by Alan Chung
1/700 IJN Hiryu (Aoshima)
The Hiryu model is the old 1/700 Aoshima kit and was built back in 2002. The model is modified to the damaged one that is based on two famous photos of the last moment of the damaged Hiryu during the Battle of Midway (one photo as shown in gallery).
The front deck is heavily modified to resemble the photos’ damaged deck, in which the interior hangar is scratch-built, and the ’blow-up deck pieces’ are made by twisting newspaper into the approximate shapes as shown in the photos. The burnt out effect was achieved by ‘heavy and over’ application of pastels and washes.
The model came 1st at the Australian Model Championship 2002 in the small scale ship category & also 1st at the ACT (Canberra) Scale Modeller's Society annual competition 2002.
