Aoshima 1/72 OH-1 Ninja Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

In the early 1990s, the Kawasaki Aerospace Company was awarded a contract under the OH-X program to produce a replacement scout helicopter to replace the JGSDF's OH-6D Cayuse. Kawasaki developed Japan's first indigenous helicopter which features design similarities from a variety of aircraft. The aircraft carries a crew of two and is currently armed with the Type 91 air-to-air missile. While the aircraft was originally intended to replace the OH-6D, budget cuts limited production of the OH-1 to 38 examples leaving the OH-6D to soldier on.

Aoshima has produced the first plastic kit of this aircraft, this release being produced in 1/72 scale. The kit is molded in green styrene and presented on five parts trees (duplicate tree not shown) plus one tree of black parts and one tree of clear parts.

As you can see, the kit layout is simple but still offers some nice options. Some of the features and options include:

• Nicely detailed front and rear cockpits
• Positionable crew entry doors
• FLIR turret is movable in azimuth and elevation
• Positionable avionics bay doors on starboard side
• Choice of weighted (on the ground) or extended (flying) landing gear struts
• Movable stabilator
• Movable main rotor
• Movable Fenestron tail rotor

External stores iclude:

• 2 x external tanks
• 2 x two-shot Type 91 pods

Markings are provided to replicate any of the 38 operational aircraft plus markings to replicate the flight test prototypes before they were updated to operational configuration.

This is a nice kit of an interesting milestone in Japanese aviation history. If you're looking for a nice subject to add to your scale flightline, grab this new kit from Aoshima.

My sincere thanks to Aoshima for this review sample!