Japanese Translation Please?

[iart7]

I'm pretty sure this does not have to go in the Painting and Skinning section since it is a general question about Japanese identification notation.

I'm painting a Warbirds skin of the A6M2 Zero and in particular the Tamaya 1944 late war model 1/48 scale. There is a symbol on the rudder and if anyone can translate it, please let me know. If you know what it means, where can I get more such symbols that were used on the rudder?

I'll post the photo in the SHOWCASE too. Here is the pic:



(click to enlarge) see the rudder?

Art

[BLOWHARD]

Hey Art, I'm sure I have a photo of this plane somewhere but I can't find it
I do have this diagram from Modelart 510. They are usually pretty accurate if not spot on. I'd trust it but it's still not 100% like a photo.

One thing, it's almost as common, if not more so, for fuselage stripes on Zeros not going completely around the underside. A lot of times they terminate at the lower fuselage edge. It is pretty uncommon for Zeros to have wing stripes though
And, if this is accurate, notice the thin style yellow IFF markings.

[turnipkiller]

Here is a good site for help with Kanji symbols (they also cover the hiragana and katakana alphabets). If you click Start->JLPT kanji and then choose a level and show all kanji, it shows you some kanji symbols and you can click on each one and it gives a meaning for it.

Quite a good resource, although your eyes can go buggy sometimes trying to see the difference between two symbols lol.

The Kanji SITE - A guide for students of Japanese Kanji

Hope it's of some use to you m8.

[iart7]

Thank you, Dave!

I'll fix the IFF and white fuse stripe. Thank you!

Here's more info about the plane. From Tamiya sheets in the box.

Artist is R. Watanabe (only shows fuse profile, no wing profile).

Plane is 261st Air Group (tiger corps), Kagoshima Base, Feb 1944.
Decals do not include wing stripes, so there!

NOTE: The same Tamaya box has 2 other skins I'm working on. V-103 of Sakai and AI-101 of S. Itaya. Also I will do EI-102 of T. Iwamoto These do not show yellow IFF markings on the wing.

Art
PS: your Zero profiles are awesome!

TK: "... although your eyes can go buggy sometimes trying to see the difference between two symbols lol." You said it, pal! Maybe that's why the stereotype Japanese person is shown wearing glasses with thick lenses. When I die and go to that hot place, I'm sure I'm gonna be forced to learn Japanese characters! ;-)

[BLOWHARD]

Take a look here Art-
First Air Fleet Air Unit Code Names: March 1944
If you scroll down Jim Long's first post you'll see he's got a list of Kanji names for each group, it appears that your tail code is a kanji symbol for tiger
As you can see-
Japanese kanji symbol for tiger
I was hoping to find some info on that plane at J-Aircraft but didn't see anything.

Cool site Turnip, although my eyes go buggy pretty quick! :P