My 1:1200 IJN Tone & Mogami class heavy cruisers.

[LouCoatney]

I was going to testbuild them this weekend, but I'll be going to be with my kids over here instead ... getting mercilessly beaten in rummy, Uno, Svart Per (Black Peter, the chimney sweep), Othello, you name it, by my 10 year old daughter who's something of a math whiz.

I printed off the sheet of 3 cruisers - 1 Tone and 2 Mogamis - and realized they were too large, so I enlarged the "canvas size" to make them smaller within the A4/ltr size sheet and printed off another.

Then I marked the one with the largest margins "Too Big" and set it aside.

... except ... after I had cut out the hull pieces ...

I'm planning on eventually building 2 Tones anyway ... they served together throughout the war ... until Chikuma was sunk off Samar ... but now there will be Big Tone and Little Tone. ... and Little Mogami and Mikuma.

Mogami and Mikuma and a flock of IJN destroyers sank USS Houston and HMAS Perth in the night Battle of Sunda Strait of Feb/Mar 42.


The U.S. Navy got revenge on them after the carrier battle at Midway, though. Mogami wisely jettisoned its powerful but volatile 24" Long Lance torpedoes, but Mikuma did not and its blew up forcing it to sink. Mogami was mostly wrecked aft of its stacks and had a floatplane flight deck built there, but floatplanes were in short supply, so .... Mogami sank the morning after the night battle of Surigao Strait in October 1944.

[Don Boose]

Looks good so far. Some place in the irrecoverably cluttered basement there are two 1/1200 Nachi-class cruisers I built out of balsa sometime around 1956 under the influence of J.P. Cranwell and S. Smiley's U.S. Navy Waterline Models and How To Build Them, which still resides on my shelf.

Don

[LouCoatney]

I have a copy - maybe 2, unless I gave it to a Norwegian public library, Don.

But do YOU have Gilmore's ca. 1940 How to Build a Model Navy?

And there is a similar British book for British ships, I'll look up.

I was always checking them both out of the Rock Island (Illinois) Public Library and pretty much wore them out.
After I left the Academy in early 1965, I first tried designing paper model ships - I wanted to do Vittorio Veneto/Littorio - but the paper was too weak. I should have looked for heavier, light gray cardstock weight paper.

Maybe someday I'll do the Myoko/Nachi and/or Takao classes, but ... it's 0420 and I've got to get up at least at 1100.

Natt natt.

[LouCoatney]

Right. Model Warships, by Seymour, Faber and Faber Limited, 1946.

Lots of RN model deck and side plans in there, including for Acasta (A-class destroyer), Exeter, and Hood. All the battleship classes plus Renown. Illustrious is the only carrier I find.

And I do have 2 copies of Cranwell and Smiley.

For WW2 model warship books generally, I do have P.C. Coker's big and now rare/expensive book.

[CaptJ]

Looking forward to seeing this build!

Oh no, more possible books for my book shelf haha! Any recommendation of one over another or are they pretty different in what they cover/their approaches to the subject? Also, I am curious, what is P.C. Coker book's title?

[Foute Man]

Read your remark in Herky's "Aircraft Carrier Shopping List" thread about the Sangamon class. Is there any chance you could do a Commencement Bay class carrier as well? Both classes share the same T-3 tanker hull, but with some external differences (flightdeck etc)
I could provide you with a part of the booklet of general plans for the Commencement Bay class, if required/wanted

[LouCoatney]

If Commencement Bay is little different from the Sangamons, I might be able to do that, FM. But now regarding heavy cruiser Tone ....

There were fundamental mistakes, so I had to scrap - the term seems more appropriate working with paper - my first prototype/testbuild, and I printed the correction off ... and then discovered it was too small after all ... and narrowed the margins, so it's basically back to 1:1200 scale on A4 or letter size.

But the transverse bulkheads are too high after all, so somehow ... with my cuticle clippers ... I'm going to have to lower them a bit on the model, and the corrections have been made on the plan.

So here she is before the decks are landed and closed down on her.

Tone, by the way, was the scene of an Imperial Japanese Navy atrocity. Tone, sistership Chikuma and other heavy cruiser Aoba sortied into the Indian Ocean in 1944. Beforeso, the theater naval commander Vice Admiral Takasu ordered that prisoners not be taken, and the group did capture the Allied freighter Behar, and 100 crew and passengers were murdered. A few officers and the 2 women survived the war. The senior admiral died before he could be prosecuted, but the admiral in command at sea Sakonju was prosecuted and hanged after the war. Tone's captain was a Christian and objected to killing the prisoners but followed orders and served 7 years in prison after the war.

[georgerutherford1861]

Looking good!

Secondary batteries are going in on the Hiei at my house, leaving the floatplanes and main gun turrets for last. I am looking forward to this one as well.

Doug

[Foute Man]

Originally Posted by LouCoatney

If Commencement Bay is little different from the Sangamons, I might be able to do that, FM.

If you could PM me your email, I will send you all drawings in my possession that might be relevant for this project, as only you can decide if Commencement Bay can be done

In case the IJN Tone project doesn't turn out the way you want it to be, Tekzo has a 1/700 IJN Tone on his website

[LouCoatney]

I'm getting this msg from MalWareBytes, FM: "Website blocked due to trojan"

I'll look it over, next time I'm on a *public library* computer.

He has squared off some things like the stacks, which I don't think was necessary, and I think my floatplanes are far better, even though I'm not making their fuselages cylindrical.

Thanks for the link, though.

***

Thanks for the update, Doug! Looking forward to your photos. I have yet to do my own 1:1200 Hiei.