by Robert Apfelzweig
1/350 IJN Nagato 1941 (Hasegawa)
These are photos of my recently completed Imperial Japanese Navy Battleship NAGATO, which was Admiral Yamamoto's flagship for the task force that attacked Pearl Harbor 68 years ago, and the only Japanese battleship to survive World War II still afloat. She was taken over by the US Navy after Japan's surrender and, after a difficult voyage to the South Pacific plagued with leaks and mechanical breakdowns, sunk in the postwar Bikini atom bomb tests. This is a very elaborate kit, probably the most intricate I have yet built, and includes the Gold Medal Models Japanese battleship brass photoetch set and the Master Models Nagato brass barrel set for the 16-in. and casemated 5.5-in. guns. The photoetch set is not as complete as some of the more extensive (and expensive) sets designed explicitly for this kit, and I had to scratch-build some of the minor bridge accessories. The most difficult task was to construct what I assume are radio antenna cages atop main gun turrets 2 and 3, and then devise a brass wire connection to the stretched sprue that still permits the turrets to rotate without breaking off the sprue cable. Rigging is entirely strectched sprue. I also used White Ensign Models Colourcoats Kure Gray paint, along with some modified Tamiya Hull Red (to make it browner) for the ship below the waterline. The decks were painted with some generic tan, and are probably too bright to accurately depict the weathered wood of the decks. The floatplane area of the deck is painted in WEM Colourcoats IJN Linoleum.
