Extra 1/700 Yamato secondary turrets?

I believe the Tamiya Musashi kit represents her more-or-less as built, whereas the Yamato kit represents her in her final configuration (or nearly so).  The latter involves a huge increase in the anti-aircraft battery, including an extension of the superstructure on several levels on each side.  (The Musashi kit's maindeck looks remarkably bare by comparison.)  What Tamiya did with the two kits, in other words, is quite similar to what was done to the real ships.  Actually the differences between the two actual vessels were minimal.  They're described in the Janos Skulski's outstanding book, Anatomy of the Ship:  The Battleship Yamato.  Skulski also describes the modifications that were made to both ships - including the addition of the port and starboard 6" turrets late in the war.

The Musashi kit, in other words, could stand in as a reasonably accurate model of the Yamato  in her original configuration - and the real Musashi, just before she was sunk, looked a great deal like the Tamiya Yamato kit.

Hi

The Yamato class BB's secondary guns came from the CL's of the Mogami Class cruisers, originaly built as Light Cruisers. But the Mogami's were converted over to Heavy Cruisers just before the onset of war in the Pacific, their original 6" mounts were removed and mounted on the Yamoto's for secondary guns. I hope that helps you.

SteveH

Gerarddm wrote:

I'm going to attempt a what-if kitbash of the A140A Yamato precursor design, the one with triple turrets all forward. The design calls for 4 secondary turrets grouped aft. The actual Yamato had only two of these. Anybody know a soure of getting two more in 1/700 scale, or am I faced with the horror of trying to cast these in resin, or buying another bloody kit for spare parts? As a base I am using Tamiya's 1/700 waterline model, which is spendy enough. are there less expensive 1/700 kits I could cannibalize?

I could be mistaken, but I think Tamiya's Musashi shows the ship before two of the 6in triple turrets were replaced by additional AA guns, so perhaps the Musashi is a better starting point.

Jorit