What the other guys said,
Excellent, real depth in the detail.
Cheers, Si
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Hello all, I proceeded this week with Yamato´s tripod main mast with its two Type 13 Go air search radars. The Type 13 was designed as an air-defense radar and was able to be moved to various platforms such as on land, ships, and even submarines. It could detect large groups of aircraft at a range of up to 100 kilometers and singular aircraft at a range of 50 kilometers.
I had the option to use the turned brass alternative mast from KA Models instead of the kit one. I tried to glue the brass parts but failed as the connections can break easily when stressed a bit. This way I decided to use all the etched parts of the upgrade set but keep the kit´s plastic mast. As the kit ommitted some fixation rods I added them from thin evergreen rods and even thinner stretched sprue pieces. It was a bit of difficile work but everything went straightforward. The searchlights are from BLUE FATTIE´s Yamato´s searchlight set. Unfortunately the for the main bridge needed 60 cm searchlights are not included and need separately optained.
This is how the mast is looking before painting:
zoomed pic of the searchlight platform and both Type 13 Go radars
Cheers 
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The error devil creeped in 
As I looked at the finished mast I found something strange about it at the top area. I checked my reference book once again and found out I had forgot to glue on the horizontal triangular bars
I carefully added part J25 and now the mast is looking really flawless to me and ready for painting 
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Glad it was a nice easy fix. I usually notice stuff like that only after it’s all painted and 50 other parts are in the way 
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Very, very nice work assembling that antenna, it really stands out, Mark
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It’s mind blowing just how much detail you are adding Thomas… The PE on that mast is fantastic
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Rory usually exactly this happens to me, too. I just had luck this time 
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Yamato´s radar mast painting is finished. I also added some wiring to the mast. The speedcones and their rigging will be added later during main rigging.
And attached to its final resting point
Off for a glass of sake 
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We need more guns da Captain said! Parallel during the drying time of my mast I started to add even more weapons to the ship. Now I felt it was time for adding the six Typ 89 twin 12.7 cm/cal high angle AA-guns within their armored turrets. The kit´s turrets were replaced here again by the magical 3d printed items from BUNKER STUDIO again. This is the instruction of the assembly - easy but again with highest caution as these parts are all very very fragile. And take care not to loose one barrel, you hav no extra shot here…
KA-Models give you sisal bags here to lay in front of the guns but my reference book don´t show any so I don´t know now if they were used on Yamatos last mission or not. As these turrets have nice superstructur I ommitted the sisalbags for the moment until some clarification.
A great advantage is also to have here an interior again which will be partly visible through the open shutters
Paiting and highlighting was done the usual way and after a short time the turrets looks like this
Finally there was just the attachment of the guns to their destined emplacement missing. Done that with superglue. The difference to the plastic kit ones are tremendous
With some zoom of the camera you can also recognise inside some of the turrets interior
Before we will enter the main bridge there will be even more guns. Tomorrow I will start all these missing triple AA guns in the armored turrets still missing around the main superstructure
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Once again Thomas very impressive.
Really enjoying following this wonderful effort - thanks for sharing.
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They look excellent, nice work. How was the fit of the parts, much clean up?
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Thank you Mark The fit of the parts was excellent and there was no clean up. The only challenge was to free the printed parts from the sprue gates. During this work the brittle fret broke and 7 gun barrels got loose and flew toward the carpet monster. Luckily I was able to salvage each one
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So much detail still being added…this is a testament to hard work and immense attention to detail…
So many guns !! !!! Half the weight of the ship must of been in ammo !!!
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Thank you so much John for your encouraging words, always a morale booster if one get those.
I also had the same thought about the amount of ammo loaded aboard this ship. You can guess how much it had to be when you see the picture of her demise and the atomic mushroom cloud-like bomb after her final explosion…
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Even more guns - it was time for the ring of triple 25 mm AA-guns and their armored cupolas. Also here were the 3d-printed parts from BUNKER STUDIO used. 5 parts were needed for each turret.
All turrets finished painted
BUNKER STUDIO provided the early and late turrets which were carried only 1945 after Yamatos last dockyard stopover. You can clearly see the slightly different shapes
All turrets finally glued on their proposed barbettes. I am really satisfied with the look of everything. The ship finally takes its known shape…
Thats it for today gentlemen
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That is some amount of fire power …
Was this final Yamato the most heavily armed Battleship of WW2 ? Not specifically calibre, but amount of guns ?
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With the biggest battleship ever with 73.000 tons I think the Yamato also have had the most amounts of guns (anti ship and anti air) of all battleships, but I am not 100% sure. The efficiency of these guns was, well, somehow crude if its true that the ship just only downed 10 US planes during her last mission - and of these were 7 downed from the air because of Yamatos final furious explosion. The AA guns were guided through optical gun controllers which were far inferior to the US ships which already were equipped with radar guided systems. Also the 25 mm guns were considered obsolete at this time of war. The guns lacked the necessary range and their projectiles the punch to give much serious damage to the current allied aircraft at this time.
The main guns however did contribute to sink the US carrier Gambier Bay during their brief encounter in 1944 - it is written that at least one round from Yamato hit the carrier who did sank briefly after this.
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Thomas, my jaw hits the floor with a thud after each of your updates. 
Absolutely magnificent!
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The twin and triple mounts were also slow in traverse and elevation (which probably wasn’t helped by the blast protection, unless those mounts had been upgraded) and excessive vibration affected accuracy. Perhaps the biggest problem was the small 15 round capacity of the individual box magazines. These had to be reloaded by hand, unlike the (60 round) drum magazines of the 20mm Oerlikon for which the U.S. Navy developed reloading machines.
Cheers,
M
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