Calling all Yamato (大和) and Musashi (武蔵) fans

[baseballbrat]

50_aqua_side.jpg (14.97 KiB) Viewed 5306 times

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They look like this but in Ceramic.

[Thomas E. Johnson]

On the IJN uniforms:

Different seasons and ranks called for different types and colors of uniforms. I don't know much more than that, but you can Google Imperial Japanese Navy uniforms, and get some ideas:

http://robwood.net/yamato_museum/1200/p ... iforms.jpg

The 1:10 Yamato Museum model has a few officer or petty officer figures in either white, blue or greenish khaki, but I don't know what they signify:

http://robwood.net/yamato_museum/1200/p ... G_9214.jpg

http://robwood.net/yamato_museum/1200/p ... G_9227.jpg

http://robwood.net/yamato_museum/1200/p ... G_9298.jpg

http://robwood.net/yamato_museum/1200/p ... G_9521.jpg

http://robwood.net/yamato_museum/1200/p ... G_9317.jpg

Thank you for that info.

So what is the majority of the crew on the model wearing?

[marengtech]

Thanks for your answer to my question Rob

To answer baseballbrat's question on flag halyards: still currently serving in the Navy myself and I am confident that the way we attach our flag halyards would be the same as the rest of the world's navies should be the same. I've included a drawing, I apologize for the crudity, which should give you a good idea what the attachment looks like. The halyard is attached using a figure 8 around the two fittings and then tied off with a half hitch or two...at least it is how we stokers do it, it annoys the hell out of the bos'ns lol.

[baseballbrat]

Thanks for your answer to my question Rob

To answer baseballbrat's question on flag halyards: still currently serving in the Navy myself and I am confident that the way we attach our flag halyards would be the same as the rest of the world's navies should be the same. I've included a drawing, I apologize for the crudity, which should give you a good idea what the attachment looks like. The halyard is attached using a figure 8 around the two fittings and then tied off with a half hitch or two...at least it is how we stokers do it, it annoys the hell out of the bos'ns lol.

I was thinking that the attachment is different. Halyard Lines on the Yamato seem to drape over a long bar and then go into some kind of a long box attached to the floor. Kind of hard to explain but different then what I have seen on other ships.

[Rob Wood]

On the glass strain insulator: Yes, that looks right, except red ceramic.

On the signal halyards: That box you see is actually the stowage for the signal flags. It would be fairly SOP for cleats to be attached on or near that box - one for each halyard.

On the 1:10 model's figures' uniforms: I supplied photos of all of them. I believe they were included simply to illustrate 4 types of uniform. Officers were not supplied uniforms - the officers contracted with tailors to have them made. There was room for personal expression in these, so you will find variations in them. As for which to use, I'm fairly certain blues were worn in winter, and whites in summer. Khakis would have been for physical labor, so khaki for gun crews would have been typical, while officers - who would not have been engaged in physical labor - would have worn the uniform of the season. I could be wrong about this, so please don't take me as an authority on the IJN. (I'm not.) My specialty is the Kriegsmarine, with a secondary specialty in U.S.N., and WWII history in general.

Just FYI for those who may not know it, the IJN did not have a completely unique navy. All of the world's major powers were very competitive, and they were all keenly aware of the plans and accomplishments of their rivals. The naval arms race got so competitive and expensive that it led to several treaties to keep the competing countries from going bankrupt - most notably, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. The terms of this treaty, which relegated Japan to a secondary role as a naval power, was a major factor in Japan's decision to attack the U.S.N. fleet at Pearl Harbor, 19 years later. Japan formally renounced the treaty in December of 1934, but that did not sever its relationship with British shipbuilding firms. Great Britain had played an important, ongoing role as a supplier of capital ships to Imperial Japan. Kong?, for example, was built by the Vickers Shipbuilding Company. And even though Kong?, commissioned in 1913, was the last IJN capital ship built outside Japan, the entire Combined Fleet was British in general demeanor.

When you look at Japanese officers and men, they don't look that much different than their British counterparts, and it would not be a stretch to look to British traditions of dress and ship organization and management to fill in where research fails to supply the information you need to move forward in your model build.

All of this simply my opinion,

Rob

[Thomas E. Johnson]

On the glass strain insulator: Yes, that looks right, except red ceramic.

On the signal halyards: That box you see is actually the stowage for the signal flags. It would be fairly SOP for cleats to be attached on or near that box - one for each halyard.

On the 1:10 model's figures' uniforms: I supplied photos of all of them. I believe they were included simply to illustrate 4 types of uniform. Officers were not supplied uniforms - the officers contracted with tailors to have them made. There was room for personal expression in these, so you will find variations in them. As for which to use, I'm fairly certain blues were worn in winter, and whites in summer. Khakis would have been for physical labor, so khaki for gun crews would have been typical, while officers - who would not have been engaged in physical labor - would have worn the uniform of the season. I could be wrong about this, so please don't take me as an authority on the IJN. (I'm not.) My specialty is the Kriegsmarine, with a secondary specialty in U.S.N., and WWII history in general.

Just FYI for those who may not know it, the IJN did not have a completely unique navy. All of the world's major powers were very competitive, and they were all keenly aware of the plans and accomplishments of their rivals. The naval arms race got so competitive and expensive that it led to several treaties to keep the competing countries from going bankrupt - most notably, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. The terms of this treaty, which relegated Japan to a secondary role as a naval power, was a major factor in Japan's decision to attack the U.S.N. fleet at Pearl Harbor, 19 years later. Japan formally renounced the treaty in December of 1934, but that did not sever its relationship with British shipbuilding firms. Great Britain had played an important, ongoing role as a supplier of capital ships to Imperial Japan. Kong?, for example, was built by the Vickers Shipbuilding Company. And even though Kong?, commissioned in 1913, was the last IJN capital ship built outside Japan, the entire Combined Fleet was British in general demeanor.

When you look at Japanese officers and men, they don't look that much different than their British counterparts, and it would not be a stretch to look to British traditions of dress and ship organization and management to fill in where research fails to supply the information you need to move forward in your model build.

All of this simply my opinion,

Rob

Thank you for that info.

[baseballbrat]

I found a photo of the halyard line tie downs on the signal deck.

[baseballbrat]

Does any know anywhere a schematic of Yamato's rigging can be found? I have been looking for sometime now.

[Thomas E. Johnson]

Does any know anywhere a schematic of Yamato's rigging can be found? I have been looking for sometime now.

I had a hard time with that as well. The instructions for Tamiya's new 1/350 Yamato don't include any. I used The Anatomy of the Ship volume on the Yamato, and came up with what looks reasonability correct.

[baseballbrat]

Does any know anywhere a schematic of Yamato's rigging can be found? I have been looking for sometime now.

I had a hard time with that as well. The instructions for Tamiya's new 1/350 Yamato don't include any. I used The Anatomy of the Ship volume on the Yamato, and came up with what looks reasonability correct.

If anyone is going to this years Nationals, please visit Tamiya and request that they add a rigging diagram to their premium 1:350 Kit. I have tried to contact them, but no response.

[Rdutnell]

Greetings Everybody!

This past weekend, my dad gave me an old model kit of the Battleship Yamato that he had started, but not completed, many years ago. It is a 1/400 scale model made by UPC. Here are a couple of pictures of the box.




?
And here is a pictures of the parts, as he I received them.



It is even motorized.



The plans are quite interesting, and sparse by today�s standards.





Here is what the plans say about the motor. (Last 2 paragraphs)



My questions are as follows:
1) When was the kit made and released?
2) How would one go about finding the UPC Kit No. 5021M instruction sheet?
3) Does anyone know if there is PE available in this size (I haven�t had a chance to look yet)?

If anybody knows the answer to any of these questions, I would love to hear about it.

[Timmy C]

For PE, I would look for GMM's set for Hasegawa's old-mold 1/450. There should also be something for Hasegawa's new-mold 450th in the near future as well...

[GMG4RWF]

Here's my 2400 Yamato,s - Both versions (though Musashi never recieved her lower 5" twins) - still working on the Upgrades paint

[Pagodaphile]

From the 1/10 museum photos I notice what appears to me as white safety stripes on the top edges of the triple 25mm AA enclosures. This appears to be exclusive to the deck level mounts as the ones super-mounted on the main turrets don't have this.

Does anyone know of the rationale of this practice and were there examples of this applied to other vessels ?

[GMG4RWF]

Did some painting on my mods (don't know about those stripes btw)

[shipfan1959]

This forum is a great source for pictures, current info and inspiration for my own kit building. I just wanted to add a few comments. I apologize if the info I add isn't new.

Just skipped through the 90+ pages and found the pics of the old UPC Yamato kit a great find. I ordered the UPC catalog as a kid and I remember seeing the large scale Yamato and Shinano kits, but until today I never saw what the actual kit looked like. Seeing the UPC kit reminds me of the dated inaccuracies of my first Yamato kit by Aurora which I once saw posted on the web.

I didn't know the Yamato Museum had updated its 1/10 model by changing the shape of its original round-shaped triple 25mm gun tubs to the 1/2 hexagonal. For some reason, they didn't add the 2nd pair of open triple 25mm on the aircraft deck or remove the jib crane tower. Not a fan of the toy like crew figures they've added since they opened.

I can't read Japanese fluently, but based on the well known USN overhead photos from the Sibuyan Sea, recent Japanese publications seem to throw doubt about the presence of the 26 single 25mm AA on the decks of at least the Yamato in the Leyte operation.

They wonder if the four single 25mm guns shown protected by sandbags in the Okinawa operation were hold overs from the twenty-six she supposedly had at Leyte Gulf or if the four were installed just before her final mission. I haven't seen a hi-res version of the photo of Yamato under attack at Kure in March of '45 for what it may reveal.

My thought was if they existed, the single 25mm AA were not fixed and were stowed because of the planned use of the 46cm guns in the upcoming battle. They might have believed the 46cm sanshiki-dan AA shells would be more effective than the single 25mm AA around the turrets and didn't want to jeapordize any exposed 25mm crews when they fired the main battery against air or surface targets.

Only during Yamato's final mission do USN photos show any unshielded triple or single 25mm AA too close to the main guns.

I have 20 years of publications on the Yamato, so its cool to see the new revelations coming out decades after those ships were sunk.
Even I wondered what were those light colored crescent-shaped objects by A-B turrets were in the USN pics


Any plans in the works for affordable (under $50) 1/700 waterline kits of the Pearl Harbor BBs in their late war configuration? As a California resident, it kills me that efforts to preserve the USS California weren't successful. It would have been great to have the California and Iowa on display together in San Pedro.

For those wanting advance info on any kits you plan to purchase, check out this website, I think they are based out of China:

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/plamo/

From there you can navigate to your hobby interest of the day and narrow it by manufacturer, scale, etc.

For most any kit the site will have photos of the parts bags and all pages of the instruction sheets including parts list. I haven't ordered from there, but the info they post has guided me in my choice of what manufacturer to go with and what price range to expect.

Right now I favor Aoshima and Fujimi, the jokes of the original waterline series currently have the most interesting kits. Compare the instructions and details offered for these kits:
Tamiya or Fujimi kits of the aircraft cruiser Mogami
Hasegawa or Fujimi kits of carriers Akagi or Kaga
Fujimi or Hasegawa kits of the Kongo class

I can't afford the exciting range of new 1/350 kits, but some are on my bucket list. The Fuso class was always a favorite exactly for their ugly awkward look.

[Timmy C]

Hobby Search (1999.co.jp) is based out of Japan. The .jp, if nothing else, gives it away

[prowannab]

Would any body have a schematic,or pictures of the main turret, under the deck parts. I just can't seem to find much of anything.Thanks for the help.

[prowannab]

I just found a gold mine of the wreck,I can't believe how much more information is available on this fairly long video. I wish I would've found this before I started my wreck build. ( warning; this also has Japanese commercials in the video and can be a bit risque for American viewers.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOMXWRXdr3g

[baseballbrat]

I just found a gold mine of the wreck,I can't believe how much more information is available on this fairly long video. I wish I would've found this before I started my wreck build. ( warning; this also has Japanese commercials in the video and can be a bit risque for American viewers.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOMXWRXdr3g

Go here for Yamato models.

http://www.geocities.jp/yamato_model_guide/