by Marty Shay
1/700 IJN Kirishima (Hasegawa)
The Hasegawa "High Grade" 1/700th scale Kirishima is not much fun. The kit retails for $69 so I expect more from it. Some features are great, the deck is nicely detailed, the superstructure is crisp and has nice detail, aligns nicely. The stacks and gun turrets are really nicely detailed and engraved
The midships boat deck is plain, no engraving or panel lines which is disappointing since most of this deck is visible. The full hull lower hull is difficult to align and is made from some sort of translucent plastic which doesn't take Acrylic paint very well, I finally used polycarbonate paint (for lexan)on it after a few trials and errors. The lower hull is VERY plain and there are no locator holes for the props and rudders which made life difficult. The pewter propellors are poorly cast and again no locator holes or pins, very difficult to attach and align.
The guns are disappointing, all of the kit reviews I've seen say that the kit brings individual metal barrels, it doesn't. Typical U shaped plastic gun barrels. OK, I can cut my own brass tube but for a $69 kit why should I have to???
The instructions are awful and the box art isn't much help. Some of the midships platforms are designated as "right" and "left" but they're reversed so I had to do some microsurgery to correct them.
The base is a joke, I'm scratch building a bare-bones drydock so I can display two ships side by side. In retrospect I should have built the kit waterline. The PE fret is brittle, I'll probably end up using the plastic catapult and crane rather than the PE. No PE railings are supplied.
Lots of spare parts, guns and boats, so I won't have to buy any "ordinace" sets for a while. Painting instructions are awful, I'm using other people's buildups and other IJN ships as a painting guide.
Assembling the secondary guns, directors and aircraft the lack of locator holes is annoying. The main gun turrets seem a little small but useable.
Considering that I only paid $23 for the kit it's a reasonable value, I'm sorry I didn't buy the waterline Hiei kit for $14 instead though, I could have used the $9 difference to get a Destroyer kit to round out my task group.
If I had paid list price for this kit I would be really angry.
Kirishima was a member of the Kongo class, modified several times during the interwar years. British designed but built in a Japanese shipyard during WWI she was a formidable warship, beautifully designed, heavily armed and armored. It's debatable if she was a classic "Battlecruiser" or the first Japanese expression of the "Fast Battleship". The Japanese apparrantly considered her to be a Battlecruiser, the next class of heavy ships the Japanese built were referred to as "Battleship version of Kongo". IMHO she was easily a match for any of the US "Standard" Battleship designs.
During WWII she served initially as an escort to the Carrier task forces during Pearl Harbor and Midway. She supported several invasions and was part of the force supporting the Japanese Guadalcanal operations. In October and November of 1942 she was involved in several surface actions around Guadalcanal engaging US and allied naval forces. On November 15, 1942 Kirishima engaged and heavily damaged the US Battleship South Dakota in one of the few Battleship vs Battleship duels of the war. Pursuing the retreating South Dakota Kirishima was attacked by another US Battleship, the USS Washington. A close range melee battle broke out and Kirishima was severely damaged and had to scuttle.
All in all a very impressive performance by a 25 year old 14" armed ship facing two brand new 16"
armed Battleships.
