by Dan Kaplan
1/700 IJN Shirakumo 1944 (Tamiya)
Shirakumo early 1944
Anyone who has followed my various Fubuki builds is likely aware of my criticisms and frustrations with the various Tamiya Fubuki kits. For close to 30 years, until the advent of the PitRoad versions, the Tamiya kits were the only such offerings in the 1/700 scale. My PitRoad Fubuki project involved a lot of research, including ongoing comparisons with the older Tamiya Fubuki kits.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it turns out that the Tamiya hull, regardless of kit, is only appropriate for the Fubuki Type I group. I had been working with a Tamiya Hatsuyuki kit hull on and off during the PitRoad builds and, at the end of that project, found myself with numerous PitRoad extras in addition to the Hatsuyuki. Unsurprisingly, my curiosity led me to attempt a respectable build of a Type I from the Tamiya kit, but only by kit bashing it with assorted PitRoad Fubuki parts.
As I had just finished an early war PitRoad Type I as Shirayuki, I felt a late war version would serve as a nice counterpart. Only two ships of the Type I group, Usugumo and Shirakumo, actually survived into the late war period and gained the appropriate refit. Between them, I felt Shirakumo had the more interesting career, given her participation in the Battle of Sunda Strait, the Indian Ocean raids of early 1942, the Aleutians invasion, and Guadalcanal, where she was heavily damaged. After repairs and a refit, she served again in the Aleutians and Northern Pacific until sunk by torpedo from USS Tautog in March, 1944.
The PitRoad project served me well as I was able to pinpoint the source of several frustrations with my earlier builds of the Tamiya kit. Aside from the forecastle limitations, I realized that Tamiya’s aft deck house was incorrect with regard to torpedo stowage and the structure’s true, asymmetrical cross-section shape. I rebuilt it using evergreen strip for new bulkheads and added the PitRoad late war top that includes two molded 25mm emplacement positions. A scratch-build brass rod mast was added, along with numerous fittings.
The kit waterline hull plate was discarded and replaced by .01” styrene sheet to lower the freeboard by almost 1mm. The Tamiya bridge base was mated to a PitRoad bridge top, with a scratch-built open cupola on top. Tamiya funnels were used without the funnel caps, just adding scratch-built brass funnel grills. A mix of PitRoad and Tamiya air intakes were used, along with a RDF compartment built from styrene square rod, as was the degaussing cable.
Though the Tamiya turrets are nicely shaped, they are undersized and lack detail. The turrets that comes with the PitRoad Fubuki Type I kits are also undersized. Fortunately, turrets from the PitRoad E-5 equipment set are correctly sized and detailed. Generous use was made of the new FineMold 1/700 accessories, including two types of davits, a 90cm searchlight, 7m cutters, 25mm AA, & torpedo davits. Torpedo tubes were constructed from housings from the Tamiya Light Ordinance set mated to tubes from the PitRoad E-10 DD set. Brass rod was used for the masts, main gun barrels, aux. piping, jack staffs, and antenna. Brass girders from FlyHawk and LionRoar were used to replicate some of the cross-bracing and torpedo reload trusses.
Shirakumo was painted in Kure Grey, hull red, & IJN linoleum using Tamiya paints. In the end, I found myself finally satisfied with the Tamiya kit, but only by making significant changes. For those interested, the build log can be found here: http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=54394
Excepting the occasional photo update to some of the other Fubuki sisters, I expect that Shirakumo will be the last of the Fubuki builds for the foreseeable future. Though, there is that 1/350 FineMolds Ayanami sitting in my closet....
