Calling all Mikasa (三笠) fans

[Timmy C]

To be honest, I never encountered the ochre mast option until the Hobby Boss 1/200 paint guide you posted came out. I don't think it was an option we discussed in this thread till now, even. I would trust the Hasegawa paint scheme more than the Hobby Boss one: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10460323

Also, here's the actual Hasegawa 1/350 paint guide for the Victorian scheme - as you can see, it's consistent with the newer 1/700 model's white masts:

[pascalemod]

To be honest, I never encountered the ochre mast option until the Hobby Boss 1/200 paint guide you posted came out. I don't think it was an option we discussed in this thread till now, even. I would trust the Hasegawa paint scheme more than the Hobby Boss one: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10460323

Also, here's the actual Hasegawa 1/350 paint guide for the Victorian scheme - as you can see, it's consistent with the newer 1/700 model's white masts:

Where did you find the 1/350 Hasegawa guide? Is there a PDF? Struggling a bit with painting instructions of details on deck for example etc. I searched a lot but cant find a PDF of the victorian scheme in 1/700 or 1/350 in good detail...

[Felix C]

Difference in the Mikasa 1/350 kits tsushima and yellow sea battle versions?

I mean just a quick difference. Is it mostly extra ventilators and different masts?

[pascalemod]

Difference in the Mikasa 1/350 kits tsushima and yellow sea battle versions?

I mean just a quick difference. Is it mostly extra ventilators and different masts?

I have 1/700 which offers to build 2 versions: Yellow Sea and Tsushima.

Difference as far as I can tell:
Yellow Sea:
Masts with gun platforms
Ventilators
secondary guns have shields (sorry cant tell calibre, im not so into rivet counting YET on it)

Japan Sea - Tsushima:
Masts lack platforms and have different layout
Ventilators are covered in some areas
extra guns on bridges, and no gun shields

Victorian:
as Yellow Sea + launches on the stern (4x) and different paint job as per reference above


Still looking for Victorian paint scheme instructions if anyone has them!

[Felix C]

Thanks. I take it the 1/350 Victorian pre-war scheme in suspect?

[Timmy C]

To be honest, I never encountered the ochre mast option until the Hobby Boss 1/200 paint guide you posted came out. I don't think it was an option we discussed in this thread till now, even. I would trust the Hasegawa paint scheme more than the Hobby Boss one: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10460323

Also, here's the actual Hasegawa 1/350 paint guide for the Victorian scheme - as you can see, it's consistent with the newer 1/700 model's white masts:

Where did you find the 1/350 Hasegawa guide? Is there a PDF? Struggling a bit with painting instructions of details on deck for example etc. I searched a lot but cant find a PDF of the victorian scheme in 1/700 or 1/350 in good detail...

Yup, right here: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10045599

[billyboy]

Hi all,

While we are talking about 'Victorian' scheme on Mikasa, I notice there are a lot Mikasa models online that have been painted in a curious sort of hybrid scheme

Lower hull: Black
Superstructure: light grey
Funnels: black + white bands.

Some manufacturers such as Seals Models even include this odd scheme in their painting instructions (e.g. Cruiser Iwate kit asks you to paint the upper works in an equivalent to US Navy Light Gull Grey!)

Does it have any basis in reality?

[Timmy C]

What do you mean by "hybrid", Billy? What you've described IS the Victorian scheme that's been discussed in this thread. If you mean the call for light grey instead of white, then that could just be (as I did) an attempt to account for scale effect - pure white in 1/700 or 1/350 scales are a bit glaring, not to mention being a pain to paint. It could also be that the real life colour was indeed a light grey, but it's always been referred to as white in the discussions here for ease of description (light grey next to black does appear, after all, white).

Hasegawa's latest 1/700 Victorian scheme kit further subdivides into two different schemes - black versus white/light grey masts: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10460323/40/1
I would ignore the two-tone appearance of the hull in the upper scheme - it looks like a scanning or printing error since it doesn't call for separate colours.

[billyboy]

What do you mean by "hybrid", Billy? What you've described IS the Victorian scheme that's been discussed in this thread. If you mean the call for light grey instead of white, then that could just be (as I did) an attempt to account for scale effect - pure white in 1/700 or 1/350 scales are a bit glaring, not to mention being a pain to paint. It could also be that the real life colour was indeed a light grey, but it's always been referred to as white in the discussions here for ease of description (light grey next to black does appear, after all, white).

Hasegawa's latest 1/700 Victorian scheme kit further subdivides into two different schemes - black versus white/light grey masts: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10460323/40/1
I would ignore the two-tone appearance of the hull in the upper scheme - it looks like a scanning or printing error since it doesn't call for separate colours.

Thanks Timmy, I think you're right- manufacturers such as Seals Models give a light grey colour (equivalent to the same "gull gray" the US Navy painted it's carrier aircraft in the 60s!) for the parts I would expect to be pure white. I guess they're just trying to tone down a very stark black/white scheme on a small scale model. It's a bit misleading though- I prefer the colour call outs to be the 'real' colour- I can then make a modellers decision to lighten,darken, change tone as I see fit!

Cheers!

Will

[pascalemod]

Do we know color of the deck of Mikasa in 1902? Japanese ships tended to have this much lighter yellower color but today Mikasa is as expected with an all gray bleached out by the sun deck. How was in in 1902? It was built in England so if Im making a new ship, what should I aim for? Anything to watch out?

[DariusP]

You should never take the present day Mikasa as a source of any information about its Russo-Japanese War appearance. Lighter color is the way to go.

[Ady]

I'm building the hobby boss 1/200 Mikasa 1902 in her Victorian livery. Am I right in thinking that I'd be better using RN antifouling red rather than IJN red?

[pascalemod]

Am I right in thinking that I'd be better using RN antifouling red rather than IJN red?

Just red mixed with some dark yellow (dunkelgelb, like on german WW2 armour) is what I used, closer to RN result, and sprayed with very thin layer of gray to lighten it up (1/9 diluted with spirit). I dont know what is IJN hull red, becuase Tamiy has this dark brick red color and you think THATS it and then there is a an aircraft carrier half sunk after WW2 and it has color photos... and hull is red. I think this brick red dark color is wrong. Use red.

Now, on as Im back building my Mikasa, here is the result of reading all this thread and researching the web so far for Victorian paint scheme. Take it for what it is, an opinion. But I think here Im making 2 assumptions: this was a ship that looked british when build and delivered, and then repainted by Japan. Its ok if it looks a bit Victorian for all intents and purposes. And colors for that period all must be scaled to account for paint quality of those days. Antifouling included (it would be weaker than more modern equivalents).

1) Black for hull - it is a nato black (not pitch black) paint, that will be washed-diluted with navy blues and dark browns. There was no super black paint back then. Blue is sea reflection, black is dirt/coal and rust all mixed in.
2) White on superstructures - there was no brilliant white paint then also, and for scale it wont be light gray necessarily. The white that was used in those days was slightly creamy color. So dirty off white makes more sense. So if you wanna do the white color correctly - diluted with bit of dark yellow-gray mix, not just go monochrome. Makes more sense for 1/200 and 1/350 but mine below is also done this way. Light gray with black is wrong, IMHO.
3) Masts - black-white(or ochre) mixture in early days like 1902, as launched, and black all on 1904. Easy.
4) Ventilators inside - Id do red in 1902 and black in 1904. Why not. Red is nicer for contrast and in Victorian spirit, so to say.
5) Antifouling red - royal navy kind - reddish-brown but not too bright like American, not too brown like German. Not dark brown red like Tamiya Hull Red which is best to be used on German hulls as a filter only (diluted 1/9). I do XF7+XF10+XF60 and mix my own, with XF7 dominating, like 3:1:1 and spray with diluted light gray for wear and may be also spray diluted orange if you like - that also seems to correct things nicely and blends in your rust streaks and panel lines etc.
6) I would consider adding some panel lines on the hull in this scale with very thin brush strokes in few areas just to give the ship a little more volume, though it will look overscale perhaps.

Here is my little Mikasa in 1/700 WIP!

[Iceman 29]

Mikasa (??) is a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the late 1890s, and is the only ship of its class.



Named after Mount Mikasa in Nara, Japan, the ship served as Vice Admiral T?g? Heihachir?'s flagship throughout the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, including the Battle of Port Arthur on the second day of the war and the Battles of the Yellow Sea and Tsushima.

A few days after the end of the war, the Mikasa's magazine accidentally exploded and sank the ship. The ship was salvaged and repairs took over two years. The ship subsequently served as a coastal defence vessel during the First World War and supported Japanese forces during the intervention in Siberia during the Russian Civil War.

After 1922, Mikasa was decommissioned in accordance with the Washington Naval Treaty and preserved as a museum ship at Yokosuka. She was badly neglected during the occupation of Japan after the Second World War and had to be refurbished in the late 1950s.

It was partially restored and is now a museum ship located in Mikasa Park in Yokosuka. Mikasa is the world's last surviving example of a pre-dreadnought battleship and the last surviving example of a British-built battleship.

more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_ ... hip_Mikasa















Shipyard Vickers, United Kingdom
Vickers shipyard, Barrow-in-Furness
Ordered 1898
Keel laid 24 January 1899
Launched on 8 November 1900
Armed in March 1902

https://www.kinenkan-mikasa.or.jp/en/mikasa/index.html

HIJMS MIKASA was the 6th battleship ordered to be built in England.

This photo shows the launch of HIJMS MIKASA at Vickers shipyard.


Technical specifications:

Machinery: 25 Belleville boilers, two triple expansion vertical steam engines (VTE)
Coal: 700 tonnes (standard load); 1,521 tonnes (full load)
Length: 432 feet
Beam: 76 feet
Draught: 27 feet
Standard displacement: 15,140 tonnes
Speed: 18 knots
Maximum range: 7,000 miles at 10 knots with a standard load
Crew: 830
Armour: Krupp cement armour (4 to 9 inch main belt)
Armament: Four 12-inch guns, 14 6-inch guns, 20 12-pounder guns, eight 3-pounder guns and four 2.5-pounder guns; four 18-inch submerged torpedo tubes.



Built by Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness, England, on 24 January 1899, launched on 8 November 1900 and commissioned on 1 March 1902, Mikasa was the last of six modern battleships ordered from Great Britain by the Imperial Japanese Navy. While her five predecessors were protected by Harvey-type nickel-steel armour, Mikasa had the very latest cemented steel armour from Krupp. On each of the six battleships, the Japanese concentrated the armour along the starboard and port main belts, in the gun turrets and forward lookout tower, rather than in the entire hull, as the Russians did on their warships, giving them a 2 knot speed advantage. However, the armour was only 4 inches thick at each end, making the Japanese battleships vulnerable to mines. This is what led Hatsuse and Yashima to run into the Russian naval base at Port Arthur, China, on 15 May 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War.

Although the Russian battleships were outnumbered and outgunned, Admiral Heihachiro Togo (who made Mikasa his flagship) and his officers trained their armoured cruisers to operate at 3 miles or less in order to use all their guns. They held their ground in the Battle of the Yellow Sea on 10 August 1904, although Mikasa and Asahi were damaged. The Japanese line proved devastating against Vice-Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky's poorly organised and trained squadrons in the Tsushima Strait on 27 and 28 May 1905.

On the night of 11 to 12 September, a week after the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth that officially ended the war, the Mikasa caught fire, exploded and sank at her moorings, killing 251 of her crew. Restored and repaired, she served throughout the First World War and supported the post-war intervention in Siberia. Decommissioned in 1923, she was preserved as a war relic and survived the Allied bombing raids of 1945. Although the Soviet Union wanted to destroy it, US Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, an admirer of the Togo, supported the restoration of the Mikasa. In 1961, the historic pre-dreadnought battleship reopened as a museum ship in Yokosuka, where it remains to this day.

A link to an interesting Japanese site with quality photos:

http://www.sakanouenokumo.com/kikaku/mikasa_phot.htm

Collection of photos of the battleship Mikasa:

Battleship Mikasa when finished (Click to see extra-large image)


Battleship Mikasa when finished (2)


The battleship Mikasa before the battle of Tsushima


Battleship Mikasa immediately after the Battle of Tsushima


Mikasa museum ship before the war


And a few extras:





Battleship IJN Mikasa
Date: 7-8 August 1906
Location: Inside the port of Sasebo
Photo: Sasebo Arsenal
Location: Floating work in progress after the explosion accident

[Iceman 29]

Here's a goldmine of detail photos of Mikasa taken in 2019 in Japan, 350 photos that can help.

Google Drive link:

Select all the photos in the page, then click on download at the top, you will get a ZIP archive file, to unzip. Be patient, there are a lot of HD photos.

Thanks to Jeff, an American foromeur from California, who provided these photos, taken by one of his colleagues with his permission.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... Rf9Yg0mFOX

Here is also the direct download link, available for one week only on WeTransfer:

https://we.tl/t-ZHNGniIOFw

[Iceman 29]

I did some research this morning, in Japanese thanks to the translator. This country is a world apart, even for Google.

I came across this other Japanese blog about Mikasa containing some interesting information, including a link to a photo booklet on the Imperial Household Archives website.

http://blog.livedoor.jp/studio120/archives/9902646.html

This photo album, of very good quality for its time, concerns the refloating of the Mikasa only.

It would make a nice diorama.

I had a bit of trouble finding the archive at first. Mikasa is written in Japanese: ?

This ideogram looks like a ship's hull from the front, or so it seems.

To my knowledge, this photo album is not directly available on the Internet.

If you do a Google lens search, you come up empty.

The Imperial House website in question:

https://shoryobu.kunaicho.go.jp/Search? ... =%E7%AC%A0

Here's the direct address of the album archive, you can download the images directly by clicking on .
The site is slow and the HD images from the scanner are quite heavy, but this allows you to see all the details by zooming in. I think there are about 50 very beautiful photos. This was a pharaonic project.

A wooden caisson was used to partially waterproof the ship on the main deck, a technical feat!

https://shoryobu.kunaicho.go.jp/Kobunsh ... 4845376763

You can download the HD photos via this link, valid for 3 days, which will save you an hour's download time...

https://we.tl/t-Kl7YGYeQUh

Difference in quality between the image published on the Internet and the one in the subject's album:



I reworked the HD file of the album:



A lower quality view of this album:



Probably the photo used for the Hasagawa box in the artwork:















































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[Timmy C]

Incredibly cool find, Pascal, thanks for sharing!

But regarding

Mikasa is written in Japanese: ?

Mikasa is actually two characters: ??. "Mi" is one of the pronunciations for ?, which means "3". The whole name "Mikasa" refers to a small mountain range with three peaks shaped like traditional Japanese bamboo hats, where "kasa" is the term for such hats.

[Iceman 29]

Thanks Timmy!

[DrPR]

Thanks for posting the photos and history. I visited the Mikasa many times when I was homeported in Yokosuka.

Phil

[Bozothenutter]

Hi, first poster here!
A friend inspired me to get the Hase 1/350 Mikasa.
I have been reading up on it, and I have some questions...
I read that during/after Port Arthur/ Yellow Sea the Japanese big ships were rotated for refits.
Is there a site where I can read what was done on Mikasa?
Any pics of after?
The reason for my question has to do with the finish.
Was she repainted? (Wholly or partially?)

This thread is excellent btw, just a shame soo many of the pictures have gone awol.