B-25 VS Japanese Kaibokan
by René Hieronymus
click to enlarge
1/72  B-25 VS Japanese Kaibokan, Type D Class II
The story behind the diorama:

It all started when one of my cats accidentally damaged one of my older dioramas, it crashed down from a shelf and was pretty heavily damaged. (Don't worry that cat is still alive!) When I decided to rebuild this diorama I had to build one airplane completely new, cause one of the original one was truly destroyed. I decided to build a PBJ-1D (Air Force B-25D). But for this I needed a lot of photos showing interior details of this particular plane and so I started searching for this. That's when I stumbled across one particular photo showing a B-25 at very very low level attacking a Japanese Warship. 
At the same instant I knew that this will be my next diorama. A few month later I started the work in earnest. The airplane was no problem at all, I took the 1:72 scale model of a B-25H Gunship from Italeri but the ship was not that easy at all! My first idea was to take the old Matchbox, now Revell Kit of the Flower Class in the same scale and convert it into a Japanese! At least it sounded good to me, but as soon as I had the kit and started looking at it, I realized that this would be either a very major rework or simply impossible! Most of all I was afraid that when I would finish the diorama that someone would say to me, nice work and good idea, but there has never ever been such a Japanese Warship! The next thing that happened is that a friend of mine came up with a book containing some large scale plans of different Japanese Warships and to my greatest surprise among them was EXACTLY the plan of this ship shown on the photograph! 
That's when I decided to build the whole ship by myself. From the photos you will see that I used a wooden skeleton for the hull which was covered with cardboard. The bridge and the deckhouse were all built from plastic sheet and self made parts. 
The guns and the Anti Aircraft guns turned out to be a real headache, first of all I had to get good plans of them and then I had to build them entirely scratch. But I think the result speaks for itself. All the tiny details were added a nd a lot of time was spent in coloring and weathering. 
The diorama itself is 1,2 x 1,6m on a wooden base. The water surface was done in my most favorite way by using Toilet paper and wall paper glue. This pretty simple method turns out very realistic when properly painted! The little geysers are made of cotton which was first of all sprayed with Future and later softly colored. At the end they were simply glued to the surface of my "water". All together I worked almost exactly 1 year (900 hrs) on this model. 

 
At the end I can say that this model opened up a new possibility for my hobby, cause few weeks later I started to build the model I'm dreaming of since more than 20 years, a US Navy Carrier in 1/72, actually this is going to be the CVE-26 USS Sangamon. Hopefully I will be able to send you some photos of this model too, but its still at work (since 1 1/2 years) and I estimate another 2-3 years for me to finish this monster!
Click here to see more of the ship
Click here to see the finished Diorama.

 

René Hieronymus

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