Here’s the Mutsu after the front base of the conning tower was redone and the scout plane was added to the launch catapult. Compare this shot with the ones from earlier and you can really see the difference on the front tower and the scout plane area.
I got a hold of the shots of the Mogami cruisers in progress and wanted to share them to show the mods that were done. One turned out to be a Tone class, so it’s actually 3 Mogami class and 1 Tone. As with all the sculpts, they started with a coat of primer (red in this case), and then the flashing is trimmed and any uneven edges between halves of the sculpt are leveled. Mogamis had smaller conning towers than the Takao class these were made from, so the towers were cut off and sanded down before being glued back in place. While they were off, the smoke stacks got filed in front and top, and putty was added between them to match the profile on the schematic of the Mogami smoke stacks. Holes were drilled to accept a small brass rod for the scout plane retrieve crane, and sections of the round rod were squared with a file to make the crane arm, then super glued to the round rod to complete the crane. More small sections were squared with a file to make the launch catapults that were glued in later. (A few of my Oscars are in the top picture waiting to get their canopies done.) These are pretty big files best viewed by right clicking and opening in another window.
The Mogamis also got more putty added to the sides to make the bulges where the catapult launch arm is attached and the extra port and starboard AA guns were added. The putty is formed while it’s still soft to as close a shape as it can get, then sculpted and filed after it hardens. The launch catapults for the scout planes have been added above the bulge they hinge from, and the extra forward deck guns taken from the GHQ carrier have also been added.
The little tiny planes from GHQ were painted before they were super glued into place, and another look at the four from the rear to see the aircraft.
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I wanted to post these last Sunday but that Midwest ice storm knocked out the power for 3 days. FJO has started doing the Japanese transports after a bit of research into the sculpts. He found a lot of pictures of Japanese merchant ships that the game sculpts are based on, so he’s going to do a bunch of different paint schemes matching the various pictures to make each transport different from the rest. The first one, a sculpt from A&A '41, is done up as the Kita Maru. This was started Friday and finished Saturday.
The Kita Maru port & starboard.
Next up is the other Japanese transport sculpt from the most recent 2nd Ed., this one done as the IJN Nagitsu Maru.
Rolling Advanced Artillery in our house rules opens up tank killers- the JU-87G from HBG shown earlier is the only flying tank killer we can find a sculpt for. The British put some 40mm cannon on a Hurricane and called it a Mk IID, so I grabbed a section of FJO’s little brass rods he uses for his mods and cut some cannons and super glued (with gel so it left a nice thick coat) them under the wings of one of the Hurricanes I got from Shapeways. Paint scheme is based on a Mk IV found on Wings Palette (which is a great source for aircraft paint and decal references: http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/79/9/16).
FJO has been knockin’ out the transports lately. These two were done last week- the Takatsu Maru and the Kinjosan Maru. There’s some added putty on the Takatsu Maru- just a little in the center of the top.
The Teia Maru has a lot of room for troops to travel in comfort. FJO also finished the last 2 Japanese aircraft- one of Egusa Takeshige’s Vals and a Ki-43 Oscar. I saved those 2 for him to paint after I did the rest of the IJAF and it took him almost a year to get to them, but he did them proud.
I broke off the landing gear from some Shapeways ME-109E’s and gave them to FJO to use somehow, and they became funnels on the transport IJN Macassar Maru, alongside a smokestack made from a German tank barrel. Check out the mods on the pilot house, too. The IJN Asama Maru has smoke stacks made from the posts that represent the cranes on the French transports, as well as other modifications to the deck and aft poop deck.
I think there are now 12-14 Japanese transports done, some as submarine tenders and oilers. They’re all from Combinedfleet.com, a great history site with old pictures and tabular records of movement of each ship in the IJN. These two received some Me-109 landing gear as vent/funnels and putty mods. The San Pedro Maru started as a '41 sculpt I got from HBG and got a smoke stack on the aft deck with the funnels along with fore deck guns from a french transport, and the Santos Maru started as a Pacific '40 2nd Ed piece. The '41 sculpt has the molded-in windows filled with putty to make a better painting canvas for a more accurate depiction of the San Pedro Maru. The Santos Maru has an extensively modified deck and pilot house with a smoke stack and funnel vents.
The Hokoku Maru was a merchant raider with a very interesting history available here: http://www.combinedfleet.com/Hokoku_t.htm. We were looking for camo patterns to go with the IJN camo fleet pieces and this was the first we came across. After reading it’s history, FJO had to do it. The camo pattern posed a bit of a challenge while painting, and there are extensive modifications to the piece. Comparing the finished piece to the references, I think he nailed it.
A few more from Combined Fleet- the IJN Bangkok Maru and the IJN Shinyo Maru. These have too many mods to mention:
I’ve been re-doing some German aircraft I originally did 4-5 years ago or so, and just finished putting magnets in the Desert Luftwaffe, so I thought I’d share some pictures. For the desert Me-109’s machine guns, I drew them with the .005 pen on a section of a Dom’s Decal sheet that didn’t have decal printed on it so I could get them uniform, then cut them and applied them after the ink had dried, giving liberal applications of MicroSol to finish. I hate the tail wings on the sculpt so I took a file to them and shaped them correctly before I painted them. You can see their shape better in the top pic, right middle (yellow flaps). I also wanted the desert planes to look more like Me-109E’s so I squared off the wing tips.
Back on June 9, FJO and I drove from the Detroit area down to Dayton, Ohio for some gaming with Check Your 6! Gaming, where we met some great people and painters, and played “Check Your 6!” with Dave Winfree, owner of I-94 Enterprises (my rookie Me-109 pilot shot down two of his RAF Defiants :-D). Dave also brought a lot of merchandise for sale, and FJO picked up some more tiny aircraft from GHQ, and a cool transport sculpt called the Aden Maru. It’s 1/2400 scale, same as the transports and subs in this game. One neat thing about GHQ stuff like ships is that if they have separate pieces that need to be glued in, they come with extras of those pieces. So of course FJO had to use them, and the Karishima Maru was the perfect fit. It has extensive mods just about everywhere- smokestack with funnel vents (whatever those are called) on a built up stern, French transport guns on the bow, deck guns fore and aft of the boathouse, depth charges on the stern, and if I recall, a Liberty ship boathouse modded up in the middle. The extra GHQ large and small cranes in the rear and FJO’s built crane in front finish up the mods.
The transports are all done and I was able to get some pictures together, so here they are. This one is labeled Heian Maru, but I’m not sure the name is right. It’s a sister ship to the Hokoku Maru shown earlier, and a merchant raider as well. It started as a '41 sculpt, with cranes from a first edition transport, German tank barrel for a smoke stack, and some vents made of putty to round out the putty built pilot house.
This one is loosely based on the Yasukuni Maru and is sort of a kit bash piece. It’s got the top of a Baltic timber Ship (French transport) sculpt for the pilot house and deck guns taken from the same French sculpt. Taller smoke stack and the 2 pillar crane are also added. Pretty close to the base ship.
I don’t recall what the name of this first ship is, but I do know it’s another merchant raider. Edit to add: the top of the center house is from a German cruiser. If I get the right name I’ll edit the post later. The second group is a set of transports to go with the Fleet of Fog camo set.
Since the transports are done, I wanted shots of them separated into two groups based on which sculpt they started as to see the mods easier. Here they are- the group based on the Pacific sculpts with an un-modded, primed red sculpt, and the group based on the 1941 sculpts with a black plastic piece I got on sale from HBG for a dime or 15 cents. Edit to add: I almost forgot to mention- one painted sculpt in each picture is not modded.
