This is the Mirage 1/400 kit of the IJN Patrol Boat P-102, which had one of the more intriguing histories of any WW2 warship.
The four-stacker Clemson-class destroyer USS Stewart (DD224) was damaged in the Battle of Badung Strait in February 1942, and drydocked at Surabaya (Java) for repairs, where she was further damaged by falling off her keel blocks. With the port under enemy air attack the ship could not be repaired, so she was ordered destroyed ahead of the advancing Japanese forces. Demolition charges were set off within the ship, and she sustained further damage when a Japanese bomb hit amidships. When the port was evacuated on 2 March, the drydock containing her was scuttled. Her name was struck from the Navy list and was soon assigned to a new destroyer escort, DE238.
However, when the Japanese occupied Surabaya, they raised and refitted the hull, adding the characteristic trunked funnel replacing the Stewart's 2 forward funnels, and eventually installing the standard tripod mast. She was rearmed and refitted with Japanese equipment, and commissioned in the IJN as Patrol Boat 102 in September 1943, and operated with the Japanese Southwest Area Fleet on escort duty. In this role she had a hand in sinking the renowned Gato-class sub USS Harder in 1944.
In August 1945, she was found by American occupation forces laid up in Hiro Bay near Kure. She was recommissioned in the USN and sailed for home, though she eventually had to be towed back to San Francisco when her engines failed.
DD224 was again struck from the Navy list and decommissioned in 1946, and sunk off San Francisco as a target for aircraft.
I am a big fan of the old four-stacker destroyers, and a huge fan of Mirage's line of kits of the same, though there are some issues. The kits are designed so that every cleat, bollard and fitting is supplied as a separate piece to be cut, painstakingly cleaned and then attached. Same goes for things like the boat davit assemblies, each constructed from a dozen or so parts with no attachment sockets and few locating markings. As if that weren't bad enough, the moldings are delicate and the plastic brittle, so certain items (like yards and flagpoles) simply cannot be cut from the sprues by any method without a high probability of damage. The instructions are “busy” --OK, more like “frantic”-- with tiny arrows and not-terribly-clear scrap views going all over the place., but they do supply drawings for every step that show what the completed assembly is supposed to look like, which helps a bit.
The good news is that there are plenty of extras and spare parts (since different ships in the series are crafted with different sets of sprues), the moldings are reasonably delicate and as to-scale as is practical, and the kits (at least where I have acquired them) are insanely inexpensive. I've got a whole fleet lined up, which, when completed, will mostly fit in the space of a single sheet of paper.
I chose to depict her in Japanese service with no added markings, though the kit sheet supplies markings for her repatriation scheme with numbers and Japanese flag for the hull. I built the kit more or less straight OOB, adding only assorted PE rails and ladders (mainly from Tom's Modelworks), and minimal rigging with stretched sprue. In a moment of wandering inattention I screwed up and put the prop guard braces on the bottom instead of the top of the guard where they belong, but didn't feel like tearing it out and repainting. Colors are Tamiya acrylics, weathered with artists oils.
My next project in the series will be one of the lot—probably the Ward—in her “as built” configuration, complete with WW1 dazzle scheme. I've acquired both the GMM and White Ensign PE sets to fit her out, so there's lots of building fun in store.
Hope you enjoy the pics.