Japanese Battleships: Fuso & Ise Classes

The 'ShipCraft' series provides in—depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeler through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sisterships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring color profiles and highly—detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modeling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super—detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic survey of selected high—quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references — books, monographs, large—scale plans and relevant websites.

This volume covers the two related classes of Japanese 14in—gunned battleships, originally built during the First World War but subsequently totally reconstructed. They are famous for the towering forward superstructure, usually described as a pagoda bridge, that they featured when rebuilt. Ise and Hyuga underwent further reconstruction during the Second World War to emerge as a unique hybrid of battleship and aircraft carrier in a desperate attempt to compensate for fleet carriers sunk earlier in the war.