IJN Kumano +++FINISHED+++

[Ray S]

Hello all.

 

My Combrig HMS Gloucester 1910 has stalled for the time being. I need to scratch build the masts, and they are quite complex. At the moment, I cannot concentrate enough to do it justice, so I searched the stash for something a little less complex, and in the fourth hiding place place I looked, I found this:

 

 

The Kumano was one of the Mogami class. It had 15 15cm guns in five triple turrets, twelve torpedo tubes and eight 12.7cm high angle guns. It was completed in 1937, and met its fate at Leyte Gulf. Beyond that, I will need to do some research!

 

The kit was originally produced in 1971 according to the date stamp on the main runners, and to me it looks well detailed. The box states 'copyright 1994, so this is a later production run. There is very little flash or mould join lines, so should not need much cleaning up. Now, the parts:

 

 

Three original runners, it is surprising how such a complex ship can have so few parts. There were two extra runners (identical to each other):

 

 

These runners are for better detailed armament, ship's boats and davits, aircraft and catapaults, searchlights, and Chrysanthemum crests (two sizes). I will add some of these bits if I can figure out which are required. One thing which is needed, is the Type 94 Recon seaplane, the Alf. The detailing is much better than the original one, and there are two of them. The kit shows two in the instructions, but only one on the original runners. I wonder if the extra runners were always included with the kit? Anyway, here is Alf (parts 6, 9, and 11):

 

 

The hull looks lovely, there are scuttles along the hull flanks.

 

 

I usually like to add photo etch to my ships, it seems to improve them no end, but I will give that a miss on this one. I do not have a dedicated set for this, and I cannot see how to get straight railings to conform to the intense sheer at the bow:

 

 

I will be using Humbrol paints, all by hairy stick. I have a rare beast, namely a Tamiya ship model with English instructions. I have used Humbrol's paint conversion charts to decide on the colours. As we cannot get to shops at the moment, I will have to use a mix of enamel and acrylic paints.

 

I hope to get started on this tomorrow, so, any advice, hints or tips will be greatly appreciated.

 

Cheers,

 

Ray

 

 

[Alan P]

Not built that exact kit, but the quality of those 1/700 waterline models is excellent. Looking forward to seeing this come together. As you say, Kumano met her fate in the Leyte Gulf battles - notable for being the only major casualty of the desperate attack by the screening force during the Battle off Samar, taking a Mark 15 torpedo from the USS Johnston which blew off her bows. She was was sunk while part of a cripples convoy by US submarines a few days later.

 

Cheers,

Alan

[rob85]

The kit looks great really crisp!

 

Rob

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Ray, I like your choice of subject. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder but I think the 'Mogami' class, with their original triple turrets were the best looking Japanese cruisers. In 1939 (I believe) all four ships of the class had their triple turrets replaced with twin 8-inch turrets.

     I did this ship myself many decades ago, OOB and unpainted. I still have it, slightly battered. I'd like to do one again so forgive me if I'm a little jealous. You seem to have scored an extra set of triple guns, if not the turret. I'm looking forward to seeing this happen. Regards, Jeff.

[PeterB]

Hi Ray,

 

This must be the "Mogami" Class  I bought in Chester in about 1976 as it had the early 6" armament - I later converted it to 8". It built up into a nice kit, and yours seems to have had an upgrade so should be even better. I suppose that following the normal pattern, Kumano is the "early version", Mogami was I think in the semi aircraft carrier version produced after it was heavily damaged at Midway, and I guess at least one of the others will be a late version in "normal" 8" configuration - Scalemates say Suzuya so I guess they did not produce a Mikuma.

 

Good luck with the build.

 

Pete

Edited April 23, 2020 by PeterB

[Ray S]

Hello all. I have finally started the Kumano.

 

First, I needed to get my head around the instructions, they are so long and complex, I did not know where to start!

 

 

Crumbs! All on one sheet! That made a change from one section per part! All seems to be quite clear though, so hopefully there will be no issues. Anyway, I got some bits stuck together:

 

 

There were only minor seams to clean up, I have decided not to add blast bags to the guns, I have tried that in the past and had no success whatsoever. Then it was time to start some painting. I initially painted one side of the hull with Revell 374 Grey acrylic. Normally I can brush paint Revell acrylics nice and easily, but for some reason this was very streaky, even after three coats. I also thought it was too light (Tamiya colour callout was XF-53 Neutral Gray) and Revell 374 was the equivalent according to Humbrol. I then retried with Humbrol 164 Dark Sea Grey. That went on very well indeed, so I stuck with that. The linoleum deck parts I did with Revell 84 Leather Brown, which looked to be a close equivalent to the Tamiya XF-64 Red Brown.

 

 

The Leather Brown paint went on like a dream. Since I did this picture, I have re-painted the deck details and the funnel deck and generally tidied up the look of Kumano, and I have glued on the funnel assembly. I must admit that it seems odd building a ship without photo-etch, but due to that bow, I could not bend the etch railings so the stanchions would be vertical.

On 4/23/2020 at 9:39 AM, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Ray, I like your choice of subject. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder but I think the 'Mogami' class, with their original triple turrets were the best looking Japanese cruisers. In 1939 (I believe) all four ships of the class had their triple turrets replaced with twin 8-inch turrets.

     I did this ship myself many decades ago, OOB and unpainted. I still have it, slightly battered. I'd like to do one again so forgive me if I'm a little jealous. You seem to have scored an extra set of triple guns, if not the turret. I'm looking forward to seeing this happen. Regards, Jeff.

I know what you mean Jeff about the looks of the ship. There is something about many of the Japanese ships which give them an elegance that is not there with any other navy's ships. I think it is the 'Swan' bow and the curved funnels. Oh, you are forgiven by the way. I got this kit for £7 at our Club show a couple of years ago, I could not believe the price!

 

@PeterB, 

On 4/23/2020 at 12:24 PM, PeterB said:

Hi Ray,

 

This must be the "Mogami" Class  I bought in Chester in about 1976 as it had the early 6" armament - I later converted it to 8". It built up into a nice kit, and yours seems to have had an upgrade so should be even better. I suppose that following the normal pattern, Kumano is the "early version", Mogami was I think in the semi aircraft carrier version produced after it was heavily damaged at Midway, and I guess at least one of the others will be a late version in "normal" 8" configuration - Scalemates say Suzuya so I guess they did not produce a Mikuma.

 

Good luck with the build.

 

Pete

I don't know where you get your information from (books or a prodigious memory), but you always have something really positive to say about the history of these Japanese ships. Please feel free to add more if you can as that may help others who (like me!) know very little about some of these ships. Your information is always very useful indeed, so thanks for adding anything.

 

 

More soon, with luck!

 

Take care,

 

Ray

[PeterB]

Hi Ray,

 

Your comment about not being able to add PE railings is interesting. All warship designs are to a lesser of greater extent a compromise. One the one hand you want maximum speed, range and the heaviest armament possible and on the other you need enough buoyancy to keep it afloat and enough strength to stop the ruddy thing falling apart. Between the wars, the weight limits imposed by the Washington and other treaties encourage designers to try and cram "a quart into a pint pot" as it were and the Japanese if anything went a bit too far, resulting in ships which were somewhat top heavy. After the torpedo boat Tomodzuru capsized in a gale in 1934 a number of designs had to be lightened, by removing a gun turret or a set of torpedo tubes.

 

Another consequence I guess was that Captain, later Vice Admiral Hiraga began to look at changing the way the hull was designed to reduce stress and therefore allow a heavier armament on a smaller and lighter hull. This initially resulted in the light cruiser Yubari launched in I think 1923. This retained the traditional raised forecastle (fo'c'sle or focsle) but from then on, starting with the heavy cruiser Furutaka all cruisers and also the Yamato class battleships were sort of "flush decked" in a rather unique sort of way. By calculating the load and stress along the length of the hull, he came up with a characteristic curved deck profile which is very apparent at the front of the ship as in your kit, hence your problem with the railings. As I understand it, the idea behind the focsle was to cope with the bow running into the waves, but carrying the extra height and weight way back along the hull increased the stress so he started with the high bow but gradually reduced the height and thus stress in a curve. I do not have the technical knowledge to know if he got it right, but the IJN cruisers were certainly good looking ships. Makes you wonder why it was not standard practice earlier - perhaps it was difficult to fabricate the curved shape whereas the traditional "straight" decks were probably easier to build. Modern warships seem to have followed his lead.

 

As to your question, books and the interweb mostly, driven by building an awful lot of 1/700 Japanese warships (one of each class of Battleship, Cruiser excluding Yubari oddly enough, and major Carriers and one, more often two of just about all the Destroyer classes) plus quite a few US/RN/Kreigsmarine ones as well - my memory is not as good as it used to be and though I often half remember things I frequently cannot find the article I read it in! One of these days I might just create a proper index - if I live that long!

 

Here endeth the lesson.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

PS You have a very nice selection of floatplanes there - Alf, Dave, Jack and Pete I presume? My Jintsu has a Dave, most of the other cruisers have either an Alf in the early version, or a Jack in the later one. I can only remember Petes on one or maybe two of the Battleship kits - Yamato I suspect. 

Edited April 27, 2020 by PeterB

[Andwil]

Interesting information PeterB.  One small point, the floatplane is Jake, not Jack.  Jack was the reporting name for the J2M Raiden  fighter. (But you probably know this and it’s an autocorrect stuff up!😉)

 

AW

[Alan P]

That's looking very grand already, as you say, not much in the way of instructions required! 

 

Good Post @PeterB though the Japanese didn't show any respect for the Washington Naval Treaty once they'd been relegated to second power status (other than incorrectly reporting the displacement of their new/refurbished cruisers!)

 

There's a fantastic book Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War by Wells and LaCroix (if you can find one!) but some of the Kagero books are very useful as well if you want to look more closely at these imposing ships. 

[PeterB]

Hi Guys,

 

Well I did say my memory was going AW - Jake it is!

 

I don't have that book Alan - sounds like it could be similar to Roberts "British Cruisers" which I have and which is now fetching ridiculous prices on Amazon. I  have the Kagero books on Aoba, Takao and Tone, Also the Profile Morskie series of books are pretty good for very detailed plans though the text is mainly Polish I believe - they cover Maya, Nachi and Furutaka. Conways "Anatomy of a ship" are also good, and the Squadron Signal "in action" series are quite useful too, together with the Osprey New Vanguard series.

 

Pete

[Ray S]

Hello all. I have made some progress with the Kumano. This is going to be purely out of the box, but initially I dry-fitted some of the main guns and funnel stack:

 

 

I have fitted the mounting points for the two extra turret and quite a bit of the rest of the superstructure. Having the upgrade runners is certainly a bonus. An example is the fire control system:

 

 

The upgrade part (left) is just fractionally better than the Tamiya part, I wonder if you can tell the difference! I also replaced the searchlight at the aft end of the midships gun platform. There were three different sizes in the upgrade set, so I chose the 90cm light, as it appeared to be about the same size as the Tamiya one.

 

 

Using Humbrol acrylic paint has meant that I have been able to really crack on with this, the paint drys very quickly and I can progress rapidly. The main control tower has been assembled, and, like with the midships gun platform, I used the upgrade triple 25mm machine guns. The detailing on these only comes alive when it has some paint on - even brushed acrylic revealed a wealth of detail. I have lots of spares!

 

 

The camera decided to focus on the mat rather than the tower, I do apologise for that.

 

@PeterB, thanks again for the extra information you gave a few posts back, it was very informative.

 

I am thoroughly enjoying this model, it is lovely to have something which does not need anything too strenuous doing to it, but still looking pretty reasonable in the end. The base quality is excellent despite its age, and someone with the skills could do a wonderful job of superdetailing on it.

 

Hopefully more soon.

 

Ray

 

PS, the instructions suggest the Alf floatplanes are IJN Green, but I think they were a light grey underneath - I am correct in that please? At least the upgrade set had the Hinomarus as transfers, in the original kit I would have needed to paint them on and the kit instructions show them as irregular blobs, much as they would turn out if I tried to paint them!

Edited May 1, 2020 by Ray S
Tidy the post

[PeterB]

Hi Ray,

 

IJN Green uppers and Grey unders would sound correct to me for wartime. AFAIK being an inline engined plane the Alf would not have the blue/black cowling/nose normal on  many JNAF radial engined floatplanes not to mention Zeros. Kates and Vals. Of course, as this is the early 6" version of Kumano, ie pre conversion to 8" guns in 1939-1940 I believe, NMF might actually be correct with a red tail - not quite sure when the green/grey scheme actually came into effect. To confuse matters, when operating over China from about 1937 onwards some planes were painted in "China camo" of green/brown over grey, and of course the "sky grey" scheme was in effect on many carrier planes before the time of Pearl Harbour, when the green uppers began to appear, but whether or not this applied to floatplanes is unclear - I certainly have a drawing of an Alf in the "China" scheme and a Rufe in Sky Grey in an article in Scale Aircraft Modelling International. So in other words do what you feel happy with. Bet you wish you had not asked now!

 

As  I mentioned somewhere, perhaps in my Jintsu or the Nagara build in this GB, the instructions and indeed the parts can get mixed up between the early and late versions they produced in this series - like my pre war Jintsu with radar - you may find the same problem! I suspect this version should not strictly have the triple 25mm either, but what the heck - who cares. For the record Osprey say the pre-conversion AA armamament was 8 x 5" guns in 4 twin mounts, 4 x twin 25mm amidships and 2 x 13mm in front of the bridge. By 1944 the survivors were sprouting radar, triple and single 25mm all over.

 

When I painted mine in the 1970's I had a paint brush with a square cut handle rather than the usual point, and the end of that was just the right size to do 1/700 Hinomaru - I used a meat skewer for the Dave on the Jintsu! Decs are much easier.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[ArnoldAmbrose]

10 hours ago, Ray S said:

The camera decided to focus on the mat rather than the tower

Gidday Ray, I know cameras are different but for my model photos I set the zoom at about 1/2 way then position the camera to get the ship in the photo, then auto focus. The further away the camera is from the model the less percentage difference between model and background (mat), if that makes any sense, and hence less likely to have focus issues. Again I acknowledge that not all cameras are the same. HTH.

 

As I said earlier I've done this model before, back in the Dark Ages. Your triple 25mm guns and other fittings seem to have better detail than mine. I don't wish to put a spanner in the works but Pete above could have a good point regarding said 25mm. I've read recently that the first 25mm guns were twin mountings, followed by the triples and finally the singles. As the model depicts the ship carrying triple 6.1-inch guns, and therefore early in her life I suspect that the 25mm would be the twin mounts. But I admit I don't know the dates of the development and employment of the triples and singles so I could be wrong and this can be your loophole. 😉 I didn't know about the different guns either when I did the ship. Again, HTH and doesn't cause problems.

 

And I still think she's the best looking IJN cruiser. She starts to come alive with parts fitted, even dry fitted.    Regards, Jeff.

[Ray S]

Hello all.

 

@PeterB and @ArnoldAmbrose, thank you for that information above. I am a bit of an illiterate when it comes to the IJN (or any navy for that matter) and I tend to get rather confused very easily with technicalities. I find it tricky to follow timelines with armament and such like, so what you have helped with throughout this thread has been useful for the future. As the triple machine guns are very secure on their mounts, I am going to have to keep them on, and I will finish the Alfs in dark green and grey (although the silver/red finish does sound good).

 

As for my camera, it is a Nikon compact, and I have always had problems with the point of focus. One of the first times I tried it, I was at a wildlife park, and a beautiful peacock was very close by and in full sun. As you can imagine, the iridescence of the plumage was something to behold, it was far enough away so as not to be startled, but would the bloomin' camera focus on it? No way! I found the camera had a multi-point focus system, so I switched that off so it was centre-focus only, but that did not help (as you can see in the photo above of the bridge tower - it is slap bang dead centre!). Ah well. I sold cameras for twenty five years as my job, so I thought I knew a good one when I saw one...

 

Anyway, back to the Kumano. I have got quite a bit more done today, and replaced a few parts with the supplied upgrades. There are a couple of searchlight towers just forward of the funnel. I trimmed off the blob searchlight and replaced it with a 110cm one, as it seemed bigger than the one aft of the midships gun platform. This was the options:

 

 

The kit part is on the left, and the replacement on the right, no contest. I used the original kit catapaults, the detailing seemed ok to me, but what swung it was that there was a block on it to mount the aircraft. The mast seemed reasonably fine, but it was a bit indistinct when it came to fitting the fore part of it - it just butt-fitted against a ridge on the funnel. I also replaced the four ship's boats aft, they had a bit better detailing than the originals. Here is how she sits at the moment:

 

 

 

 

 

I still need to retouch some of the paintwork, but that is it for today.

 

Thanks for looking in,

 

Ray

Edited May 2, 2020 by Ray S
Tidy the post

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Ray, She's really coming along, I'm tempted to try to get another. Since the triple 25mm are firmly attached it might be best to leave them there. Don't want to do more harm than good changing them now.

     My camera is a Nikon Coolpix AW120. My wife gave it to me as a anniversary gift a few years ago. But before she did she handed it to my son to "disable all the functions dad won't need. He'll only be able to point and shoot"    -    She knows my lack of technical knowledge so well! 😀   OK I can zoom in and out, turn the flash on and off, reset the definition of the photos but that's about it. It's perfect for me and the hobby. HTH. Regards, Jeff.

[Andwil]

Autofocus can be a pain at times, for close ups or where there is a cluttered background.  For that reason I gave up on point and shoot (I bought one for travel to avoid the weight and bother of changing lenses) and went back to a DSLR with a manual focus option.

 

AW

[Ray S]

Well, the Kumano is now nearly done as far as I am concerned. Today I was able to get the main (aft) mast fitted, it went in quite well, but the top is a bit too over-scale I think. As part of the aft mast stucture, there is a crane which looks like it is for the aircraft and/or for unloading the cutters which are also stacked aft. Now, you remember the fire controller I added which was much better than the kit one? Well, I had to trim off some of the detail because the crane boom snagged the top of it! Because it is directly underneath the boom, nobody can tell, can they?

 

I also added four 9-meter cutters forward, and the last job I will do is add appropriate davits from the upgrade set, once the aircraft have been fitted. Here are how this stands at the moment:

 

 

 

 

I also need to finish off the aircraft. I have cleaned them (the Alfs) up and got the top wing on, but I may have to remove them and redo with CA, I will see tomorrow. I have gone for the green/grey colour combo, and I am also going to give them a black-ish cowling later. I like that combination, and if the model is a bit of a mashup of dates/fits/colours, that will be in keeping!

 

 

To show what I meant the other day about getting muddled, I was happily painting the fuselages on the runners, got them all done and then found I had painted one Alf and one Dave! I had painted both Alf wings. Hey Ho, I always do something like that these days! Anyway, this should hopefully be done tomorrow.

 

Thanks for looking in,

 

Ray

Edited May 3, 2020 by Ray S
Tidy the post

[PeterB]

Looking very good Ray

 

Pete

[Ray S]

Hello all, I am now calling this 'done'.

 

I found a couple of plastic rods the correct(ish) diameter for the roundels, so, rather than use the fairly thick (and excessively carrier-filmed) Tamiya transfers, I bit the bullet and painted them instead. I practiced on the surplus Tamiya planes and got a reasonable consistency, then went for it!

 

 

I then got them attached to the catapaults, then I wondered whether there should be one or two! Tamiya showed two on the painting plan, but only supplied one with the original parts. The instructions for the ship history said 'Aircraft: one Alf seaplane' singular. I left both on! This Alf appeared to have a non-inline engine, so I painted the cowling black, and I popped some dark grey into the cockpit openings. The davits were fitted and that was that!

 

 

I will pop some more pictures into the Gallery in a mo.

 

Thanks for looking and also all the encouragement and advice, it has been really appreciated.

 

All the best, Ray

 

PS, I have found a Japanese ship in my stash which does not have the excessive sheer on the bows, so I will have a go at that with etch railings, but that is another topic!

[PeterB]

Hi Ray,

 

Too late for this build but for future reference, Osprey say that the earlier Takao heavy cruiser had a pair of 60cm searchlights for signalling and two  big 110 cm ones furher back (for spotting enemy ships) - IJN training at the start of the war emphasised the use of searchlights for night fighting as the USN found out to their cost until they started to make better use of their radar. IJN did not start getting radar until around 1943 I believe. As to floatplanes, Kumano had 2 catapults and I see no reason  why she should not have 2 planes, Alf initially and then Jakes. I am looking forward to this mystery ship mentioned above.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited May 4, 2020 by PeterB

[PeterB]

By the way Tay,

 

I forgot to say I was wrong and you were right about the Aff - the early version did have an inline engine but I had forgotten that the later one had a radial, so your black cowling is fine. 

 

Good call!

 

Pete

[Alan P]

Looks brilliant, very neat. Good idea to paint the roundels on the floatplanes, came out very nicely again.

[rob85]

That’s a great build and some seriously speedy work!

 

Rob