Philip Reed is an accomplished British master modeler of large-scale, museum-quality (or better) ship models. Although web searches and some book selling sites spell his first name with two Ls, his name is Philip with one L. Trained as an artist, and having a teaching career gives Philip the right background for this book. Philip started scratch-building WWI and WWII warships and switched to a long and successful career building sailing ship models. Philip Reed has at least three other books explaining how he builds wooden sailing ships. This book details his return to building WW2 steel warships from scratch – no kit used. Everything was made by hand from raw materials, with a sprinkling of generic photoetch brass. His latest book, Waterline Warships- An Illustrated Masterclass, is from Seaforth Publishing, a venerable British publishing house obviously devoted to nautical books.

Introduction

Hello IPMS members. Today I have the all-new tooling IJN heavy cruiser Tone as she appeared during the Battle of Leyte Gulf 1944. Fujimi has been burning the midnight oil and has released several newly tooled and retooled 1/700 scale WW2 Japanese ships for 2011

History Brief

After doing a little online research I discovered that there were two Japanese cruisers bearing the name Tone. The first (1907) a “protected cruiser” participated in the World War 1 Siege of Tsingtao, a German controlled port in China. The vessel was stricken in 1931and sunk as an aircraft target in1933.

This volume of the Osprey New Vanguard series highlights perhaps the most enduring class of fighting ships of the 20^th century. Considering that transformation in warships during the last 70 years, the longevity of the Iowa class battleships is noteworthy and a testament to their design and construction.

The book is basically divided in to two sections. The first deals with design and construction of the four units of the class (U.S.S Iowa, U.S.S. New Jersey, U.S.S Wisconsin and U.S.S. Missouri) with particular emphasis on how design parameters of previous battleships (of both U.S and foreign navies) as defined by the Washington Naval Treaty influenced the development of the Iowas. These considerations had a direct bearing on such things as armament, protection and speed. The author also goes into some detail describing the brains of these heavyweights – the fire control systems. The use of radar as well as aircraft for gunfire spotting is also detailed here.

Editors note: The reviewer has included Cyber-Hobby Models Photo-etched Railing Upgrade Set for “Scharnhorst” Kit Number CHC-3880 ($19.95) with this review.

The Dragon 1/350 scale model of the German Battleship Scharnhorst is one impressive kit, not only in the size of the model itself but the enormous number of parts. The large box was stuffed full with 28 individually bag sprues, 5 photo-etched frets, an upper hull, a lower hull, a plastic base, a decal sheet, and an instruction sheet. If that was not enough, there wis also a supplemental photo-etched set of railings and other miscellaneous items provided by Dragon that was used as part of this build.

Please read the in box review (published earlier) for the history and a parts break down of this interesting kit.

The kit goes together without any problems. I followed the construction sequence as recommended with the following exceptions. I left the clear glazing (windows) off until final assembly. This made painting the bridge and deck house area a lot easier and I also left the life rings off until final detail due to them being an orange color and hard to paint with them installed.

I decided to do the MAS 563 version because of the colorful paint scheme. I followed the recommended painting instructions and guide. Model Masters paint was used almost exclusively. Light Ghost was used for the majority of the hull and fittings and Gunship grey for the deck. I painted the aerial recognition stripes on the bow before adding any deck detail.