Ohka MXY7 - K1 Kai

Brengun, 1/72 scale

Reviewed by Graham Carter

Eduard's 1/72 Avia B.534 IV serie Weekend Edition is available online from Squadron.com

Desperate times call for desperate measures and the last months of the war in the Pacific saw Japanese military thinkers resort to weapons that reflected both their desperation and ‘exploited’ the cultural belief of an honourable death in defending the homeland. Several suicide or Kamikaze machines were developed, some merely used existing aircraft, and others were entirely new. The Ohka air-dropped, rocket equipped piloted bomb represents one of these. It was deemed necessary to have a trainer version and this latest Brengun kit gives one of these.

A diminutive machine - Length: 6.06 m (19 ft 11 in) and wingspan : 5.12 m (16 ft 9½ in) - built from wood and carrying a 1200kg warhead, the three rocket motors gave it a speed of 804 km/h (576 mph) in dive and up to 1,040 km/h (650 mph) on full boost. The machine was carried to within range of a target, 36 km (23 mi), with the pilot on board, under a ‘Betty’ and then released. 852 were built during the July-September 1945 period, only two of them trainers, but few made it into combat. Issues with the poor security of the carriage aircraft and the skills of the pilots meant that few reached their targets and only seven ships were known to be hit. Fourteen are known to be still extant, a figure I find surprising.

Source, largely Wiki.

Brengun has already released the single seat version , BRP72029, to acclaim among modellers, and this kit will be a welcome addition to the modeller’s collection. The small end-opening box has a very realistic illustration of an aircraft on trestles in a hanger on the top, with a colour representation of its scheme on the rear. The kits are also available in 1/48 scale.

Construction should not take long following the instruction sheet which is printed on both sides of an A4 page folded into an A5 pamphlet. Colour call-outs are generic names such as ‘pale grey’, and ‘light linen’, with no manufacturers named. No information about the aircraft appears on the instructions or the box , a pity really.

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Thumbnail panels:

A tiny aircraft needs only a small number of parts so 27 light grey parts appear on a single sprue, two clear injected canopies (closed) and a tiny PE sheet for control horns, skids and an angle of attack indicator.

Resin parts offer the larger replacement fins for this version.

Parts are cleanly moulded with delicate panels that accurately portray the wooden structure under a couple of coats of paint. Gates are commendably narrow for a short-run kit. Interiors are obviously pretty basic - just two floors, seats (no belts) and control columns, and a basic moulding of longerons and ribs on the fuselage insides - not that much will be visible unless the modeller cuts the canopies up.

The tiny thin wings are in two halves, surprising given their thinness, but they look quite petite.

The small decal sheet is identical to the one in the single-seater kit, giving markings for two aircraft, I-18 and  I-10. This kit probably requires only the hinoramus as shown on the box rear, but nowhere in the kit does it show any other decal placement, so the modeller will have to either guess or do some serious research as to where the other markings could (?) go.

In the same batch of review samples Brengun have produced three accessory packs that will be very useful in super-detailing this kit:

• BRL157 - A very detailed PE set covering cockpit interiors, skid supports and airframe details.

• BRL158 - Vacform cockpit transparencies to replace the injected ones in the kit

• BRL159 - Canopy masks for the above or the kit parts.

These are illustrated above.

This is a nice kit of an interesting version of this weapon can be made out of the box. The addition of the three accessory packs mentioned above should allow a really fine model to be produced.

Thanks to Brengun for the review sample.

Review Text Copyright © 2019 by Graham Carter
Copyright © 2019 by Brett Green
Page Created 9 January, 2019
Last updated 9 January, 2019

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