by Dan Kaplan
1/700 IJN Zuikaku (Tamiya)
I’ve always had great affinity for Japanese aircraft carriers, especially the Shokaku class. Shortly after the turn of the last century (doesn’t that sound bizarre), I made a conscious decision to attempt building model that would represent the best possible effort that I could make at that time, utilizing every new technique that I could master, and every appropriate PE fret I could obtain. I wanted it to be a carrier, and I chose Zuikaku in her June, 1944 fit at the Phillipine Sea.
In truth, this model took the better part of 3 years to build, on and off. In the interim, I purposely built other ships, predominantly destroyers, to experiment with painting and PE application techniques . I also did a lot of research to attempt a high degree of accuracy.
One key area of research was the flight deck color; there has been, and continues to be, conflicting information about the type of wood used and the color of the deck. There were a lot of false starts and stops in this area. I went so far as to correspond with several Japanese and Japan based modelers on this topic.
While the earliest carrier fits might have experimented with different woods, by the time of the Pacific war, IJN CV flight decks were made of bei-matsu, which translates as ancient pine. It is a particular color, a sort of orangish-tan with golden tones. (Not coincidentally, this description best matches what Dick Best reported as the color of the Japanese flight decks following his attacks on the Kido Butai at Midway.) Anyone familiar with any of the Gakken books on IJN carriers can attest to this color. Some on-line wood flooring sites also show color swatches. It took close to a year to come up with a custom mix of paints, with a burnt umber wash, that was satisfactory.
About a year after it was completed, in a moment of extreme& incredible stupidity, I accidentally wrecked the original mast and Type 13 radar array. To say that I was upset is an understatement. These photos show the rebuilt mast and radar array.
I’m pretty happy with the result though, as always, there’s a few flaws in both finish and accuracy. Some things did not come apparent until after the model was finished. (I’ll never tell.) I did figure a simple fix for the one flaw that bothers me the most but that happened AFTER it was done, & there’s no way to fix it now.
Tamiya 1/700 Zuikaku kit, Tamiya/Leviathan & PitRoad equipment sets
Photo Etch from GMM, Tom’s, Fine Molds, Hasegawa, Joe World; Scratch built (from styrene unless noted otherwise)
Painted in Kure Grey & hull red. The flight deck is custom mix of Tamiya paints with wash of burnt umber over Future
Decals: Tamiya Shokaku, PitRoad IJN 1/700 decal sheet, Fujimi IJN CV decal sheet
Railings, doors, hatches, bridge windows, ladders, main mast base, radio aerial masts, aerial outriggers, netting, landing light arrays, life preservers, 25mm AA shields, Type 21 radar, boat crane hooks
References
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