The Ship...

The Two Mogami class cruisers were both completed in 1935. The Mogami and Mikuma were sister ships and during the Battle of Midway collided with each other due to a turning error made by the Mikuma. In August 1942 the Mogami went into Sasebo Navy Yard and went through an eight month conversion rebuild in which the two rear turrets were removed and a flight deck and rail system installed to improve the fleet's reconnaissance capabilities using float planes.

The Mogami participated in several battles after this refit and was eventually sunk at the Battle of the Surigao Strait on October 25, 1944.

The Model...

The model comes in a standard sized box for an IJN cruiser with the usual painted artwork of the ship on the cover. The box contains four bags with the frets, with turret decals in one bag and a bag of poly caps in another. Instruction sheet and the waterline weight were loose. There were no loose pieces in the bags.

Fret A and B...

These frets where molded together on one tree, they contain the hull, waterline bottom, bow deck and internal torpedo deck of the ship. There is really nothing out of the ordinary with the hull sides, no molded on hull lines, porthole eyebrows or degaussing cable are present as with most IJN models. The torpedo decks are a great plus. They even have spare long lance torpedoes molded onto the deck floor, even though they really won't be seen from the hull openings. The bow deck has very nice detail with anti-skip plate and several other fine details on it.

Frets D and E...

These frets are also molded on one tree and contain the rest of the decks and superstructure of the model. Anti-skid plate is everywhere on these parts, even the smaller bridge pieces. While over scale, this will still look good when painted and with save a lot of time and money not having to add it yourself. The Flight deck rails look really good for this scale and the manufacturer has even added drain troughs to the edges of the flight deck. The funnel is highly detailed and the top grate of it has open holes on a majority of the piece excluding the need for a photoetch replacement.

The only downside with these pieces is the supports for the upper flight deck. The vertical ones seem bulky to me and the real ship had several horizontal supports running lengthwise and widthwise under the flight deck yet the deck underside is smooth. It seems that it would not have been too hard to include them even if they ended up being the size of the molded rails on the top of the deck.

On various plans and other versions of this ship, there is an aft AA platform present on the very rear part of the ship. This seems to of been omitted from the kit(instructions don't show it ether) and will need supplemented by other methods to get an accurate model, if indeed it was indeed present.

Fret G...

Two of these frets are included with the kit. They contain the large turrets, extra planes and some smaller superstructure details. The internal torpedo launchers are here with a torpedo loaded in each tube. As the base of these is small they were meant to be glued to the deck, however you can add a styrene cylinder to the base easily to make them able to rotate without popping off the internal deck. There is a searchlight tower here that has the scaffolding underneath as a solid piece and it will need replaced with a photoetch equivalent to look better. A few structural pieces, like the polycap holders that go under the deck and the weight holders.

Fret W...

The kit has two of these as well. They are the standard fret included with just about every IJN ship from every manufacturer and include weapons, planes, boats and other small details. These frets have their own plane decals included.

Instructions...

These are mostly in Japanese but have English captions and are very well diagramed on the front and back. The 24 inch long single sheet can be a bit awkward to work with though.

Decals...

Only one small sheet of three decals is included with the kit. These go on the tops of the large turrets at the bow of the ship.

Assembly Note...

I've taken the larger deck and hull pieces off and dry fitted them. The hull sides could have used some cross bracing, but it may just be my method of assembly. Other than that, they all fit together perfectly with no gaps or plastic removal needed.