I have been going over my collection of ship models to decide what to build next and it looks like the old Fujimi offering of the IJN Sakura is getting the nod. I chose this one for a couple of reasons. It is an older molding from back in the early '70's, as such it has a few inaccuracies that need to be addressed. The newer Tamiya kit is a much better one to get and I will be getting one of them soon enough to build as the class leader Matsu. It is a very basic kit with two tiny frets of parts that just barely cover the requirements. Whereas the real ship carried a fair sized compliment of single 25mm AA gun mounts, the kit just barely has representations of the triples that were spotted here and there. The stern of the real ship was nicely rounded, this particular kit has a square stern that will need to be fixed. As usual for my builds figure that PE, resin and styrene bits will figure heavily in the construction process, not only to add details but to make corrections for the inadequacies of this old kit.
The original Sakura, which translates to Cherry Blossom, was laid down on the ways at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 2 June 1944, the hull launched on 6 September 1944 and completed on 25 November 1944. While her double Kampon boilers allowed for a top speed of about 27.8 knots or 32 MPH when in battle trim, as a convoy escort vessel a more sedate 18 knots was listed to give her the long legs of about 3500 Nautical Miles.
The Matsu Class of destroyers was a late war expedient to allow the empire to replace losses in the destroyer fleet with the much less expensive builds as well as faster completion time of these ships. Later versions named as the Tachibana Class did away with the double bottoms and other features as the funds to build ships dried up and materials became more difficult to obtain.
