Tamiya

1/350 IJN Light Cruiser Mikuma

Kit Number: 78022

Reviewed by  Bill Kluge, IPMS# 45849

MSRP: $171.00 Website: www.tamiyausa.com The Ship: Commissioned in August 1935, Mikuma was the second ship of the four ship Mogami class. Although considered a revolutionary design for her day (reports of her massive fifteen 6-inch gun armament influencing the design of the U.S. Navy's Brooklyn class CLs), sea trials showed her to be considerably top heavy and structurally weak, the result of too much equipment on too small and light a 9,500 ton hull. Following a 1939 refit, she ended up as a 12,400 ton heavy cruiser with additional hull bulges and ten 8-inch guns. Following deployments to Chinese and Indo-Chinese waters in the late 1930s and early '40s, once hostilities with the U.S. commenced, Mikuma took part in early South Seas operations, including the invasions of Malaya, Borneo and Java, culminating with her participation in the battle of Sunda Straight. After covering the Indian Ocean raids, Mikuma was once more teamed with her sister Mogami for the Midway operation. On June 5th, while maneuvering to avoid submarine torpedoes, Mikuma rammed Mogami, which slowed her. The following day, she was attacked by U.S Navy dive bombers. Several bomb hits started fires and explosions that eventually destroyed the ship. The Model: This is essentially the same kit as Tamiya's recently released Mogami ( reviewed here last year ), with the obvious substitution of parts to reflect her fitting and armament as she appeared from the time of her commission until her 1939 refit. This includes her full five turret, fifteen 6-inch gun armament, her original aft deck and flight deck configuration, and her original aircraft compliment of two E8N "Daves" and one E7K "Alf" (two are included with the kit). It should be noted that for anyone wishing to build either of the later sisters, Kumano or Suzuya from these kits, there were notable differences to the hull, superstructure and deck fitting between the first two sisters and the last two that would require some modification to the kit parts to accomplish. Being so similar to the Mogami, this kit shares most of the earlier one's strengths and weaknesses. The detail and engineering of the parts are exceptionally well done. The hull can be made in full or waterline form. The fit of the deck parts to the hull is near perfect (and designed to be screwed into place). Deck fittings - vents, hatches, cable reels, tool and ammunition boxes, paravanes and such - are a combination of numerous small molded on and applied parts. Be prepared for a lot of careful hand painting, or even more tedious masking and spraying of very small molded on deck parts. I spent about an hour hand painting these parts after the deck had been spray painted its brown linoleum color.

Even more so than with the Mogami build, I tried to paint as many small parts and subassemblies as possible in mass prior to starting the main assembly. I accumulated a small army of tiny parts, arranged as on a parade field, each platoon marked with the appropriate part number, waiting to be painted. I also learned my lesson to stick to the instruction assembly sequence, and save myself no small amount of aggravation by carefully scouting the instructions and opening up the proper molded-over deck holes for the appropriate Mikuma-specific parts. My favorite malleable mask - Silly Putty - was very useful for covering the aft deckhouse and mainmast, as well as the oddly contoured smoke funnel assembly, for painting the white stripes. The steam pipes were detached from the funnel and striped separately. All colors are custom mixes of Model Master enamels.

Tamiya continues the use of soft plastic poly caps to attach many of the movable (and removable) parts, including the range finders, catapults, primary and secondary gun turrets, as well as all fifteen 6" gun barrels. Again, the optional parts are provided for any of the main gun barrels to be either leveled or elevated. I chose the barrels that would be level with the deck, hollowed out the ends, and slipped them into their holding caps within the turret. This time, to avoid the thin gap between the turret and the barbette top that inevitably comes with using these poly caps, I firmly placed the turret on the barbette before attaching this assembly to the deck. The two major failings of the Mogami kit are carried over to this model as well. The searchlight tower parts have to be assembled is such a way as to present a gap along what should be an open area where there really is no structure at all. Even with careful fitting, the resulting seam in a very confined area will have to be carefully filled and smoothed. Also, the ships cutters have obvious ejector pin circles stamped in the planking detail at the bottom of the boat. These will either have to be re-scribed, covered over or the boats themselves replaced. I chose to cover the bottoms with leftover wood deck material from an earlier battleship build.

Tamiya includes a small stainless steel PE sheet for some of the detailed parts. These are not optional pieces, and include some cross-member portions of the foremast, part of the aircraft/boat-handling crane, the top portion of each catapult, the metal plates connecting the upper portions of the smoke funnels, as well as the aircraft flight deck and catapult cradles, and the aircraft props. I wanted to give this model a more complete PE treatment, and used the Gold Medal Models Takao set like I used on Mogami. The upswept bow railings are a perfect fit, and there is more than enough flat deck railing to go around the vessel. I replaced the catapults with PE (the kit ones are quite nice, however), as well as the aircraft inter-wing and some of the float struts. As mentioned earlier, four aircraft - two E8N Dave biplanes and two E7N1 Alf biplanes (the in-line version) - are included with the kit. I built three, and these tiny planes are minutely detailed, but required a bit of filler to smooth out either the tail assembly (on the Daves) or float-to-fuselage joints (on the Alf). I drilled out the cockpits and replaced the inter-wing and float struts with PE from the Gold Medal set. The brown and green camouflage was applied to Navy aircraft used in the China theatre. A full set of aircraft decals are included with the kit, are in perfect register, and snuggled down easily once removed from their carrier sheet and dipped in Future.

Flag lines from stretched sprue and a few dozen sailors from the Fujimi set completed the build. The waterline diorama was finished off with a made-from-scratch Chinese junk as a reflection of the many visits the ship made to Chinese waters in the late '30s. Overall, the Mikuma is a very enjoyable project, very well detailed and with excellently fitting parts. Even without the extra photo etch, the model builds up into one of the most attractive cruisers ever designed. Special gratitude is extended to Tamiya for providing the review kit.