Greetings all!

As the COVID-19 Coronavirus sends more of us to telework and “shelter in place” defense, I thought I’d use the excess enforced indoor time to restart a project I began long ago but had set side –


Nichimo’s 1/200th scale destroyer Hatsuzuki.

Tim,

1/200??? It must be a mis-print and be 1/2000 scale...LOL!

Looking forward to progress posts.

Mark

I know, Mark, 1/200 is a seriously BIG scale for me... but why not?

The ship has a compelling history:

Designed as an escort for aircraft carrier battle groups, Hatsuzuki (“New Moon in Autumn”) was one of the Imperial Navy’s excellent Akizuki-class anti-aircraft destroyers. Commissioned in December 1942, Hatsuzuki served throughout the Pacific War as a fleet escort. Her first major battle was the June, 1944 Battle of the Philippine Sea as part of Admiral Ozawa's Force A, where she assisted the torpedoed carrier Taiho and helped rescue survivors. Four months later she was again with Ozawa as an escort with his Northern Carrier Force during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Again she found herself engaged in the unhappy task of rescuing survivors from sunken carriers, this time from Zuiho and Zuikaku.

It was while so engaged that her great moment came. As Hatsuzuki was rescuing the survivors along with sister destroyer Wakasuki and the smaller Kuwa, the group was surprised by a U.S. force of four cruisers and three destroyers. In an act worthy of the more famous U.S.N. “Taffy 3” destroyer action a few hours earlier that day at San Bernardino Strait, Captain Amano Shigetaka detached Hatsuzuki to attack the U.S. force to cover the escape of Wakasuki and Kuwa. In a two hour running battle the fast, agile ship made repeated real and feint torpedo attacks and fired her guns continuously, managing to straddle the cruiser Santa Fe and shower the Wichita with splinters. More importantly, these all-out attacks distracted the U.S. force as Wakasuki and Kuwa withdrew. The destroyer put up such a fight that American observers identified the ship variously as an Aoba-class heavy cruiser or an Agano-class light cruiser – but the end was inevitable. The lone ship was, in the words of a USN battle report, “literally punched to pieces” under the combined firepower of four cruisers and three destroyers. All aboard Hatsuzuki, including the Destroyer Division Commander, perished. Nevertheless, the sacrifice enabled Wakasuki and Kuwa with their deckloads of survivors as well as the light cruiser Isuzu (which had been assisting the sinking carrier Chiyoda), to escape.

Ok.... going to settle in to watch the magic happen...

Bob

Wow Tim - I’ll be watching this one !

Well Bob, I don't know how magic it will be... but despite its 1975 vintage, Nichimo’s big destroyer is a beautiful kit!

I had started the Hatsuzuki with the greatest enthusiasm, but I only got as far as completing the hull before running out of steam.


I did make some progress, though. Nichimo intended the model as a runner, so it came with a motor, battery box, gearbox, and a set of metal propeller shafts. I omitted the running gear and replaced unrealistically narrow shafts with correctly sized brass tubes.


Also, the kit-provided plastic display pedestals, though nicely shaped and beautifully gold plated, had ugly seams in them, so I replaced them with pieces adapted from brass drawer pulls.


Even at this early stage and placed on a temporary base, the graceful shape of the Akizuki-class destroyer is evident!

The molded decks come with a good deal of detail including non-slip patterns on the steel decks and brass capstrips over the linoleum covered areas. The kit capstrips were sharply molded but just a bit heavy, so I scraped them away.
I made rows of tiny holes with the point of my X-Acto to assure proper placement of new capstrips after the decks have been painted.


The new linoleum deck brass capstrips will be those from Gold Medal Models’ 1/200 scale 2-Bar IJN Railing set.

Nichimo had included nicely molded anchor chains on the focsle, but they seemed too two-dimensional, so I cut them away. The chain test fitted here should look more convincing.

I also plan to replace the kit fairleads (right) with better resin parts from Corsair Armada.

Following with interest Tim!

Looking forward to seeing you work your magic with this kit!

Tim,

Couple of nice upgrades to enhance things.

Mark

Will be following this, Tim. Watching and learning.
John

Russ, Mark, and John - welcome! This big model is a bit of a departure for me, but it should be fun.


The aft deckhouse has some attractive molded on detail including open doors. I carved out the blanked off area behind the open doorways, but this revealed the lack of any bulkheads or even a deck within, so I added some basic shapes inside with sheet plastic.


Not much is visible through the open door, but at least now it won’t be an unrealistic void in there! The white rectangle on the exterior is a closed vent cover.


The starboard side.

Tim,

Great idea on the open door. Never thought about it until now but are the insides of Japanese ships paint the same color as the outside deck or hull?

Mark

Interesting looking ship Tim,

My kind if scale too. Will be along for the ride.

Lie the work on the interior.

Cheers

SI

Thanks Mark and Si.



Good question! I haven’t seen much information on Imperial Japanese Navy interior painting practices. Models of IJN ships sometimes show the inside faces of open doors in white, but this 1942 photo of Akizuki shows the insides of the open doors to be the same color as the hull.


As for the interior spaces, I suppose like most navies the bulkheads and overheads would have been a light color to increase visibility in the confined areas. Still, this picture of Yukikaze’s pilothouse suggests that the colors might have been darker.


...so I’m not really sure.

Unless I get better information, I’ll probably paint Hatsuzuki up with hull-colored door insides and white or light grey interior spaces.

The molded doors on the kit weren’t bad, but they weren’t consistently rendered throughout the kit, so I scraped them away and replaced them with photoetch brass doors from Tom’s Modelworks (set No. 2012).

Also, I cut away a pair of poorly represented pipes molded on the deck. I’m not sure what these were for, but I suspect they had something to do with the oxygen torpedoes stored nearby.

New ones were fabricated from 1.5 oz. solder wire to match pictures. I also added the various cowl and mushroom vents to the deckhouse roof.

Tim,

Amazing work so far, looking forward to watching this move forward.

David

Tim,

count me in, too, of course!

As everybody says, great start and very quick progress, I'm looking forward to following your build!

Cheers

Jan

David and Jan, thanks and welcome!

Work continues on the aft deckhouse. After opening up the blanked off scuttles to represent open ports, I also drilled small holes to add the handrails to the sides.
The tiny ringed handrail support fittings are from Gold Medal Models 1/200 IJN 2-Bar Railing set.

The handrails themselves are 34 gauge brass wire.

The Gold Medal Models 1/200 IJN 2-Bar Railing set also contains individual hand grabs to replace the molded-on kit representations. The set includes a nice little jig for drilling the mounting holes for the grabs.





They create a much better effect than the molded grabs in this large scale.

hand rails, hand grabs, new oxygen pipes! Oh my!

No kidding... can you tell I've been shut in all weekend?

Nice work, Mr. Reynaga! I was wondering, though, about the black-painted vents on some of the structures on the aft deckhouse (in the pictures,you've got some PE grates on them) - were these air intake vents for the boilers, or just some general air intake vents for the whole ship?

Tim

Tim,

Those handrails look wonderful!

Mark

Thanks Mark. I should have photographed the original rails on the kit parts for contrast... the replacements are a big improvement. Thanks to Loren Perry (Gold Medal Models)!

Thanks Tim. I don't know where those intakes led; on the plans I have they are labeled simply "duct".

Those the intake screens from the Tom’s Modelworks IJN Destroyer set I’d installed in the ducts earlier are bothering me; they are certainly better than the open holes the kit provided, but they seem just a bit coarse.

I’m working from home today, but maybe I’ll do something about them tonight...

Nice progress Tim,

What the other guys have said, I do like the individual steps on the iron ladders, and the handrails look very impressive. The screens on the vents look pretty good, I think they will blend in under a coat of paint of paint.

Enjoying the watching the build come on.

Cheers

Si