This is the third item from Master Model that I have had the privilege of reviewing, and once again, I have had a very positive experience with some remarkable items. The subject of this review comes from the Sea Master line of parts, in particular their 1/700 scale offering of 28cm/54.5 (about 11 inches) SKC/34 gun barrels as carried by the German ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. I volunteered for this particular review as I already had a Tamiya Water Line Series Scharnhorst (kit 77518) lying in wait in my stash, ready to accept these new parts.
I missed out on this book when it was originally published as a hardback a few years ago. Fortunately it has been re-issued as a softbound book. The book is the definitive volume on this submarine. It was the largest submarine to serve in WWII at over 400 feet long with a crew of almost 200 and weighing over 5200 tons.
The first chapter gives us an overview of the Japanese submarine service in WWII. Chapter two covers the specifics of the I-400 class, with chapter three giving us the details and specifications on the aircraft the sub was designed to carry, the Aichi M6A “Seiran” attack-bomber. This chapter includes detailed drawings and pilot memories.
Most people are aware of the large WWII German U-boats as they appear in movies, video games and on TV very frequently. These are typically the large Type VII and Type IX boats. Many don’t realize the Germany also had a very active midget submarine effort going where one or two man subs attacked and sunk shipping.
While there are several different types, the one we are looking at is a one man sub named Biber (Beaver). There were 324 built towards the end of the war. While not very successful (they sank or damaged 9 ships versus losses of 70 subs), they do hold a spot in the history of the Kriegsmarine.
Bottom Line: Excellent 3-D anchors and flattest chrysanthemum bow crests for wide range of Imperial Japanese Navy warships.
Fine Molds Nano Dread 700 Series has been producing a line of very finely detailed and realistically close-to-scale aftermarket equipment sets for 1/350 and 1/700 scale World War 2 Imperial Japanese Navy warships. These sets use advanced molding techniques to produce very small parts with exceptional detail. Historical accuracy and attention to detail makes Fine Molds Nano Dread sets ideal for upgrading WW2 ships. They have an advantage over photoetch metal sets by being three-dimensional, easier to handle, no folding or assembly required (mostly), rigid, stronger and just plain better-looking.
Titanic, no other ship’s name can conjure up so many images in one’s mind. The ship was the epitome of luxury, affluence and status. The tragedy of the loss of over 1500 souls; the love of Ida and Isador Straus, who would not be separated and chose to go down with the ship together rather than one should live apart from the other; or of the ships remains broken and battered on the ocean floor.
The world’s most famous ship is also one of the most modeled ocean going vessels of all time. This book covers one man’s journey building a scratch built 1/48 scale 18 foot long model of RMS Titanic. The book opens with a brief history of the loss of the ship and a discussion of builder’s models of the Titanic and her sister’s Olympic and Britannic before launching into the meat of the subject.
During World War II, one of the most publicized branches of the German armed forces was the U-Boat Command. At the beginning of the war, the submarine service was unprepared for the conflict to come, and as the war began, a rapid expansion took place, with U-boat construction and crew training assuming a rapid pace. The Germans never had enough U-boats, and as the war progressed, the Allies were able to develop countermeasures, such as long range aircraft, convoy escorts, and the decoding of German Enigma traffic, which slowed down and eventually overcame the effectiveness of the U-boats against Allied shipping. Although over 1,100 U-boats were built, over 800 were unsuccessful or never saw action, but nevertheless, only 30 U-boat commanders accounted for about 800 of the total of about 3,000 merchant and naval vessels sunk by U-boats during the course of the war. And tragically, of the 38,000 men that went to sea in U-boats, only 8000 survived the war.
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.
Bottom Line: As good as it gets for some, but not all, boat davit types for World War 2 IJN destroyers. Wish I had these for all those IJN DDs I have already built.
Fine Molds has been producing a line of very finely detailed and realistically close-to-scale aftermarket equipment sets for World War 2 Imperial Japanese navy warships with injection-molded plastic. These sets use advanced molding techniques to product very small parts with exceptional detail. Combined with historical accuracy and attention to detail makes Fine Molds Nano Dread sets ideal for upgrading WW2 ships. They have an advantage over photoetch metal sets by being three-dimensional, easier to handle, no folding or assembly required, rigid, stronger and just plain better-looking. Set WA11 is specifically for half of the boat davit types for WW2 IJN destroyer (DD) classes – the radial type.
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.
Thanks once again to Stevens International for providing IPMS with yet another review kit. Without your support (and our purchasing the items) companies like Tamiya could not continue to provide us with new, interesting kits to build!