IJN Hiei
by Hanchang Kuo

1/700 IJN Hiei (Hasegawa)

This is Hasegawa's 1/700 IJN battleship Hiei finished in her November 1942 fit--at the time of her loss at the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. This is no cakewalk project. Hasegawa's Hiei, while a fine kit itself, has a lot of errors. Midway through the project I looked at the huge stash of unbuilt ships and started wondering why I picked this one. Anyway I am happy now that I could finally move on.:-) Here's a few things I've done with this kit,

• Rebuilt part of the pagoda structure especially the part facing stern.
• Replace all out of scale kit-supplied splinter shields with thinner Everygreen stocks.
• Scratch built missing or error superstructure parts. Including new mid-ship AA platforms, aft 12.7cm AA gun ammunition handling room, vegetable storage, crew ready rooms, etc.
• Rebuilt the main mast from brass and plastic rods.
• Scratch built missing deck equipments--vents, winches, paravanes, also degaussing cable and various missing details on the hull.
• PE parts used are WEM's IJN Light AA set, Hasegawa's Hiei Part B, GMM's Cable Reel set, and railings from Tom and GMM.

Reference:
- Gakken Pacific War Series Vol. 21 "Kongo Class Battleships".
- Model Art Ship Modeling Special No.15 "Kongo Class Battleships".

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