by Paul Helfrich
1/700 IJN Kumano (Tamiya)
This is the old-tooling Tamiya kit of the Kumano. This was one of the very first 1/700 waterline models ever issued. The new tooling is supposed to be much better, and the old kit does have some inaccuracies, but building it felt like working with a little bit of modeling history!
The Kumano was part of the Mogami class, a close sister to the Suzuya and a near-sister to the Mogami and Mikuma. These ships were purportedly light cruisers but actually were a bit heavy, compared to treaty limitations, which the Japanese soon began ignoring anyway. Their main claim to being "light" cruisers was a main armament of 15 6" guns (comparable to the US Brooklyn class), but right from the start, they were designed to be easily modified to a "heavy" cruiser armament of 10 8" guns. The Tamiya Suzuya kit shows the ship with this modification, but the Kumano shows the original triple 6" gun turrets and original, ligher AA fit.
I don't think I've ever built a Tamiya kit I didn't enjoy, and this one was no exception.
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