[Lex]

Hi all, in this post I would like to present a testbuild of the Ibuki in heavy cruiser configuration in 1:400 scale.

The Ibuki is the last of Japan's heavy cruiser to be built. As their battleships were generally kept at bay for a variety of reasons, the Japanese found their heavy cruisers to be very useful in the second world war. It's fair to say that they did have some of the best, if unbalanced, cruisers in the war when it's about surface combat. There were a number of plans to expand or replenish Japan's cruiser force both before and during the war, the only such plan that came close to fruit was the Ibuki-class, which Ibuki was the first ship of.

The navy was satisfied with the Mogami-class, and had no incentive to make huge modifications to the design. Superficially the Ibuki would have been extremely similar to the Mogami class cruisers, or Suzuya to be more precise. However the Ibuki did not see completion as a cruiser. Rather, halfway into construction, the navy saw a need to convert the ship into an aircraft carrier, and she was half complete as CV Ibuki when the war ended.



The designer of this model, LuckyCV12 (he goes by this alias), is an aspiring and diligent modeller. He had trouble developing the ship's hull, and I offered to help design it, so this is a combined effort between us. Being responsible, I asked to testbuild the hull which of course later escalated into building the entire ship... I advised him to keep the 400 scale, as any larger scale would require much more research and good project management, not to mention 400 scale naval subjects, offered only by JSC and a number of independent designers, is a relative niche compared to the competitive 200 scale。

The plan is to offer the model both as free digital download, and as printed versions by Galaxy Paper Art along with laser accessories and PE. Galaxy Paper Art is a small publisher established by the Chinese language community ourselves but I won't elaborate on this until we figure out a way to accept international orders... it will take a while.

As this is a testbuild, I'll be keeping to the original design as much as possible, only making modifications for significant inaccuracies. However I will be liberally using 1:350 series generic photo-etch accessories from plastic models. Sorry that life has had me at crossroads and I will update this post irregularly. Stay tuned.