Thursday 22 April 2010

Moving onto the Japanese Carriers in 1/3000

My ongoing naval adventures in 1/3000 scale:

Moving from the IJN dreadnought battle-line to the real "war-winning (or losing)" Pacific battle-line, the IJN carriers prove an interesting research problem. With the dreadnoughts it is a question of which bit is deck tan and which bit is grey, whereas the IJN carriers are a bit more customised and individualistic.

Hence a Google Image search on a carrier by carrier basis is called for. The Pearl Harbour "killer" six (search template = " aircraft carrier") are first up:

Kaga (Name is a province of Japan):

My first attempt at painting this, as seen from a reconnaissance Catalina:


Then lower down from from some attack aircraft angle (the large yellow sun denoting The Battle of Midway marking):


Not bad for a first attempt, but I may rework some of the white lines, possibly adding a few more. The sea is another experiment, this time an oil painted canvas. Too bright blue at the moment for my liking. I plan to play around with mixing some oils for sea-effect later :)

Akagi (Name means "Red Castle" and is also a name of a Japanese mountain):
Soryu (Name means "Blue or Green Dragon"):
Hiryu (Name means "Flying Dragon"):
Shokaku (Name means "Flying Crane"):
Zuikaku (Name means "Fortunate Crane"):


One down, five more to go :)
 
These searches turned up an interesting company specialising in 1/6000 ships:
http://www.toshachminiatures.com/figurehead.htm

Before I get carried away with all the 1/250 and 1/700 scale detail I must remind myself I am working with models of 1/3000 scale :)

4 comments:

TWR said...

Wonderful models!

Many years ago I played WWII Naval games using 1/4800th models. I must say your models are tempting me to try some naval action again!

Are you using General Quarters, you mention GQII in one of your posts? I haven't seen these rules but have obviously heard of them.

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Hello TWR,

GQ I and II are two small £5.00 (ea) pamphlets dating back to the early 80's perhaps late 70's but give a very good abstract (not shell or turret counting) simulation of naval combat (available in the UK via Navwar).

GIII has come out in late 200X from the US and goes into a more detailed description of ship characteristics (turret counting). It does has its appeal but increases complexity.

I still prefer the former for large campaign styled battles

A Google on David Manley's page will pull back good some results

TWR said...

Thats very interesting. At the local club a couple of people run occasional naval games that look to have all manner of tables and calculations. Certainly not what interests me. The older versions sound a little more interesting.

Anonymous said...

What of the Shinano? That carrier was large and fairly important. I am surprised you have not included it in your list of carriers.