Special Hobby Aichi E16A1 Zuiun "Paul"
By Chris Banyai-Riepl
The Aichi E16A1 was an interesting Japanese design built to the requirement of a dive-bombing floatplane. The design specifications changed extensively throughout the development process, resulting in a gap of almost two years between the first flight of the prototype and the plane’s entry into service. The E16A1, code-named "Paul" by the Allies, had many interesting features as a result of its dive-bombing capabilities, including Fowler-type flaps and dive brakes The Special Hobby E16A1 is a very thorough and complete kit, with both injection and resin pieces. The resin parts make up the cockpit and engine, and the detail in them is incredible. The engine is made up of separate individual cylinders The engineering of this kit is interesting. The large The floats are another complicated piece of work, made even more difficult The
built into the "N" float struts. Armed with two 20mm cannons in the wing and a 13mm machine gun in the rear, the Paul could carry a 250kg bomb almost 2000km. In combat, though, the Paul quickly fell to the guns of allied fighters, and it was quickly pulled from frontline service. The survivors were used for training and kamikaze attacks. A couple were captured by the U.S. and flown for evaluation.
attached to the central crankcase. While this means more work to the modeler, the task of cleaning up the cylinders is much easier. Both rows of cylinders are given, and once this is all together you will have one incredible-looking engine. It’s too bad it will be mostly hidden behind the tight-fitting cowling. The cockpit is very well detailed and some time with the paintbrush will be needed to turn this into a nice representation. The only thing that is missing is the rear 13mm machine gun, but it could be stowed out of sight, so it isn’t essential.
wing root fillets are separate pieces, which made it easier to mold, but it is going to be tricky to assemble. The fit here is pretty good, though, so all that will be needed will be some careful sanding and a lot of dry fitting. The cowl is in two pieces, and it may need to be thinned down on the inside to fit it around the resin engine. Having it in two pieces will make this chore much easier.
by the lack of any locating tabs or pegs. The float supports are made up of four separate pieces, all of which seem to be going at a different angle. There is a diagram showing the proper front alignment of the struts, but even still there will be a lot of work needed to get these right. If there was ever a case for a jig, this is it! Once the struts are on, the next step is to add the floats, which also don’t have locating pegs. The entire undercarriage assembly will probably be the most time-consuming task with this kit, especially since it doesn’t have wheels that you can file down to even out the stance. I think using brass wire inside the struts would help tremendously in alignment.
decals are printed by Propagteam and are very thin. They tried to help cover the translucence of the yellow and red by undercoating them with white, but they left an edge on the yellow numbers that might show up when put on the kit, especially over the dark green upper surface camouflage. The rest of the decals are all in register and should present no problems. There are several serial number choices for the Japanese variant, including one with white stripes on the horizontal stabilizers.
This kit is a nice example of an interesting Japanese floatplane. In looking through my notes, I found that Aoshima also does a 1:72 Paul as well, so you have a couple of choices for doing this plane if you can overlook the Aoshima kit’s many gross inaccuracies. The Special Hobby kit comes out ahead in my book because of the superb resin interior and engine included. With the interior and the difficult float engineering, I would recommend this for a more advanced modeler, but with time just about anyone could turn this kit into a nice example.