IPMS/USA Kit Review: Hasegawa 1/48 Isuzu TX40 WW2 Fuel Truck

Hasegawa

1/48 Isuzu TX40 WW2 Fuel Truck

Kit Number: HAS 36114

Reviewed by Andrew Birkbeck, IPMS# 27087

MSRP: $33.95
Distributor website: www.dragonmodelsusa.com

This kit was initially released by Hasegawa in 2008 as part of a "combo kit" with a Ki-45 twin-engined aircraft. Happily, for those like me who concentrate more on military vehicles than aircraft models, Hasegawa has seen fit to release this excellent kit on its own. Way back in the mists of time, Hasegawa released a World War Two Isuzu fuel truck in their 1/72 range of military vehicles, together with a Toyota aircraft starter truck. With this kit, you get not only a fuel truck, but also an interesting little wheeled fire extinguisher, along with some fuel drums and two soldier figures.

The model consists of five sprues of standard "Hasegawa plastic" for the truck and fire extinguisher parts, together with a clear sprue for the truck windows, headlamp lenses, etc. The parts are all molded to a high standard of detail, with no sink marks and only a couple of ejection pin marks to contend with. This plastic is of a high standard, and reacts well with standard modeling solvents. However, the two sprues that contain the two figures is of a different type of plastic, more brittle it seems, and the figures themselves I feel are poorly molded with detail that doesn’t match the quality of the vehicle parts.

The fuel truck model assembles easily with the help of the well-designed instruction sheet. As with other trucks I have built in this scale, one starts with the assembly of the chassis/engine/exhaust areas, with the engine itself being the oil pan etc, not a full engine. One then moves to the cab interior, which is reasonably detailed for the scale: separate steering wheel and steering column, floor-mounted gear levers, bench seat, together with raised detail for the instrument area, with decals being provided for the instrument dials etc. If you want separate floor pedals for the brake/accelerator, you will have to scratch build these.

The cab roof and the top half of the doors are molded in clear plastic. You then carefully mask off the window areas on these parts, and paint them canvas/sail color, as it was apparently a soft top vehicle. The front windshield has wipers molded integrally, requiring some careful masking if you intend to paint them black, as I did. The front grill gives the modeler the option of building an IJN or IJA vehicle, both arms of the Japanese military, of course, having their own air wings to refuel.

Lastly, the modeler assembles the large fuel tank that sits on the rear deck of the truck chassis, this being molded in four main parts, a top and bottom, along with a front and a rear part. The only care required here is to insure that the seam around the middle of the top/bottom tank parts is carefully cleaned up once the glued parts have thoroughly set up.

As mentioned earlier, there are two "versions" of this truck available to the modeler, one being Navy, the other Army. From a check around the Internet, it seems very little evidence is left regarding what these vehicles looked like from WW2. The Japanese weren’t big on the use of color film, and much of the documentation from the WW2 era was destroyed by US bombing operations. Hasegawa provides paint mixes (using Gunze acrylic and Mr Color lacquer mixes), indicating the IJA version being a Khaki color, while the Navy version is listed as a "Midnight Blue" or "Cowling Color". I chose to do mine as an Army vehicle, and chose to paint it using White Ensign Models’ excellent enamel range of paints, WWII Japanese Army Khaki (AR J 01). The soft-top cab was painted Mr Color lacquer 45 "Sail Color". Other than a license plate for the rear of the vehicle and the instrument decal, there are no other markings with the kit.

Overall, I loved this kit. It is well molded, with commendably good fit of parts. The exception to this was the two crewmembers that were included, which are in my opinion poorly detailed and molded in an inferior plastic. This kit is perfect for any IJN or IJA airfield diorama, or on its own as part of a military vehicle collection. My thanks to Dragon Models USA for providing this review kit.