The Ki-67 was a very robust aircraft, able to withstand heavy battle damage and employed good defensive armament. Its high maneuverability allowed it to carry out dive bombing attacks and escape from a low level. Japanese troops nicknamed it the "Flying Dragon," while the Allies gave it the code-name "Peggy." This limited edition kit features resin upper panel and drop tank parts, side panel parts and three marking options to represent the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force's 14th Flight Regiment in August 1945.

There is no surprise that I am a fan of Japanese equipment when it comes to my modeling tastes. I couldn’t resist taking on this Hasegawa offering of the Peggy. Basically this is a stock Peggy kit with the addition of an additional resin part that is used to create a fairing over the stock dorsal turret. Additionally, the two clear side blister positions are replaced with two flat faired polystyrene parts and lastly, two resin additions to the kit are the 500 litre underwing mounted fuel tanks that enabled this Ki-67 variant to carry out long distance bombing raids.

This Hasegawa Peggy tool dates back to 1999 and it still in fine shape. I only spotted a small bit of flash and mold seams were a breeze to clean up. Is this kit simply one that you vigorously shake the box and a fully assembled kit drops out? No, but its close.

Construction starts as most aircraft models do and that is with the interior. No surprises to be found here. The interior assembles in short order, and with a bit of paint, it is ready to drop into the fuselage halves. The fuselage halves are prepped and the side blister fairings are inserted into place. My biggest complaint about this kit, (and it’s a small one) is with the fairings. First it was necessary to reverse the parts from left to right / right to left to get them to fit properly. As called out in the instructions my parts did not want to drop into place. The other rub with the fairings is that it is necessary to cut out a small window in each of the two parts. The kit does NOT include the clear window part to fill in the open hole you create so it was necessary use a bit of PVA glue to make my own window.

With the fuselage now sealed up, I added the top resin fairing part. Fit was good but not great. This was the only assembly that required any filler in this entire build. I added the nose and tail glass to the fuselage to complete the fuse build. I found the nose glass housing fit had a tiny bit of a step with the fuselage. A bit of sanding and a good polish of the nose piece gave me a good clean fit. The wings and engine nacelles just about assemble themselves. There were no problems on these steps and the fit was great between the fuselage and wings allowing the builder to leave the wings off the model until painting and decaling was completed.

With the model mostly assembled it was time to move on to priming and painting. One fact I neglected to mention was the amount of masking necessary on this kit even without the side blisters and dorsal turret. When my review copy arrived at the house I immediately jumped online and purchased an Eduard masking set (CX068). Unless you really enjoy cutting and fitting a copious amount of small tape masks from scratch, it is worth the investment in the mask set. Priming and painting revealed no problems with the build. I found the decals clean and easy to apply, however they were just a tad thick and brittle. The brittle nature of the decals was revealed when trying to get the wing Himamaru to lay over a small navigation light. Even with decal solvent, the decal cracked. I would suggest you take your time and use warm water.

This kit ships with decals to build one of three aircraft. There is little difference between the paint schemes so really you choice is down to tail codes and fin marking color differences.

Decal Options:

1. IJAAF 14th F.R. 1st SQ. Code: 069 Irumagawa A.F. Aug., 1945
2. IJAAF 14th F.R. 2nd SQ. Code: 062 Irumagawa A.F. Aug., 1945
3. IJAAF 14th F.R. 1st SQ. Code: 486 Nitta A.F. Aug., 1945

In conclusion I found this kit to be worth the time to build it. The overall fit was very good and a modeler with basic skills should be able to finish the build with a small bit of coaching when it comes to the resin parts. I really enjoyed the build and will certainly keep my open for another variant of the Peggy to build in the future. I’d like to thank Hasegawa USA for providing the kit for review and the IPMS USA for allowing me to review it.