The Ship

So much has been written about the battleship Yamato that anyone familiar with the Pacific War will know of the Japanese super battleship. Realizing that they could not compete one-on-one with the U.S.Navy, from the mid-1930s the Japanese shipbuilding philosophy was to build each of their new warships to be individually superior to any competing USN warship design. Commissioned into the IJN in late 1941 and early 1942 respectively, the Yamato and her sister-ship, Musashi represented the epitome of this philosophy. Weighing in at nearly 70,000 tons fully loaded, they were the largest battleships ever built and were not superseded in warship size until the advent of the U.S. Navy’s super carriers in the 1950s. As powerful as they were, Yamato and her sister spent much of their careers at anchor and did not fire their 18.1”guns in anger until the Philippines campaign of October, 1944, where Musashi was sunk by air attack.

The book is divided into eight chapters. The pictures are located throughout the chapters with many of them pertaining to the particular battle being discussed by the author. Except for the first chapter in which his birth and early career are touched upon, the rest of the chapters are dedicated to the battles in which he took part. A good explanation of the battle discussed is given on each of the chapters dedicated to the particular battle. In addition, maps of the battle are also provided.

The first chapter is divided describing his early career, and the beginning of the war against Russia. It ends with the description of the battles of Smolensk-Moscow and Stalingrad. In the second chapter the author describes the failure of the Soviet troops to achieve their assigned task to thrust deep into the German lines and cut their retreat routes. The Germans thus counter-attacked that defeated the Russians.

This is the third part of a series of A-20 Pin-Up Nose Art sets of decals in 1/72 Scale. I was going to do a product review only but once I saw how nice these were I broke out an old Matchbox A-20 from my stash to use these in a real build.

In the packet is:

• 2 x sheets of decals (one is stencils)
• 1 instruction sheet

The decals look very good when removed from the packet. I did have some issues with a few of the decals breaking up when being placed on the model. I did manage to use all the ones I needed with a little patience and rebuilding the broken ones. I do recommend leaving them in the warm water a little longer than you would normally and also leave then on a dry paper towel for a while before using. This I found reduced the breaking.

Summary

These are very attractive marking and very good, just be careful using them