Tamiya

1/350 I-400 Japanese Navy Submarine

Kit Number: 78019

Reviewed by  Dave Morrissette, IPMS# 33653

MSRP: $69.00 www.tamiyausa.com Tamiya enters the submarine kit market with this brand new release of the Japanese I-400 Sen Toku class subs. These were the largest subs of WWII with an overall length of 400" (this is about 80 feet longer than Gato class fleet subs). It remained the largest sub built until the ballistic missile subs of the 1960's were commissioned. The reason for the size is that they carried three M6A1 Seiran floatplanes for bombing missions. Enough history for the moment, what's in the kit? First, there are two display bases molded in black styrene- one for the sub, and one to display one of the neat 1/350 Seirans. There are two sprues in dark green for the Seirans and two sprues of gray for the top of the sub and the parts. The bottom hull is separately molded in dark red. There is a PE tree with propellers for the planes, cradles, radar and aerial details, and other detail parts. There is also a bag with poly caps, bolts and a set of weights. The weights give the model stability when added so it can't tip over on its base. There is a full set of decals for the sub and for all the planes and last, a paper set of flags. It is very complete. The instructions are magnificent with a good history, painting guide, history and details on the Seiran and a full color diagram of the internal layout and paint scheme. The only things missing are railings for the conning tower and deck. Construction started with installing the weights in the hull and the base for the sub. I like to build this early so the sub has a place to rest during construction. You have a decision to make right off the bat as to whether to have the forward diving planes extended or retracted- I picked extended because I like the way it looks. Prior to adding the top hull, you need to add the crane and antennae and several poly caps. I then glued the two hulls together. Fit was good, but if I had used a few spacer bars to spread it and it would have been perfect. The front deck was added but I left off the PE crane until later. I did add the shafts, aft diving planes, rudders and screws at this point, and the fit was excellent. I turned my attention to the conning tower. Before starting this, I needed to decide how to display the planes. There is room for three in the hangar bay (with folded wings of course). I decided to build 2 Seirans with the wings folded in stowed position and one on the front catapult to show scale. The planes are small kits themselves, building from nine pieces in launch configuration or 5 in stowed. Each was painted and decaled. Each plane receives 11 decals, and they are beautifully printed. A nice touch is that the canopies are decals and look crisp in this scale. The folded wing pair was then encased in the hanger and the rest of the conning tower built easily with excellent fit. Make sure you attach piece A9 to the front prior to installing the tower to the hull- it can't be added afterwards. I added the catapult and its PE deck, the PE crane to its stand, and then painted the sub by starting with the top color. Tamiya has a special spray can (TS-66) for this color. I mixed my own after finding a recipe on the Steel Navy site. This was masked and the bottom red hull color sprayed. The decks were hand painted with the mixture of colors recommended by Tamiya. The decals were added to the sub and subsequently coated with Dullcoat. I added all the deck guns, capstans, hatches, the other Seiran, and other small parts and flat coated again. I added a dark gray wash and wiped the excess, screwed the sub to its base and dull coated one last time. This kit is complete, accurate and fits great. It is magnificent. It is highly recommended to everyone, and builds into a beautiful model. My thanks to Tamiya for such a wonderful kit and to IPMS/USA and Tamiya for the chance to do the review.

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