by Monty Fowler
1/700 IJN Kimikawa Maru (Skywave)
Long before it started the war against the United States, Japan saw that any territorial expansions in the Pacific would involve lots of water, long distances and some scraps of land not always big enough for substantial military bases. So recognizing, it started an ambitious program to develop a wide variety of seaplanes, and to construct or convert the tenders needed to service them. The Kimikawa Maru was one such ship. Launched in March 1937 as a cargo/refrigerator ship for the Kawasaki Kisen Line, she completed a number of cruises on the New York-Tokyo run before being requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy in July 1941.
In June 1942 as part of Operation AL, the seizure of two of the US's far western Aleutian Islands in Alaska, the Kimikawa Maru was given the critical task of getting air power to the new bases quickly. (Those of you who have never heard of Operation AL, or the Aleutians for that matter, may recall the other part of this massive plan, Operation MI, the planned occupation of Midway Island that ultimately ended up costing Japan the war.)
On June 8, 1942, the day after Japanese troops occupied Kiska Island, the Kimikawa Maru steamed into the harbor to unload her cargo of seaplanes, fuel and base construction materials. She spent the next 13 months trying to keep the seaplane bases on Kiska and Attu islands supplied with planes faster than the violent Aleutian weather could smash them or the Americans could bomb them. After Attu was retaken by the US in May 1943 and the Japanese evacuated Kiska in July, the Kimikawa Maru was transferred to the South Pacific. Her luck ran out on Oct. 23, 1944, when she was hit by four torpedoes from the submarine USS Sawfish in the South China Sea and sank in less than 3 minutes.
The Aleutian Campaign has always fascinated me. Two world powers slugged it out for more than a year over a couple of small and strategically worthless islands, in an area where the weather is so awful it cost each side 10 times the number of airplanes that combat did, and in which heroic efforts are required merely to stay alive. And yet ... it was America's first theater-wide victory over Japan. The Battle of Attu, the modern US Army's first amphibious invasion, ended up being the second most costly battle in the entire Pacific theater, in terms of the percentage of forces engaged. It was America's first successful strategic bombing campaign, and had the very last and longest classic daylight naval gunnery duel between capital ships without benefit of aircraft, the Battle of the Komandorski Islands.
The Kimikawa Maru caught my eye because of her cool white 'arctic' camouflage scheme. A number of Japanese warships in the Aleutian campaign got unique treatments with white paint, but I have a soft spot for the auxiliaries. Skywave has a nice little kit of her, but when the seaplane tender bug bit me, it was nowhere to be found so I had to make do with her sister ship, the Kamikawa Maru. Kit No. W-52 (ordered from Pacific Front Hobbies) had most of the little bits necessary to turn the Kamikawa into the Kimikawa (those names get confusing, don't they?) The major difference was the Kimikawa's slightly larger seaplane deck. I had to add some sheet styrene painted the same color as the rest of the deck, and smaller bits for the seaplane rail system. Clever positioning of some of the little seaplanes and bits of deck cargo hid differences in the addition. The kit contained the two box-like things forward of the superstructure on the main deck, and the extra guns and mounts.
To give the model a 'busier' appearance, I also sawed open the No. 1 hatch cover, glued in a sheet styrene deck and bulkheads, and filled it with scratchbuilt crates, pallets of drums and some of those lovely little 1/700 photoetch crewmen. I'm not absolutely sure this is how the Kimikawa Maru's holds were set up, but detailed information of any kind about WWII Japanese merchant ships is extremely hard to find.
Fortunately I had already acquired Skywave's set E-12, Equipment for Japanese Navy Ships-WW 2. The ship kit only has three each of the Mitsubishi F1M2 'Pete' and Aichi E13A1 'Jake' seaplanes, not nearly enough to cover the decks. The accessory kit gave me two more each of those, plus a Nakajima E8N1 'Dave' I decided to add moored next to the ship, and some more ship's boats to further clutter the scene. Records show that the Kimikawa offloaded eight Jakes during her first visit to the Aleutians, but I wanted her decks to look busy so decided to add the five Petes too. Artistic license, you know?
There was a little scratchbuilding involved, my first complete 1/700 scale ship in fact. OK, so it's only a daihatsu landing barge! It was kind of fun, actually. Couldn't find any plans of these very common Japanese landing barges on the Internet, so I ended up eyeballing the measurements by comparing bombing raid photos of Kiska that showed daihatsu's together with Jakes. Typical for the military, there seemed to be no one design, so I felt free to add a 25mm anti-aircraft cannon to the rear of mine. A photoetch ship's wheel was the final touch.
I splurged and got the photoetch set that Pit- Road makes for this kit. While it added lots of good details, the instructions are in Japanese. I'm not bi-lingual - some parts for the airplane catapult and a few odds and ends were a complete mystery. Postings on several hobby websites found a guy who could translate, so I managed to get that sorted out! Further postings resolved discrepancies in the camouflage scheme. Photos showed the Kimikawa Maru with a wavy white pattern on only the forward starboard hull, but the boxtop art indicates white paint on the aft end too. Turns out Skywave was just saving money by showing both sides of the ship in the same drawing. As a notation in Japanese under the illustration explains, the white paint goes on the starboard side forward, and on the port side aft. I'm fairly confident I got the pattern across the front of the superstructure correct after detailed study of the few photos available.
Here is a more or less complete list of things added and aftermarket bits used:
Gold Medal Models
Cargo sling pulleys, cargo hooks, lifeboat falls, No. 700-2.
Anchors and chains, No. 700-20, IJN medium anchor on port side, anchor
chain on starboard side, forepeak.
Watertight doors and hatches, fire hose racks, life rings, No. 700-22.
3-bar railings, ladders, No. 700-10, and some bits from the spares
box.
Large whaleboat tillers and rudders, No. 720-11.
Naval figures, 31 total from No. 700-17. I like these a lot better
than some figure sets because they are only joined to the fret at the
feet, not the head too. Only half as much to cut free, and you don't end
up with flat-headed sailors. Hard to bend those arms and legs, though.
IJN flag, No. 700/350-1D. Now if I could just figure out a way to get
rid of the shiny surface ...
Loose Cannon Productions
Deck cargo of crates (forward) and lumber on pallets (aft), some bits
of leftover photoetch.
Pacific Front Hobbies
Skywave kit No. W-52, IJN Kamikawa Maru (also listed as No. SW-2800).
I used everything except the miserably thin and impossible to remove
cargo booms, substituting 0.025-inch plastic rod, and the parts replaced
by the photoetch set listed below.
Pit-Road photoetch set No. PE-109, adds some nice detail to the
superstructure (the vertical beams between decks), an aircraft catapult,
six of the trolleys the seaplanes were wheeled around on, launching
sleds for the Petes and Jakes, propellers, cargo boom pulleys and some
vertical and inclined ladders. I didn't use the cargo pulleys because
there weren't enough to rig all the booms properly, and the vertical
ladders were to heavy looking.
Stretched sprue from the kit was used for the cargo boom lifts and
rigging, radio aerials and mast rigging and ropes that are guiding
airplanes or mooring boats.
Radio Shack
22-gauge wire to replace the degaussing cable that runs all the way
around the hull, and the ridge around the anchor hawse holes.
Skywave
Set No. E-12, Equipment for Japanese Navy Ships-WW 2, all of the Petes
and Jakes, plus one Dave, four aircraft trolleys for the Petes stored
forward, and all of the small boats on the diorama base. I added life
rings and stretched sprue masts to the two 11-meter motor launches, and
some stretched sprue oars to the little rowboat. I tried adding the
outer braces between the Pete's wings, but that was too small even for
me; did manage to add the rear brace between the float and fuselage,
though.
Tom's ModelWorks
Figures in No. 1 hold, some inclined ladders, No. 708.
White Ensign Models
Some aircraft propellers, machine gun for Pete on catapult, No. 715 .
Ships' wheel for daihatsu barge, No. 736.
