¹⁄700

IJN Tatsuta, 1944

The Model, and the build process...

The beautiful box art shows TATSUTA in the early years of her long career, that last from 1919 to 1944, where she was sunk by torpedoes from the submarine USS Sand Lance. The picture show TATSUTA with a single pole front mast. Later in 1931 this was altered to a tripod mast. TATSUTA and her sister TENRYU was little modified during there lifetime, but closure of the superstructure with steel plates as roof and glass windows was one of the more obvious rebuilds. As well as more AA guns - TATSUTA in 1944 with 10 (2x5) 25mm AA guns.



The kit comes with only one big sprue of parts, besides the typical piece of hull and red water line bottom. A big plus for this kit is the extra set of IJN extra sprue parts. Also note the little sprue of the masts at the lower right corner (this is actual from the kit of TENRYU - and the only difference between the two kits) TATSUTA comes with the single pole mast and TENRYU has the tripod-mast. I have shown the tripod-mast here, because I want to build TATSUTA as seen in 1944.




Here in 2008, the kit bares it age, and there are not many kit parts that are used unaltered, and many swaps with more surplus parts as Pit-Road/Skywave and PE-sets. But as stated before, "There are no bad kit's -just some who need more attention" ! With that attitude I jumped in with both legs, and tried to build a little 3500 Ton Cruiser, often overlooked by her bigger and prettier cousin's.