1/1200 IJNS Yamato and IJNS Mushashi (again) Picture Extravaganza of Japanses Super-Dreadnoughts

Have camera will play! The "deadly sisters" IJNS Yamato (top) and IJNS Mushashi (below) on a stretched canvas or should I say ersatz sea of "blue pacific" oils:

From the high level bombing run (see above) to the low level reconnaissance pass (see below) with enemy armaments turning:

Just camera-happy clicking away (see below):

A close up of the IJNS Yamato's stern (see below). Here you can see the only real modelling difference between the two (Yamato and Mushashi) in the Revell kits. There is extra AA mounted on the the rear (Y turret) and forward 18" (B turret) main batteries of the Yamato:

Extra AA seen here on the front B turret (see below):

Still plenty of film left in the camera so I kept clicking away. The "long" shot (see below), not what you want to see coming at you at 25 knots:

Impressive even going looking back opposite way at the beasts (see below):

The IJNS Yamato in profile (see below):

And again:

Back to the high level target for the B-17's again (see below) plus can you see the edge of the world (see bottom of the picture below):

Any excuse for a close up, even slightly fuzzy, of those 18" batteries (see below):

The last picture of the series, let's not forget there is the IJNS Mushashi too (see below). After all I did her first over a year ago now (and even pretended she was meant to be the Yamato, oh the indignity) so let me give her a moment in the sun.

Well I thought I would blast these pictures out in one big post and get it all over and done with. I have to say I enjoyed that. There is the small question of an outstanding IJN carrier to finish, but I sense the need to move on too.

Are the fellow "treadheads" missing the tanks? I've got some more pictures lined up of early war  stuff to come, though yo might be surprised at the scale of these chaps ;)

1/1200 IJNS Yamato gets some TLC ... highlighting

Three sisters (IJNS Yamato [bottom], IJNS Shinano [middle], IJNS Mushashi [top]):

The Yamato (right) gets some highlight work done (see below [right]), I decided to plane her aircraft white as per the Shinano 'air group'. The Mushashi's (see below [left]) planes are painted green, so at a glance I can tell the models apart!

Just playing around with the camera seeing them sideways from above. To highlight I added Tamiya Nuetral Grey XF-53 to the Games Workshop Adeptus BattleGrey, then added some Anita's Acrylics Cream White:

And then skewed at an angle (Yamato [top], Mushashi [bottom]):

It's a nice feeling now the battleships are done! I'll have to do the same to the Shinano now ;)

The 1/1200 IJNS Yamato gets a lick of paint ...

The IJNS Yamato gets the flat black (XF-1 Black) Tamiya treatment (see below):

The artistic long shot (see below). IJNS Shinano is base coated with Games Workshop Adepoptus BattleGrey (Grey) and Tanned Flesh (Pink) :

A close up of the Shinano "air group" (see below) complete with 'tricky' red markings:

It is slow progress less than an hour a per night but bit-by-bit I am getting there! Then blink and something quite spectacular happens to the IJNS Yamato ;)

(See below) The Yamato is base-coated Games Workshop Adeptus BattleGrey for her steel deck and Vallejo "Game Color"[Sic] Leather Brown as the stand in for Games Workshop's Snakebite Leather (Decking).

The IJNS Mushashi appears in Blue Peter style, "here's one I prepared earlier", to act as painting guide reminder so I can get the end result looking pretty similar. They also stand together posed nicely as the 'pack of three Yamato sisters' Japanese from the Revell "Mini-Ship" series.

Still not finished "highlighting" still to do.

1/1200 IJNS Shinano continued ...

Did you know that the Shinano was a "pink lady" as her deck was a "sea shade of pink". As I quote from the model build on modelingmadness:

"...the flight deck of the Shinano was a very un-military shade of pink!  (The box art from the old Tamiya 1/700 scale model actually depicts this.)  According to Lynn Lucious Moore's “Shinano: The Jinx Carrier” (US Naval Institute Proceedings, February, 1953) the steel flight deck was covered with, “...a thin, shock-absorbent latex-sawdust...” composition.  The origin of the wood is unclear, but Japanese red cedar (sugi) or Japanese red pine (akamatsu), both common in Japan, would account for the pinkish color noted by observers.  The deck would have undoubtedly have been camouflaged before she entered service, but it had not yet been done when Shinano was sunk on her way to final fitting out.  The improbable color is well attested by several eyewitnesses, both former crewmen and civilian workers."

Pink, as I have been told by a former merchant seaman of many years, is also probably the most effective paint camouflage you can use at sea (true/false? please discuss). Whether it is as effective when painted all over your flight deck I know not. Note: My "pink" was Games Workshop Tanned Flesh, again chosen just to use it up. At least the Japanese seemed to have moved away from advertising their carriers with large "Rising Sun" roundels perfect for adjusting the US dive-bombers bomb run as per Midway. A plane in the hanger gets a little bit of painting attention (see below):

The plane is painted white, with a black engine cowling, grey windscreen/glass and then the tricky Japanese roundel (well it certainly is in 1/1200) applied in red and then its jagged curves are touched up and smoothed out by careful application of white.

Then the many pieces of the "layered back bit of her hull" are assembled and her flight deck is put on and the little carrier group (see below) is painted as per their comrade down in the hanger. The IJNS Yamato now appears for a bit of mutual moral support, after all it is 1944 and US planes are everywhere!

Looking quite cool but there is still quite a bit of painting still to be done.

The IJNS Yamato begs for some more paint (see above). Her turn has come ;)

IJN Shipyards: IJNS Yamato and IJNS Shinano (1/1200)

The recent eBay purchase of the Revell IJNS Shinano kit comes under the glue and black undercoat, the ever faithful Tamiya XF-1 Black (see below):

The only complication with the Shinano (in contrast to her sister hull on the Yamato) is, by virtue of her aircraft carrier conversion, her "rear" is stacked into many (three to be exact) layers that have to be painted then glued together thanks to their relative inaccessibility to a paint brush at a later stage. 

Top and bottom assembled on the Shinano (see above). All that is needed is a base coat of dark grey. I am using up a pot of Games Workshop's Foundation Adeptus BattleGrey at the moment (just to use it up). To be fair it has a nice thick coverage.

The IJNS Yamato being in the vicinity of the matt black starts getting a bit of an undercoat too! Steady progress, though not at breakneck speed ;)

1/1200 IJN Yamato

At last the IJN Yamato gets some of the TLC it deserves:

It slipped together beautifully and is patiently awaiting its black undercoat:

Can you count the flak batteries? Can you see those massive eighteen inch main armament guns, stacked in three triple turrets? It was the biggest floating thing of WWII! Isn't it crazy that its huge mass was effectively redundant by the time it commissioned!

Sunk by US Pacific Fleet air power without even getting in range of its enemy in 1945.

IJN 1/1200 Yamato Kit

My triumvirate of Revell IJN 1/1200 kits is now complete (although I should add only one is "made", two are in the projects "stash/stock" for the winter nights). So I now have the IJNS Mushashi (made), the third ugly sister that was converted into an aircraft carriers 'desperation style' post the Midway 1942 disaster the IJNS Shinano (still in the box) and the most famous of the pack the IJNS Yamato courtesy of my latest eBay purchase.

Peeking inside the pack I see it's a nice little kit, differing only from the IJNS Mushashi in that it has turret options with additional AA mounts on them.

This begs the question, as I now have eighteen Revell 1/1200 warship kits, does this mean I have the complete (warship) range? Details to follow in a different post.     

Japanese WWII Dreadnought Battleships 1/3000

Seen below some "heavy metal" of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in a sheltered anchorage somewhere in the Pacific.

In the fore are the super-dreadnoughts Yamato and Musashi (both wielding 9 x18" guns), behind them Mutsu and Natagto (8 x 16" main armament, the Japanese version of the RN Queen Elizabeth class) and lingering in the distance the Fuso and Yamishiri (12 x 14" broadside).

Again from a different angle. This mass of armoured metal was outmoded by the time of WWII in the Pacific Theatre, where air power was the dominant deciding factor. Still very nice to paint up :)

The rest of the IJN awaits for1941 and the Pacific War scenarios (all the above are Navwar 1/3000 figures).

Footnote: This page amongst all my postings is the most popular by far and away. Is it just being picked up by the search engines for people interested in the Pacific War?

Yamato continued

Taking it down to low level hell:

Your bomb doors must now be open, but in all honesty could you say the same for your eyes at this point? Fingers crossed here goes!

Sometimes when you get your teeth into something you are not quite satisfied until you get a little more from it. The 1/3000 scale Yamato was actually painted after its slightly bigger 1:1200 Revell brother here (in fact sister, as the kit I have is in fact of the Musashi.)

I was seeking some meat to the bone and my crazy collection of plastic 1:1200 ships (long forgotten about in a cupboard) came to my rescue. All I need now is for Airfix to re-release their old 1:1200 "Sink the Bismarck" ships so I can get my hands on the old HMS Hood:)

[Footnote: A little bit of after the fact internet research shows that the yellow decking should extend slightly further forward on the 1:1200 model, well I'm not going to have a sleepless night over that, I'll putit down on the future Sunday afternoon job list.]

One fine day (in retirement) I may get round to doing her in 1/700 as those Japanese kits are beautiful (I fear I'll never move up to the motorised 1/350). Wargaming wise this is all crazy as even 1/3000 seems too large at times for tabletop naval battles without the aid of a ballroom.

Yamato Progress

The (painted) Yamato is spotted! Coming down from on high:

Getting bigger and bigger all the time.

Will your luck hold or the murderous flak get you?

The ocean effect courtesy of an artist stretched canvas, thinly smeared in flexible filler (hence the ridgy cracked nature), painted dark blue. It is a WIP experimentation inspired from some comments posted on the awargamingodyssey blog (a nice recommended read).