1/700 Taiho (??) 1944 - Fujimi

[ModelMonkey]

Brilliant.

[Dan K]

Thank you, friends.

Quick update. This area complete, except for boat straps and possibly darkening the canvas cover. It is under bright light here, so it pops more.

[Silenoz]

Just reading the whole text... man, superb job you are doing here...

[Dan K]

Thx!

The rigging for the ship�s cutters was installed, as were boat straps. The main and secondary batteries have also been installed.

The twin 10cm mounts as provided for in the kit are simplistic, but this is not a knock on the kit, as the actual mount utilized the very simplistic, open backed A2 shield, as seen in a captured version at Balikpapan: http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_39-65_t98.php . That said, the plastic version can be improved with some louvers and a hood for the gunlayer�s position. The kit barrels are a tad short, though they do benefit from open barrels. The AH set provided brass turned barrels, which are certainly an improvement, though they may be a tad long, maybe .5mm.

The kit�s triple 25mm AA were replaced by Nanodread units from Finemolds. Interestingly, the Nanodread units are improved, retake units (set W25) that show far more detail around the recoil rings. However, these shielded units now sport a styrene injection splinter shield instead of the metal ones issued with the original WA7 set. I don�t care for the way these splinter shields attach (too precarious) and I also think the shields are set too low on the mount. I chose to utilize the brass PE shields supplied by Fujimi, and glued them on a hair higher.

Under casual inspection, a fellow modeler also discovered that the insides of the Type 13 Radar PE up on the mast was not entirely covered with paint, so that necessitated a small re-spray. Prepping involved some caution, but it went well enough.

[Dan K]

The personnel safety nets are also in place. The metal pole supports for these nets had an upward curve to them, so I rolled these PE versions a bit. You�ll also notice in the Shokaku photo that there are no thick cables running at the top or the bottom of the net, whereas all the PE versions show one. It's just too much work to correct it or create new PE.

[Joe Simon]

Dan that looks great! Can't wait to see her airwing.

[marijn van gils]

Fantastic work Dan! She is coming together beautifully!

The paint-filling at the island worked great. It really improves the look.
Compared to aircraft modellers who obsess over filling seams, I feel ship modellers are often a bit lazy when it comes to seams. But not you!

[Dan K]

Thank you, Joe & Marijn.

Air group - probably a strike group mix of Zeros and Jills.

Seam - oh, yes, I always knew that it would have to be filled. One look at Junyo's postwar photos can tell you that.

Oops, forgot to post the touch-up shot.

[ModelMonkey]

Superb!

[Rui Matos]

Brilliant work Dan!
It's always a pleasure to see your updates!

It's getting there... carry on!
Cheers,
Rui

[Dan K]

Thx, Steve, Rui!

A 'quick" update: I'm working on the radio masts. The kit and Fujimi PE pieces are ridiculously undersized. I'm not sure if the pattern was copied from the 1/500 kit, or just gleaned from what can be admittedly conflicting references.

However, a simple exercise using the sea level photos of Taiho gives one a good, if only approximate, sense of their size. The top of the latticework mast bases rises to approximately the midpoint of the aft Type 21 radar. Likewise, the top of the entire entire mast matches the midpoint of the forward Type 21 radar.

It turns out the the stainless steel masts from Joe World V03 match the required base height. This is also true of the FineMolds AM-31 CV mast set. Both are stainless steel, but the Joe World units are much stiffer. The upper mast and yardarm are brass rods soldered together. Plus, I've had to remove the glued on brass bases from the ship with CA debonder and install plastic nubs as anchors.

Still working on rigging the masts. Test fits are shown.

[Dan K]

While working on the masts, I had been debating whether or not to add warning strips to the edge of the flight deck where the main batteries are located. It would be far easier to add them before the masts were installed. Eventually, I decided to add them.

It's not obvious upon first impressions, but most of the purpose-built carriers (those with long hulls and relatively narrow beams) had flight decks that extended well over the AA sponsons mounted on the sides of the ship. Accordingly, the flight deck would then interfere with the elevation and the firing arcs of the main batteries. To remove this sort of impediment, the flight deck edges were equipped with hinged flaps at the edge of each main battery emplacement. These flaps could be folded back when the main batteries were employed. Further, these flaps were denoted by red and white warning stripes at the edge of the flight deck. Some examples are seen below.

While the existing photos of Taiho are not clear enough to confirm their existence, it was the prevailing practice at the time, and would certainly be appropriate for a new ship and crew. This would be particularly true for a ship whose flight deck was asymmetrically shifted to its port side by 1 meter. I am comfortable with adding them.

As an aside, I don�t believe these flaps were added to any of the carrier conversions from merchant ships. Those hulls were typically wider, with proportionally narrower flight decks. Akagi had at least some permanent indentures to her flight deck to accommodate her main battery (below). I�m not sure about Kaga. Her hull may have been wide enough to accommodate the main battery without this feature.

[Vladi]

Hi Dan, your Taiho develops excellent! I fully consent about the warning stripes on Taiho. I don�t think I�ve ever noticed a model with these flaps deployed, that would definitely be a nice touch e.g. for Battle of Cape Engano participants. On the other hand, most models show a carrier with full deck load where deployment of flaps would be less likely.

[Nino]

Wow, never noticed those hinge-able deck sections before. That's one way to improve the arcs of fire for the AA.

Terrific pictures. Fantastic work on your replica. Keep'em coming.

Nino

[Dan K]

Those comments are much appreciated.

I moved onto completing the masts. I discovered that I had made them oversized, so I trimmed the overall height above the yardarm by 1mm, and the yardarms themselves by 2mm. I also added small (7.5hp) engines used to raise & lower them by cutting down some Fujimi "S" class deck winches. I then attempted to install them.

But, of course, there was another hiccup when test fitted upon their small sponsons. The port side small platforms upon which the masts rest are not placed at the same level on the hull. The forward one is 2mm lower than the aft one! Makes it tough to have the masts and wires line up properly on the horizontal plane.

I removed the forward sponson and re-positioned it higher by 1.5mm. �twas very delicate surgery, to say the least.

[Dan K]

The nets for keeping the aircraft off the AA batteries were also installed.

[Vladi]

She�s really neat!

[Joe Simon]

That 's beautiful Dan!

[Dan K]

Thank you.

As an aside, no large aircraft safety netting in 1/700 PE is really accurate. The actual netting was composed of thin wire in 1/2 meter squares, supported by single poles raised from the AA sponsons. Almost impossible to replicate in 1/700 scale.

[Devin]

Nice work, as always. I like the paper spacer for the arrestor wires.