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IJN Cruiser Chokai swinging at the buoy


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Dear Colleagues

 

The ‘A Class’ heavy cruiser Chokai was built at the Mitsubishi shipyards in Nagasaki in 1932.  Following the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 which capped battleship building, many nations went on a mad dash to build the most potent 8” (20 cm) gun heavy cruisers.  Before WWII up to a 1/3rd of Japanese taxes went on the Navy.  Of all the Japanese heavy cruiser designs, the Takao Class was probably the most extravagant.  Envisaged as flagships, the bridge structure could easily accommodate a flag staff.  As Admiral Mikawa’s flagship, the Chokai led the Japanese Navy to its most astonishing victory in the Pacific War over the cruisers defending the transports off Guadalcanal in a night action of 7th August 1942.  Eventually Chokai was sunk at the Battle of Samar in October 1944.  Her wreck has been recently found and is perhaps the most complete warship on a sea bed anywhere in the world RV Petrel find IJN Chokai - YouTube

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I have been building the Fujimi Chokai on and off for a number of years.  For reasons that still cannot be explained I managed to lose sprue C entirely so had to scratch build quite a lot of parts.  I was helped by the 3D printed gunnery control units from Shelf Oddity and a PE fore mast structure from an old Fine Molds set.  The 12.7 cm AA guns are Fine Molds NanoDread whilst the 25 mm units are PE from Veteran Models.  The boats are also Fine Molds but the Daihatsu barge is from Five Star.  I was pleased to add the truly minuscule ships lanterns from Five Star.  These are beautifully turned miniatures in brass that can easily be lost inside your finger nails!

 

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Here is the ship at an earlier stage in the outfitting yard

 

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Hope you like it?

 

Andrew

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Gidday Andrew, that's a beautiful model of a very powerful cruiser, and very well presented. And such detail! I had to check twice that it was 1/700. 

     One of the victims of Chokai's action that you referred to was an Australian cruiser - HMAS Canberra.     Regards, Jeff.

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Lovely model Andrew,

 

Funny how you get used to any scale, then all others seem ludicrously big or small! I’ve just gone from a 1/700 build to a 1/200…

 

Looks fiddly!

 

Guy

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On 08/08/2021 at 10:18, AndrewCJ50 said:

Hope you like it?

Like it ? Like it ?
It’s absolutely stunning, how do you make something so small, look so big ?

Jon

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Thank you Fellow Modellers

 

You are very kind.  For camera I have an old digital SLR from Canon, set it to 100 ASA and fix aperture to about F20, it then decides on the exposure of about 1/4 sec.  Then use a photo editor to lighten the exposure further.  The model is about 12 to 16 inches from the camera with the sky backdrop a further foot or so away

 

Regards

 

Andrew

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