Hasegawa 1:350 Heian Maru Submarine Depot Ship

[Shar2]

N.Y.K Line Heian Maru
1:350

History

As with her sister ship Hikawa Maru, Heian Maru is a Japanese ocean liner that was built for the Nippon Yusen KK line by the Yokohama Dock Company. She was laid down as a 11,616-ton passenger-cargo liner by the Osaka Iron Works and made her maiden voyage from Hong Kong for Seattle, Washington. She is one of three sister ships. She and her sister ships were named after important Shinto shrines, the other being Hie Maru. From 1935 she was in service on the NYK (Japan Mail) Line's Kobe to Seattle route via Nagoya, Shimidzu, Yokohama and Vancouver. In August 1941 she made her last voyage, in ballast, from Seattle to Yokohama.

In October 1941 she was requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese navy, (IJN). Later that month she was registered as a prospective submarine tender in the Yokosuka Naval District. The conversion was carried out at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ shipyard at Kobe. Four 6-inch (152-mm) 41st Year Type single mount guns, one 3.5 m range finder, two Type 93 dual 13-mm machine guns and one 1100-mm diameter and one 900-mm diameter search lights are fitted. A degaussing cable (anti-magnetic mine device) is also fitted. The conversion was completed at the end of December she completed conversion. Thereafter, HEIAN MARU was assigned to Vice Admiral Shimizu Mitsumi's (former CO of 3rd China Expeditionary Fleet) Sixth Fleet (Submarines) in Rear Admiral Sato Tsutomus’ SubRon 1, Combined Fleet, based at Kwajalein. On the 31st December she sailed from Kobe and arrived in Kwajalein on the 8th January 1942. After sailing from Harbour to harbour refuelling and re-arming numerous submarines, landing troops and Rabaul and from 1942 to 1944, she was finally caught by carrier aircraft on 18th February 1944 and badly damaged to the point of the crew having to abandon ship. The next day Avenger aircraft, off USS Bunker Hill, hit her with a torpedo, after which she capsized and now rest in 110ft of water of Dublon Island.

The Model

The kit comes in the usual, attractive, top opening box from Hasegawa, with an artistic interpretation of the ship at sea. The kit is basically the same as the Hikawa Maru released last year, but with additional parts for this ships armament and other small details.

On opening the box the two hull halves, which are mounted on a cardboard insert along with a large poster which also acts as the painting guide. Removing the hull insert reveals 10 sprues of grey styrene and one of clear. As is usual for Hasegawa the parts are nicely moulded with crisp detail with quite a few moulding pips on the parts, although there is a small amount of flash at the sprue junctions.

Construction starts with the two hull parts being joined together with 7 internal bulkhead parts adding considerably to the strength of the structure. Whilst the propshaft fairings, props and rudder are fitted later in the instructions, I would probably fit them at this point to help with painting before the rest of the build commences. Next to be fitted are the 3 cargo deck and the raised foredeck with its bulkhead. The promenade deck is built up with the superstructure parts, which are again nicely strengthened with internal bracing. Once complete this sub-assembly is added to the hull. At this point the myriad of deck pieces can be added, these include items such as ventilators, winches, bollards, cleats and the anchors. The 13mm and 152mm guns are also built up and fitted to their respective positions.

The stern castle is built up next followed by the boat deck. The bridge section of the superstructure is next to constructed, with some nice internal details such as the ships wheel, binnacles, signal lamps and transparencies for the windows. The final section of superstructure is the boat deckhouse with the funnel, more ventilators, winches and fan trunking housings.

The rest of the build consists making up the ships lifeboats and attaching them, with their associated davits to the boat deck, followed by the many masts and derrick arms all of which will require some careful rigging combined with some research as to how and where the cables are fitted, as this information isn’t given in the instructions. The completed model can be displayed on the two nice pedestals provided.

Etch
In addition to the plastic parts there is a small sheet of etched parts which replace some of the solid plastic parts to make them more realistic. There are also some railings, gun platforms, and searchlight towers make up the majority of the parts. The landing craft and 12m launch receive new cradles, rudders, propellers, steering wheels, liferings, steering position railings and a ramp for the landing craft. A nice touch is the template to fit the boats cradles in the correct positions.

Decals
The well printed decal sheet provides the modeller with the ships name for the stern and bows, along with depth markers, various flags and the markings for the numerous liferings, which makes a change from having to paint them. All the decals appear in good register and density. There is also a sheet of sticky label type flags with a couple of pennants which are actually quite useful in that they would be easy to attach to their respective halliards.

Conclusion

This is a very nice kit, just a shame that there isn’t an option to build it as a waterline model without some major surgery as it would be good for a diorama with some I class subs alongside. My other criticism would be that Hasegawa have kept their wooden deck and two etch sets out of the main kit to be sold separately, but at least this kit does have some etched parts and the modeller can now get a wooden deck from another source. Other than that, I can really recommend this kit

Review sample courtesy of UK distributors for

[Chris Hewitt]

very nice kit

[Harry@BFM]

This is a great kit. Now all I need is the time to build it.

[Arkady72]

Again must have?