IJN Destroyer Hatsuhimo
Reviewed by Timothy Dike
| The Hatsuhimo was a Hatsuharu Class Destroyer.
She was built to the maximum limitations of the Washington Treaty that
limited warship sizes. Armed with 5 Dual Purpose guns in two twin and one
single gun mounts.Though fast and heavily armed these ships suffered from
being too top heavy so beginning in 1942 some of these ships had the single
5" mount removed and replaced by a 25 mm anti aircraft guns.
This kit is identical to the Pit-Road Hatsuharu except for the Box art, Instructions and decal. This kit represents a late war version of this class with the added anti aircraft armament. |
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| The hull is well detailed with raised tread plate and lots of sharp well defined features. The superstructure parts have some nice hatch detailing so there is no need to replace them with photo etch. The masts are finely molded for this scale. The forward superstructure is quite nice consisting of three separate wall for the lower portion and a top bridge platform split at the window line making it easier to open those windows. |
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| The weapons included in this kit are from the standard
Skywave IJN weapons set that I usually recommend for replacing on other
kits. So you already have the best weapons available on the market. The
main guns are molded with a separate shield, a vast improvement over other
kits.
The decal sheet is pretty well done, with numbers to build several ships in this class. There are ships names as well as a couple of battle flags. |
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The instructions are good, consisting of a little history
and several exploded views showing the various subassemblies. It is straight
forward and easy to follow. Parts are included for an early or late version
of the ship but are not noted in the instructions.
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| Typical of the water line series of kits this one has a painting guide on the back of the box with color numbers for the Pitroad and Guze Sangyo line of paints. The art work is pretty detailed and includes rigging. |  |
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| Conclusions:
This kit is typical of the high quality waterline kits available today. It is highly detailed and is a vast improvement over the other waterline destroyer kits originally produced in this scale. It can be built out of the box with good results. But add a some PE rails and rigging and you have a real nice representation of one of Japan's WW 2 destroyers. This is kit #W29 and has a current retail of $27.50 US. |
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