Fujimi 610009 1/500 IJN Battleship Yamato

Fujimi 610009 1/500 IJN Battleship Yamato

Product Type: Plastic Kitset

Brand: Fujimi

Scale: 1/500

Requires assembly. Glue and paint sold separately.

April 7th, 1945?dawn breaks over the waves as a massive, steel behemoth starts what would become her final day afloat. Only a few short hours and the world's largest battleship would join her sister ship at the bottom of the ocean. I'm speaking, of course, of the Imperial Japanese Navy Super Battleship?Yamato.

First begun on Nov 4th, 1937, the Yamato and her sister Musashi claimed their spots in history as the largest, most heavily armed battleships ever to set sail. Displacing a staggering 69,988 tons, a good 20-30,000 more than most battleships, the Yamato class was nearly 700 feet long, 121 feet wide and towered over the water. The ship was designed to give the Japanese Navy an equalizer against the US Fleet. While down on numbers, the Yamato and Musashi gave the Japanese a definitive firepower advantage in head to head combat. However what the Japanese could not have envisioned was that the era of battleships, duking it out with big guns, had ended. Armed with nine 18.1in main guns, twelve 6.1in and twelve 5in secondary guns, and twenty-eight Anti-Aircraft guns, the massive firepower of the Yamato class proved to be no match for the US Navy's most effective combat weapon?carrier aircraft. Both the Yamato and Musashi met their ends by wave after wave of aerial attacks.

One of the most popular ship subjects for scale modelers, the Yamato class has been produced in virtually every possible scale from 1/2400 up to 1/96. Up until now, only one release of the grand battleships was available in 1/500 scale from Nichimo. Now almost 30 years old, the kit simply cannot stand up to current modeling demands for maximum detail. So to answer that call, one of the world's oldest model manufacturers has stepped up to the plate with a new 1/500 scale IJN Yamato. The kit depicts the battleship as she appeared at the time of her sinking.