Merchant Ships of the United Nations

The latest arrivals at the fleet review are the several allied merchant ships depicted below. First, we have King Edwin:

King Edwin is a Dodd motor ship built by Harland and Wolf in 1927 with a gross registered tonnage of 4536. I've depicted her using C in C's Doxford. This particular casting is perhaps a touch plain but with a little work it comes out nicely. And it's size and style were fairly common. Further, in some ways a simpler casting affords more opportunity for conversion. I haven't really done that yet, but more might come later. I regret that I didn't add ship's boats, but perhaps I can rectify that.

Next we have a pair of takes on a casting sadly no longer in production: the original C in C "tramp steamer." 

Why C in C replaced this model I'm not certain, but this is the older version, which differs quite a bit from the current casting. Leading the column is the Harrison steamer Daytonian: built by Henderson in 1922 and registered at 6434 tons. Trailing her is Fort de Douaumont: a Doxford ship of 1918 built as War Deer, purchased by Chargeurs Reunis, and registered at 5266 tons. In spite of the difference in tonnage, the two ships are nearly the same length and beam. Likely the newer ship gained cargo capacity through improved engineering, reflected also in a higher cruising speed, and slightly increased draft. Both are single screw reciprocating steamers, but if the newer ship has higher pressure boilers (which she doubtless does) then she should be able to achieve the same results with less boiler capacity and less fuel.

Next up, let's move back across the channel and convert a Panzerschiffe casting:

I've used this typical large freighter to depict an Ellerman liner built by Cammel Laird in 1935: City of Manchester. She was a twin screw turbine with a registered capacity of 8917 tons and even some passenger accommodations. (Though I'm guessing not many.) Panzerschiffe castings are, of course, a little simpler, but that leaves a lot of room for customization, and the resin material is in many ways easier to work with. It doesn't bend as badly as white metal and it's easier to cut and file. All in all I really love these guys, particularly for merchant ships, where customization adds so much to the dizzying variety out there.

Another interesting conversion is this small sidewheel ferry:

This is yet another casting whose provenance isn't quite known to me. I picked her up second hand. From earlier research I'd surmised it to be a 1/3000 Navwar "A/B Standard" merchant, but I can no longer find my reasoning for that. In any case, it's quite small. Above you can see an unmodified casting next to the one I rebuilt as a paddle wheeler. I'm using mine to depict a P&A Campbell ferry built by McKnight in 1891. Campbell operated across the Bristol Channel and Ravenswood continued in service with the company until 1955, when she was scrapped. I probably wouldn't have set out  to depict a small channel steamer, but given the yeoman service all variety of small ships and boats gave, and the commonality of such vessels in coastal service she seems a nice addition. (Ravenswood remained in civilian service until the suspension of the ferry in 1940, after which she was eventually taken over as an AA vessel.)

Next we have another coaster, this time converted for military duties. This is the French "landing ship" Golo as depicted by Seabattles and sold in the U.S. by Viking Forge:

In terms of sheer casting and sculpting quality, this was one of the nicest ships I've had the pleasure of modeling in the scale. I added masts, as you can see. There are small pinholes that lead me to believe the Seabattles castings might come with such fanciness, but the domestically produced Viking Forge copy omit them. Even so, this is a nice little ship, and it's no great thing to make some masts out of rod.

Finally, we have the whole gang mustering at an unnamed tropical port on the way to the fleet review. Looks like a little bit of paradise.

As always, thank you for joining me. If you like what you see here check back soon. I plan to post on converting Fort de Douaumont soonish, and there will eventually be more footage of the fleet review.

Sincerely,
The Composer

Logistics on the Small Seas

Unlike the Pacific, where both sides needed to move everything across water, the European Axis had much less need for seaborne logistics. That said, the Germans and Italians each made use of maritime transit in their respective enclosed seas; the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Since I particularly like merchant ships I've chosen to depict several from both nations. (And both theatres provide quite gameable encounters.)

First, here's some Italians mustering for a quick trip to North Africa and back. I've decided to use the three merchants to represent Santagata, Gioacchino Lauro (both of Achille Lauro), and Entella Mangiarotti (of Fu Gioconda & Enrico Ravano). The first and third ships were both conversions picked up second hand on e-Bay. They appear to use portions of an older style C in C tramp steamer. The second ship uses a Panzerschiffe Italian freighter. (And while I've had it a long time I did recently update it.) The three Soldati class destroyers are further longtime Panzerschiffe members of my collection.

Next we have several German ships that have made their way across the Baltic to the Norwegian fjords. In the first photograph Dithmarschen keeps company with Scharnhorst. In the second Frigga (against the pier) and Oldenburg offload supplies under the watchful eye of destroyer Z-30. Dithmarschen is another Panzerschiffe casting sold as Nordmark.

Oldenburg is from the same supplier's WWI range, where she can be bought as Möwe. I haven't as yet identified Frigga, but she feels like an older Viking Forge casting. The model is a little crude, but with some TLC it becomes quite useful. The general shape suggests an older prototype, likely coal fired. Frigga dates from 1924, so she's a little newer than I would have liked, but she's the right size, coal fired, and generally visually similar. In short, she'll do.

And of course all of these ships have since steamed off to the NIFTI fleet review, which will be depicted in full later, but there are more new recruits to introduce first. So as always, thank you for joining me and keep your eyes peeled. There's more to follow soon enough.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Rebuilding Notoro

There were a number of ships  in the Imperial Japanese Navy with interesting histories, but few more colorful than the one I will describe here. I happened on this ship quite by chance. Being a fan of logistics (odd isn't it?) I quickly bought models to represent oilers for my first two fleets: Neosho and Kaskasia for the Yanks and Notoro and Iro for Imperial Japan.

We will be discussing Notoro. She was the second ship of the Shiretoko class of oilers (sometimes also called the Erimo class) built immediately after the First World War when the potential of oil as a fleet fuel made itself obvious to even the most obstinate coal burning navies. They were broadly similar to the Kanawha class of the U.S. Navy with about 15,000 gross registry tons and speeds of about fourteen knots. Notoro came six years after Kanawha, but by the mid twenties Japan was fairly well supplied with eleven purpose built oilers and several leased merchant tankers; a state not far inferior to the larger U. S. Navy.

At this point the astute observer will note some interesting facts: the Imperial Japanese Navy was at that time treaty bound to be roughly three fifths the size of their likeliest opponents and their military needs were considerably more local; thus Japan had something of a surplus of tankers odd as that may sound to ears familiar with later history. So they took a pair of their perfectly good fleet oilers and converted them for use in aviation. (After all, if you have a large flat deck . . . ) Thanks to some odd quirks of history and my own collecting habits my own Notoro has enjoyed a remarkably similar career thus far. I bought and first painted her as a fleet oiler. Later I learned that she had been converted to a seaplane tender. Eventually, after I had procured a fair handful of more modern oilers, I got the yen to convert her to that seaplane tender guise. I worked off photographs I had to hand, which showed her in the mid thirties. Since I started I've found that she probably underwent some rather drastic changes in the late thirties or early forties that might eventually prompt me to undo some of my careful work, but for now she's a decent enough seaplane tender. But enough history. You want to know how she got there . . .

So here's Notoro as she arrived at the yard for overhaul. This is the casting pretty much as it arrived from Panzerschiffe. I might have cleaned it up before I painted it, but this was an early piece that predated my detailing habits.

The first step in the conversion was to remove the excess fittings from above the main deck. It was a little work to file the walkway and the sort of pipelike thing off, but the hangar roof would help to hide any imperfections.

The next step was to lay out the hangars and build the supports. Due to scale I simplified the structure a little, eliminating some light horizontal elements and slightly reducing the number of uprights. I also cut a small triangular piece to become the forward plate. Holding this in a pair of tweezers I filed one edge of it with a round file to make the curved indentation where it fits around the gun tub. Once all of these were in place I cut small pieces of sheet styrene to fit. I drilled holes in these for the heavier posts for the large cranes that passed through the hangar roof, which I would install from above later.

Before attaching the roof I painted the deck, hangar interior, and added aircraft, since doing so beneath the roof would have been difficult. I decided to leave the hinomaru off since I assumed they wouldn't be visible after the roof was in place. This was a mistake I came to regret.

Here you can see the aircraft in the hangars and the posts for the heavy cranes fitted. You may also see that the upper surface of the seaplane wings is clearly visible . . . but in a spot that's darn hard to paint. Oops. When in doubt add the detail that might or might not show before you close things in. At worst you'll have done a little unnecessary work, but you may save yourself considerable headache later.

Once those small problems were solved I turned to the masts and cranes. Notoro seems to have had fully five cranes for aircraft handling. I deleted the least visible one for space reasons but the two largest cranes were supported by rather complex vertical trusses that stood athwart the beam of the ship forward and aft of the amidships superstructure. While I don't have the skill to really do them justice I felt I had to make something of an attempt. You can see that the shorter port post forms the back rail of the truss and the taller starboard one the front rail (assuming the boom of the crane is to the front). I typically use 0.015" styrene rod for masts and spars. For these heavier elements I used 0.020" rod. You can see the difference if you compare the trusses to the masts. While small, it is visible. I built up the heavy DP weaponry fore and aft from styrene stock and rod. I've occasionally done this with squash casting, but the number of DP weapons is not so atrocious and the built up guns look a little cleaner when finished. At this stage I also added the masts. The foremast is attached to the forward truss along with a small structure I assume is a pilot house.

Finally you can see the last two cranes in the photo below. These appear to have been overhead gantry types, which is quite surprising in this application. Neither the photographs nor the diagrams I've found are completely clear. I suspect good Japanese sources could answer the question, but in this scale the difference wouldn't be obvious anyway. The relevant thing is that it's structure was another truss, though smaller and more conventional than the cranes above. I depicted this with a piece of styrene smashed in the grip of a needle nose pliers, which gives a nice waffling effect. 

At this point about all that was left was adding anchors and painting, which I did forthwith. The resulting ship, while a touch crude, looks acceptable from table distance and gets the point across pretty clearly. And the wealth of interesting detail helps to distract the eye from any imperfections.

As always, I hope there's something here you find useful or interesting and thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Japanese Auxiliaries Steam to the Review

As the Annual Naval Review gets underway I'm taking some long delayed 1/2400 projects off the back burner and heating them up. For a number of years I had kept paint-free miniatures from building up in my fleet, but that changed a few years back when a not-quite-local gaming store sold off the stock of another store that had gone out of business at prices I'd never seen before and likely won't again. And it's only gotten worse since, thanks to my visits to the seductive Bay of Ee. Thus am I well caught on the horns of a dilemma. I have over a hundred ships needing paint, but I'm not dreadfully excited about them. And I have a fair number of painted ships that I'd like to update, but that doesn't whittle the pile down any.

I've settled for a compromise and done a bit of both. Below are two Japanese auxiliaries; one from each camp. First, Canberra Maru:

This is a C-in-C model of an IJA transport that was sunk in the late stages of the Guadalcanal campaign. I got this one used and without tag. It took me forever to identify it as it was quite a bit smaller than I imagined it would be. (She tends to look beefier in photographs than her 446' and six thousand odd tons on the books suggest.) But careful measurement shows that C-in-C actually got it more or less right. To give an idea of her size she's pictured below with Hakusan Maru (astern),  Asama Maru (starboard of the pier), and Kamikawa Maru (out in the bay).

In the overhaul department Notoro emerged from the yards with considerably more superstructure than she had going in. Below you can see her in the company of her unconverted sister Iro. (The circular barge was included for scale.)

And here's Notoro alongside another seaplane tender, Kamikawa Maru, which was seen earlier. Both of these models (and Iro) are heavily converted Panzerschiffe castings. While they don't get as much love as the fancy brands they are much more reasonably priced, they make good solid gaming pieces, and they look quite presentable with a little detail work.

Of course it is the time of year when I take all my ships from all the various manufacturers and line them up together for Imperial (my wife's), Dictatorial (my own), and friendly inspection. More will follow, but below is a little sampler of what is presently on display.

I will keep you updated as the review continues and I have photographs of Notoro's conversion that might be illustrative. Stick around if you're interested. More will be along shortly. On that note, thank you kind readers. As always, I hope you enjoy my humble offerings.

Sincerely,

The Composer

To War on a Japanese Liner

Just prior to WWII Japan had one of the largest and most modern merchant marines in the world. Military subsidies and government support kept the major ship-builders busy constructing fast new liners and tankers by the score. During the war most of this shipping was taken over by the military and subsequently sunk. If you want to game WWII it's instructive to examine the brief but interesting period between impressment and loss. Several of my newest endeavors have been of this sort, including two ships bought from Viking Forge: Asama Maru and Hikawa Maru.

These are two of the ships Viking Forge casts for the Seabattles line; a very nice line of well sculpted models of generally smaller warships, merchants, and auxiliaries. Hikawa Maru is particularly interesting, as she is one of the very very few Japanese merchant ships to survive the war (the large red crosses no doubt helped) and one of the only Japanese ships of that vintage (merchant or otherwise) still afloat today. She's now a museum ship, which is a rare enough state. It's particularly nice to see a ship more typical (and less glamorous) than the Missouri or Queen Mary preserved and open to the public.

The variety of both generic and specifically Japanese merchant ships available in 1/2400 is impressive. With some careful conversion it can be made even larger. To wit, let's look at three merchant ships from as many suppliers:

In the above photo the two models in front of the pier depict OSK liner Buenos Aires Maru (in civilian colors) and NYK liner Asama Maru (in two-tone grey.) Behind the pier is a model of another NYK liner, Hakusan Maru. The three ships are from Panzerschiffe, Viking Forge/Seabattles, and GHQ respectively. I invested a similar amount of work in all three, building masts and adding details to each. (Even the GHQ ship). Each has advantages and disadvantages, but to my mind all three look pretty good together. For the price, Panzerschiffe is the only way to go, but their variety of available merchant ships is not endless, so if you want a more colorful fleet without scratchbuilding it other suppliers are also useful. Typical Panzerschiffe merchants run $3-4. Viking Forge merchants usually run about twice that, with larger ships costing somewhat more. GHQ merchants run anywhere from four to six times the price of Panzerschiffe, thus making up the smallest percentage of my collection. Even so, some of their ships are quite pretty and I'm willing to shell out every once in a while.

In addition to the companies above, C in C also casts some fine merchants and Viking Forge has some in house sculpts, which you can see below compared to one of the Seabattles ships and a different Panzerschiffe liner.

The two tankers at the left are the Viking Forge and C in C models. Both depict "Kawasaki" type tankers taken over as fleet oilers. Both have had masts added. The Viking Forge model (in the rear) has also bee armed and generally militarized. The Panzerschiffe model, foreground on the right, is older work which I did more quickly and with less research or detail, but even so I think it makes a nice addition to a convoy. The escort in the foreground, sold as an "Etorofu" type escort, is another Viking Forge house sculpt, though a much more recent one than the tanker. Their new work is really quite good, fully up to the standards of C in C or GHQ.  The masts are added, but it's a nice little model even without them. The detail is crisp and the casting is clean. (Cleaner, in fact, than most of their Seabattles casts.)

One final option for 1/2400 merchant ships is available through Panzerschiffe. In addition to the ships in their general catalog they sell a number of "merchant groups." This is a sort of "budget" line that seems to be specifically aimed at convoy gaming. Where a typical merchant might run $3, these generally run a little less than half that, though you must buy them by the group. Each group is $20 and most contain about eight ships. (A few have more and one has seven.) Below are two ships from MG-7 next to the VF/SB Hikawa Maru.  These are less detailed ships (and I have added less detail) but even so, they can serve to flesh out a convoy nicely. (And I think if I invested the time they could look quite nice.) And if you want simple markers in which you don't need to invest the effort of painting, these little merchies, like all Panzerschiffe, are cast in grey and could be used for a game straight out of the box.

If you want to specifically model merchants and auxiliaries 1/1200 might possibly serve you better, but for wargaming the variety of models available in 1/2400 is, I think, quite suitable. There's a little something for every budget and every skill.

Commissions for a New War

A while back I painted several WWI ships for Sabryin Owlfeather: British battlecruisers HMS Invincible and Inflexible, and the German armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

When Owlfeather bought his WWI ships he also bought some later combatants, including one named after the CO of the German squadron: Admiral Maximilian von Spee.

The German Panzerschiff, or armored cruiser, (which looks very much like a battleship you could put in your shirt pocket in this case) . . . 

Graf Spee

Von Spee's squadron encountered a superior British squadron and met its end in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. The captain of the German cruiser Graf Spee scuttled his command after it took serious but non-fatal damage in the Battle of the River Plate. (And in his defense, had he not scuttled his ship the Royal Navy would have been happy to scuttle it for him in short order.) Along with the "pocket battleship" Owlfeather acquired the several British cruisers that crippled her: 

HMS Exeter, Ajax . . . 

and Achilles.

The reader can be forgiven for thinking that Exeter seems to be wearing the white rose, as she's secretly a York mumming as her younger brother, thus I have proposed the nickname "Ersatz Exeter" for this lovely ship. (And she is a fine ship, whatever you chose to call her.)

The takeaway here might be that commerce raiding against a superior foe is rarely the recipe for a long life. But hopefully the models look acceptable. I don't know that I'll ever do much work on commission, as I get far too attached to models I build or paint, but there you have it. I do hope you will be pleased, Owlfeather. And if you want to fight the River Plate, bring em by. If you have the ships I have the ocean.

WWI Commissions

A while back a friend of mine asked me if I'd paint some miniatures for him. I've taken commissions every once in a while in the past, but I don't do it often because it's a lot of work and I don't have the guts to ask for the kind of scratch that would actually be commensurate with the time I invest. Maybe this isn't surprising. But this was a friend, and I said yes. Originally this was to have been a simple "paint up the Panzerschiffe" project, but darn if I can ever leave well enough alone.

Well, my friend Owlfeather wants to play some WWI games, and of course the Battle of the Falkland Islands is a nice, if rather unbalanced, place to start. The most famous participants are probably the two British battlecruisers: Invincible and Iflexible, followed closely by Graf Spee's two heavies: Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. (These are, in fact, the very ships Owlfeather first purchased.) I started with the British pair. As usual you can see some of my styrene additions to the model.

The tripod masts are .020" cylindrical stock topped by small rectangles cut from more styrene blanks. The aerials atop are .015" stock. For anchor chain I've found that smashing .010" cylindrical stock with a pair of textured needlenose pliers works fairly well. The anchors themselves are carved out of think styrene sheets. I cut a small square and put two groves in one side that I pry open a little. I then trim the resulting center bit down a little to make a sort of squashed sideways E that works fairly well. The anchor capstans are very short pieces of .020" stock. I glue them to the deck and then file them down to the same height and simply run my anchor chains up to them. In reality the chains should generally wrap around them and go back, but at this scale a little abstraction is inevitable.

While imperfect, it helps to solve the empty fo'c'sle problem. With nothing the expanse simply looks too large and too barren on ships of cruiser size or larger. (I've decided paint suffices on destroyers and under. Not only is the hardware smaller on lighter combatants, and thus less visible and harder to model at 1/2400, but you generally need many more of them. For the sake of mass production I have decided some sacrifices are acceptable. And prop guards give a better return on investment, but that's something for another post.)

Here you can see the result after I've applied a basecoat and the deck color.

Here you can see the completed effect. Invincible and Inflexible lie at anchor on the Sea of Shijin ready to do battle in the name of grognardery and the right to drink dark beer. The Kaiser's fleet will no doubt attempt to extend the hegemony of both yellow beer and lighter gaming. Me? I like both. I guess that makes me a neutral in this battle.

Tenno Junyokan Banzai! Tenno Senkan Banzai!

Long live the big boys! Long live wagons! Long live guns the size of steers!

But first, God bless the little children:

These are just the sorts of things Japan could have really used more of. Viking Forge sells them as the Etorofu class, but they serve almost equally well as the preceding Shimushu class, for which I have chiefly used them. Collectively the Imperial Navy called these two classes "Type A Kaibokan." These small but handy escorts were upgraded throughout the war, eventually boasting six depth charge projectors, a trench mortor, and a pretty decent sonar suite on a displacement of just under nine hundred tons. They weren't quite Flowers in terms of ASW, since Japan never had anything quite as nice as Hedgehog or Squid, but they were moving in the right direction, albeit with a multi-purpose military hull that cost a little too much. As the war drug on Japan began to realize that they really needed more of these things cheaper and with more and better ASW projection, so they simplified the hull dramatically, but it was a case of too little too late. If Japan had invested in mass producing cheap versions of these from the early forties the submarine war might have been a somewhat more difficult proposition for the U.S.

All or nearly all of Japan's prewar escorts suffered to some extent from one particular problem: all were capable, multi-role ships that cost too much to be economic ASW platforms. The Type A Kaibokan described above are no exception, but the next two classes might be even better examples.

These two are the torpedo boat Otori and the small minelayer Natsushima, both from Panzerschiffe. Both were intended for convoy escort, but both were also outfitted for additional roles: the Otoris had a significant anti-surface capability in the form of several 4.7" deck guns and a triple torpedo mount, and a thirty knot top speed. Natsushima and her sister Nasami shipped over a hundred mines on a five hundred ton hull. The Otoris in particular might well have been very capable ASW escorts had they dispensed with the torpedoes, most of the deck guns, and a large portion of the powerplant. As it was they probably had too much equipment on too little displacement to be entirely satisfactory, and they surely tried to do too many different things. I suspect some of this stems from the same Japanese preference for a few very capable ships rather than many less capable ships that is so evident in major combatants. If you're planning to fight a conventional war with a wealthier opponent this makes some sense. If you need to defend against asymmetric or economic warfare (or both in one submersible package) it doesn't really work out.

Speaking of submersible packages . . .

The above two submarines are different models of the same class from different manufacturers. For reasons that may be self evident I have not used them as such. At the top is a conversion of a C in C miniature, which they market as I-19. Below is Panzerschiffe's I-15. Both of these boats were B-1 types. Since C in C miniatures virtually always seem just a little smaller than their competitors (they claim that theirs are the correct scale) I have used their boat as a slightly less bulky C-1. To do so I stripped off the hangar and catapult track, cut the deck gun off and replaced it forward, and added a guard at the bow for the forward anchor of the radio antenna. I decided to use the Panzerschiffe model for I-19 since the GHQ search plane made a much better visual fit on the larger model. The catapult track is broad, making it easier to mount the aircraft, and the hangar is large enough to look plausible if quite cramped. I made surprisingly few alterations, all considered. I did add a crane, but since this is collapsible it would be quite excusable to leave it off. I changed out the deck gun for one I built up out of stock to make it look a little lighter, but again, this isn't vital. The only alteration I considered truly necessary was the addition of a pair of periscopes.

Among my new-build Japanese destroyers are these two Fubukis: Fubuki and Sazanami.

Both of these ships were quite active in the early war and both were the veterans of many battles in the East Indies, the South Pacific, and ultimately Sazanami of Coral Sea and Fubuki of Midway. Both are Panzerschiffe models. The paint is somewhat speculative and a little inexact, but attempts to portray the fact that different Japanese naval arsenals used different paint formulations resulting in quite different shades of grey, with Sasebo's being darkest and Maizuru's the lightest.

Just when I think I've got a handle on Japanese destroyers I learn that they built a quick-firing behemoth during the war as an AA escort for their carrier fleet:

I first learned of the Akizuki class in the "Imperial Council" thread on the World War 2 Forum, www.ww2f.com. Somehow I had repeatedly overlooked them in my previous researches. They're surprisingly large even for a navy known for building large and capable destroyers; weighing in at 3,700 tons fully loaded. With eight quick firing 4" DP guns for a main armament these must have been fearsome AA escorts indeed, almost an AA cruiser. I've used yet another Panzerschiffe model to depict them, albeit with the usual added masts.

But I said I'd also built a few heavies. Admiral Takao, this one is for you:

Years ago, when I built Atago, I rather fell in love with Japanese heavy cruisers. These were large, fast, sleek ships with a tremendous punch and the Takao class, with their enormous flag bridge, had an especially menacing and almost modern aspect. While Atago still looks alright, I've learned a lot since then and I put all the lessons to work on Takao (and Nachi.) Both of these are Panzerschiffe models, but I've added quite a lot of detail. You can see masts, rangefinders, secondary gunbarrels, breakwaters, aircraft cranes, anchor chain, and anchors. Most of these are fabricated from simple styrene stock. For anchor chain I use the smallest cylindrical stock I can find and crush it in a pair of pliers to give it a corrugated surface that looks chain-like from a distance. The aircraft are GHQ details and the ship's boats are C in C. In order to get the appearance of boards I run deck brushstrokes in parallel, painting a light wood color over black. I typically allow a little black to show through this second coat. When you drybrush a light color across the direction of the brushstrokes it actually makes the "boards" pop out just a little and it can be quite convincing.

The last new ship I'll discuss today is Ise, which you will see in the forground of this picture:

This is a nice study of what can be done with a Panzerschiffe model and some patience. For comparison I've placed Ise in front of a C in C Kongo I painted up as Kirishima several years ago. When I first bought the C in C miniature it left me somewhat dissatisfied with my (increasingly large) collection of Panzerschiffe miniatures, but I have more time than money, so the best solution for me was to find a way to make what I had look better. That's when I started trying to find a way to add deck details. It's taken a good couple of years and a lot of practice, but I think you can see that it's paid off. I think my simple Panzerschiffe Ise looks entirely presentable next to the C in C Kirishima. (To which I have also added a mainmast, to be completely fair. I haven't been content to build a model as-is in years.) Ise had the complete treatment described above plus radar. Apparently she was the first ship in the whole of the Japanese Navy to carry air search radar. A very handsome ship, if I do say so myself.