Century-Old Escort for 2015: Mirage 1/400 P-102 (IJN)
Posted by Matty on September 26, 2015, 9:28:58 Edited by board administrator September 30, 2015, 11:43:32
--Originally Posted 9/26/15--
I.J.N. P-102 Patrol Gunboat (ex- USS STEWART)
Click on Image for FULL RES Mirage 1:400 by Matt Stein
In my NeverEnding Quest for a really decent quality, "Quickie Build", my latest bit of incompetence was in picking this kit, to follow my similarly-mistaken choice last year, to build Mirage's ORP Mazur:
Click on Image for FULL-RES
Being a much newer release than the Mirage Mazur (left), this kit's parts were so much finer - and more numerous - that all Pre-Conflict Intel indicated surely it would all go together easily and beautifully, straight OOB. But my War Plan Orange would prove flawed - as The Struggle this build was to become (see below), would echo that of Mazur far more than not. Beyond that, the two subjects shared much else in common, as well. Both were 100-year-old escort designs: long, low and thin, festooned with diverse ironwork, open gun-mounts, etc.. Both were launched by one navy, and then saw service with another: in the case of P-102, starting out as the USN 4-piper DD Stewart. Likewise, both were overwhelmed in the opening assaults of WWII: P-102 in the Pacific at Cavite, Philippines, where as USS Stewart, she had to be scuttled (along with the floating drydock in which she was berthed) in the face of the advancing Japanese. The latter who, after taking Cavite summarily salvaged and refitted her as P-102, for IJN service.
Don't get me wrong: I am quite happy with the outcome of this build, and do believe it captures the essence of this ship, including a few really sparkling details, here and there. But - much as for the real P-102 - only at a Terrible Human Cost .
Just as USS Stewart was scuttled at the very outset of Hostilities, so too was dashed any hope of mine that this kit could ever be anything close to a Quickie Build - from the very first attempted removal of parts from their sprues (see below). A bitter discovery that would only broaden, extending to numerous items throughout construction - for (one random) example: I did not expect to have to chop off a heavy bar from the front of the tripod mast (left and center-left), just to depict an accurate (Gold Medal Models' 1:400 4-Piper set) PE ladder there (top, center, center-right and right). Nor to find huge sink-marks (and of course fill them w/CA-putty) in the sides of the Radar Shack (top, center-right and right), before crowning with its Radar Detector, mercifully quite nice OOB. But then to find, for positioning this assembly atop the bridge, absolutely zero locators - neither on the roof plastic, nor anything clear, in the instructions - nothing - and thus to attach it too far forward (discovered too late of course). And likewise for the forward AA Platform: ripped back off and repositioned no less than 4x times - and still not right. Worse yet: molded into the foredeck, a pedestal (center-left) for the forward Main Battery Single-3inch Open-Mount Gun was too far aft, which would have crowded the gun too close under the AA Platform. Apparently in deference to which, the kit supplies one gun noticeably undersized(!) - accordingly downsizing (just as unconvincingly) the Blast Shield at the front of the the AA platform, as well. Thus, the pedestal had to be chiseled off, the Gun moved forward and the Blast Shield replaced with a bit of far more accurate, if still imperfect, PE (top and center), snipped and origami-folded from a flight deck jet-blast deflector from GMM's 540-scale CVs fret. The Main Battery 3inchers themselves were replaced identically both forward (top and right) as well as aft (center-right and right), with customized resin upgrades. (And here I did take some Artistic License, particularly with the trunnions, to make them look more interesting, IMHO, than the real, Dutch 75mm ones appear to have been.) But such added work - and there was plenty more where that came from (see below) - served to draw out an expected two-weekend build to more than two months' worth of weekends. I had of course anticipated some extra effort - for such things as refabricating Bridge Windows (top, center and right) out of white glue in PE (again GMM's 1:400 4-Piper DD) framing, as well as opening a couple watertight doors (top, center-left, center-right and right) with added PE (from Gold Medal Models' 1:350 Liberty Ship fret), but some of the demands of this kit really Take the Cake:
The single Engagement producing by far the most Shouted Epithets (I really do have to get double-pane windows in here, so the neighbors won't hear me ), was the Battle Of The Boat Cradles/Launchers (top, left, center-left and -right), requiring in their major refabrication (left), in PE and plastic. Over-engineered to begin with (left), nearly every one of their most delicate parts - roughtly 2/3 of all those required - broke clean in two - simply from trying to free them from their sprues! Incredulous, I continued (painful) trail-and-error to finally discover the only way to remove them intact was via painstaking, excruciatingly-light stroking at their attachment points, with a laser-sharp knife tip. However once freed they would still retain burrs, whose attempted removal would invariably bust the tiny part anyway! Perhaps my kit had some bad batch of styrene: I only know I've never seen anything like this, before. Compared to that, replacement of the Ship's Boats themselves - which kit-supplied USN Motor Whaleboats (left) would, for P-102 so I reasoned, have been landed in favor of IJN-types - copied (top, center-left and -right) from several Nichimo 1:500 scale kits (Nagato and Zuikaku, IIRC), was completed in a snap. But another waiting Cluster-Fu** were the Propeller Guards - again with no locators whatsoever on the hull, and with individual, impossibly-tiny struts - which I didn't deal with all that well and I Don't Want to Talk About It! Still more unforgivable - more so even than the above, misplaced forward gun - was the complete absence of any fantail Platform/Sponson Extensions to support the Depth Charge Racks - the latter whose asses must hang significantly overboard - accordingly clearly indicated, with evidence for supporting platform extensions, in historic pics. And again, in apparent Fudge-Knowlegement of this, the kit provides distinctly undersized Depth Charge Racks - themselves rather mediocre-looking, in any scale. Clearly saying to the builder: "OK, we're Screwing the Pooch here, so go ahead and discard these Little Weak Sisters (actually, you should save them for your Lindberg 1:535 DE or Airfix 1:600 4-piper) - because you are going to be rebuilding the entire Depth Charge Racks/Platform setup, anyway!" And Lo, that was precisely what Was Come To Pass (top, center-left, center-right and right): Depth Charge Racks replaced with (again, GMM 1:400 4-piper PE and Plastruct rod ashcans, per Loren's instructions for) USN facsimiles, atop Platform Extensions bashed from snippets of GMM 240-scale pre-dreadnought Boarding Stairway (landings).
The distinctive, IJN linoleum-covered decks, painted in Testors (FS30219) Dark Tan (top, center and right), remained highly visible over much of their area, and might well have profited from (at least) an attempt to lay down some hair-thin brass-colored lines: painted/masked, or perhaps in strips of some metallic tape - or possibly even PE - to simulate the hold-down strips of the real thing. And here my second error may also have been painting/masking for linoleum on the 01-level/deck house roofs - not because it doesn't look good (as IMHO it still does), but apparently is inaccurate. Per her (late-war) appearance in historical pics, I painted P-102 in two grays: Testors (FS36081) Euro-I Gray on the hull sides, and Testors (1238) Gloss Gray for everything (steel surface) above - per "scale effect" simulating a faded black and a dark slate gray, respectively. The Battle of RattleCan Sound was joined, however, when the Testor's Gloss Gray - the rattlecan, the paint itself or both - malfunctioned, layind the paint down extremely thick, even gummy (esp. center-left and center), with the occasional pinhole-bubble as well (insert Virulent Cussing, here). None of which I dared remove/re-do, given the extreme fragility of these parts (insert forlorn, Resigned Cussing, here). At the finish, however, my CounterAttack with an overspray of Testors Dull Coat - while thickening everything yet further (some of which had to be scraped out of the foremast ladder) - did greatly mute highlights on all the above flaws. And this time I had remembered to install both a Ship's Wheel and Binacle inside the WheelHouse (center): the former augmented (whether accurately or not) with PE again from GMM's 400-scale US 4-Piper fret, while the latter came OOB already very nice (Halle-F-in'-Lueja!). Also among the kit's more (at least) decent details were the Triple-25mm Open-Mount AA Guns (center), as well as Secondary Battery Single (circa 2-inch?) Open-Mount Guns (top and center).
OOB, the kit searchlights (top, left and right) and Ventilation Hoods (top and right) were quite good, needing simply to be hollowed-out and the holes painted with respectively silver and black. At the other end of the spectrum were the Canvass-Covered Railings, completely removed and refabricated both atop the Bridge (top, left and right) and the Aft DeckHouse (right), out of single-plies from toilet tissue (right-center, see below), doped onto PE 2-bar railings (left-center, center and right-center) with dilute white glue. Not realizing I had picked the optimal tissue (at least, so far) already on my Mazur build - which used Publix Supermarket's "GreenWise" brand toilet paper (right-center, at middle-right) - I experimented with two denser-weave tissues, as the former had also proven exceedingly fragile when wet (note edge-tear, above, even dry). Note Publix' generic-brand toilet paper (center, upper-left) has noticeably fewer irregular holes (and still in the package you can compare based on the total number of sheets/square feet: the fewer, the denser), while of course Publix' generic-brand Paper Towel (right-center, at top) is denser still - as well as having a (much more) deeply-embossed pattern. In the event, I discovered both of these turn out to be already too dense: the generic-brand Toilet Paper, while starting out looking quite good (right-center, to right at middle), proving after having been painted (right-center, at bottom) to have insufficienlty sagged-down over the bars - and of course the Paper Towel still worse, failing even to completely relax its embossed dimples. By this time, however, fooled by the initial results I had gone ahead with the generic-brand TP for all the Canvass Railings on this build, resulting in a rather heavier/stiffer final appearance than desired - but still far better than either the OOB (featureless) plastic, or, IMHO any PE alternative(s). Nor did I seriously consider trying to dissolve/re-do them and thus withdrew, logging The Canvass Sea Engagement admittedly a Tactical Draw - but a Strategic Victory.
The Final Salvo - directly at My Psyche - was to be cheated, as this kit will do royally, out of any hint of Empty Box Gratification (EBG): the satisfaction of watching your model box thoroughly cleaned out, its sprues picked bare, approaching The Finish! Seriously though, in reality this is a major benefit of this kit (matched only by some of the newer Dragon/DML kits AFAIK): an Embarrassment of Riches left-over (top), for your parts box. Indeed not only providing just a ton of good- to excellent details (left and right), including USN/RN weapons, rafts, boats, etc., but also major items like funnels (center and right) and complete deckhouses (left, center and right) - sufficient, in fact, to outfit an entire second (and even most of a third) 4-piper DD! Just come up with a Hull and Main Deck, and you're set (hear that, you wood-carvers?). Even the underscale items -the above-mentioned Depth Charge Racks and Single-3inch Open-Mount Gun, plus what-all ever else - can go to improve any number of smaller, 500- perhaps even 600-scale kits. For example, I already used (the larger) one of the 3-inchers as a foundation for mastering a 550-scale RN four-inch, High-Angle Gun - and indeed, prototype castings from that project were what I used to bash this build's Main Battery SIngle-3inchers!
Click on Image for FULL-RES
So, all kidding aside, I was in fact very happy with this build - both its final appearance as well as employment of my own skills, pretty much pushed to the wall.
Now to stand back a couple feet, drink some Scotch, and see if I can't better her appearance that way!
Cheers,
- Matty
Re: Century-Old Escort for 2015: Mirage 1/400 P-102 (IJN)
Always I used to read smaller articles which also clear their motive, and that is also happening with this article which I am reading at this place. Couple Cams
Re: Century-Old Escort for 2015: Mirage 1/400 P-102 (IJN)
Welcome, Norman - and THANKS for the compliments, buddy!
[You hear that, everybody else: it's a "NICE WEBSITE" - now get up in here and POST about your ships! ]
Seriously though, I am still having trouble accepting pictures, but if you have your own web-storage, feel free to post them yourself - actually, anything naval-related, including aircraft, etc. - and a few [or even many] words describing what you're showing us.
Thanks Again, Norman, and Welcome Aboard ModelFleet, buddy!
Intricate work on the guns and bridge area. Nicely nicely done. The mast and midships area are really noticeable. You can see right away that this is a ship that someone has modified. It's got that IJN "rake" to it, but you can still tell they didn't build it. Fantastic results.
This unique ship really does about equally say both "IJN" and "USN 4-Piper". Some of the more morbid historical hacks claim P-102 lured and sank up to two USN subs who misidentified and approached her as a USN DD - but they provide nothing (beyond the above, highly circumstantial evidence) to prove this.
Meantime, while building/figuring out this model, I got the distinct feeling - and maybe this was just me, projecting, but - the IJN modifications seemed to show real appreciation for the original, flush-decker design. Almost like saying "Yes, we Get It, and by now would only suggest including these changes."
Anyway, it was cool - and Thank You for the compliments. I've just uploaded the edited final version, including links to all the pics at "FULL res" (twice the resolution), which will show you a lot more/better - particularly regarding the leftover parts, which you can really see exactly what- and how good they are, now.