The Ki-43 could easily be considered the IJAAF's 'Zero' as the two aircraft has much in common. Both were light weight, both were the service's first monoplane fighter with retractable landing gear, and both were quite maneuverable. The A6M had greater range and heavier armament, while the Ki-43 was faster and had better mid to low altitude handling. Both had insufficient armor protection and both entered service about the same time. 

THE KIT

Those of us who have been around for a while, realize that though this and other Nichimo kits are from an earlier era in scale modeling, they are still worthy builds. This one is no exception and until Hasegawa released their early Ki-43, this was the best around.

The kit is not lacking in detail by any means. Surface detailing includes engraved panel lines and sunken rivets. There is sidewall detail on the inside of the fuselage and the cockpit itself has a considerable amount of detailing in terms of floor mounted controls, rudder pedals, control stick and a nicely done seat. Decals are provided for the instrument panel if you wish to use them. A pilot figure is included.

The engine is two pieces with exhaust detailing along with a full accessory section, which will disappear for the most part when the engine is attached to the motor mounts. If you are into dioramas, you could cut the one piece cowling to allow engine detail to be visible. Once the engine/cockpit assembly is trapped between the fuselage halves, the tailplanes, cowling and windscreen/canopy can be attached.

Wings are a single lower section with upper halves and the landing gear/wheels are nicely done. There are a pair of drop tanks if one wants to use those. Finally, things like the prop, landing light, pitot tube and radio mast are installed.

Instructions are in Japanese with no English to be seen, so you are on your own when it comes to colors. There is a large decal sheet with more options on it than are shown in the instructions. The schemes shown there are all with the 64th Sentai, the unit with the arrow on the fin as shown in the box art. I'm not sure that the brown upper surface is accurate, but there it is. All the planes are early war so no yellow wing leading edge and the underside will be unpainted metal. I'm sure that some of the options will have mottling of various degrees over the unpainted upper surface. All Ki-43s had a black anti-glare panel on the nose. The decal sheet looks quite usable and there are a lot of aftermarket options if one is so inclined. 

CONCLUSIONS

I bought this one as I've never done a Nichimo Ki-43-I and wanted a kit that did not have separate flaps, like the Hasegawa kit, as these flaps were almost never deployed on the ground. I have an aftermarket sheet with some nice options, so I'll only be using the instrument decals from the kit sheet. There is a build article already in the archives and it looks like a nice one.

August 2025

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