1/350 IJN light cruiser Agano (Hasegawa)

The light cruiser Agano was the first of a class of four light cruisers which, with the later and slightly larger Oyodo, were the only cruisers that Japan was able to complete during World War II.  Rather weakly armed with six 6-in. and four 3.9-in. guns, they nonetheless carried eight torpedo tubes and the lethal "long lance" torpedo, though their anti-aircraft batteries were particularly weak.  The Agano was the first of the class to be commissioned (October 1941) and the first to be sunk (February 1944), being torpedoed by the submarine USS Skate about 160 miles north of the island base of Truk.

Hasegawa's Agano comes in a rather large box and is an excellent kit with superb fit of its parts; unfortunately, this company has a peculiar policy of releasing multiple photoetch sets for its ship models (rather than a single all-inclusive one), with the result that fully detailing the Agano with all sets would cost well above the kit itself.  Since I already had plenty of GMM railing, ladders, cable reels and boat cradles from previous IJN cruiser or battleship builds, I decided to just purchase the "B" photoetch set, which provided most of the remaining specialty parts I needed, and after a brief Internet search I found a distributor (through Sears.com, surprisingly) who offered an excellent price.  This photoetch set is for the "Agano class" which means that it includes a number of parts for the later light cruiser Yahagi (another Hasegawa kit), which differed in significant ways from the Agano in terms of superstructure and light AA weapons.  The only major part of the ship not provided with photoetch is the catapult, though the plastic is well-formed and doesn't look too overscale.  The Agano class cruisers used a longer and newer catapult design than the older Japanese heavy cruisers and battleships, and so my collection of unused GMM IJN brass catapults could not provide what I needed.  The Agano was completed with MasterModel 6-in. and 3.9-in. brass barrels and Veteran resin-and-brass twin and triple 25 mm AA guns.

The brass strips across the decks were purchased from Flyhawk (applying them was the most tedious part of this build), and the decks were painted in IJN Linoleum from WEM; the hull and superstructure were painted (either sprayed, brushed or airbrushed) with Tamiya Sasebo Gray, and the lower hull with Tamiya Hull Red mixed with some flat brown to achieve the "cocoa brown" color recommended.
 

Gallery updated 2013

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