The Zuikaku (Happy Crane) and sister ship Shokaku (Flying Crane) were Japan’s most modern and capable aircraft carriers in World War II. With the exception of Midway, Zuikaku was in every major carrier battle in the Pacific, from Pearl Harbor to Cape Engaño, where it was sunk by American torpedoes and bombs in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944.
Fujimi’s new kit represents the Zuikaku as it was that October. Parts are molded in gray and clear plastic. There is little flash and not many mold marks. A few thicker parts have sink marks that need to be filled.
However, most of the detail is excellent: The 5" and 25mm guns have all the detail you could ask for, while the flight deck has delicate planking and tie-downs. But the expansion joints are recessed where they should be raised. Eight aircraft are included: two each of the Jill, Kate, Zero 52, and Zero 21. Optional bomb loads are provided. The aircraft are nice little kits. Chain is included for the anchors.
The photoetched metal is good, but I didn’t see instructions for it. I discovered too late that the instructions are on the color painting guide; even so, they’re not that great.
The kit instructions are well drawn, with some side views that show placement of the inclined ladders and other parts. There are a few mistakes, though. In Step 3 you will need to make six guns. Step 4 tells you to drill out holes, but there are no guide marks. I had trouble aligning parts in Step 6, particularly Part H25. Make sure to test-fit the flight deck to check alignment.
The flight deck is one thing I would like to do over. Brass parts are provided to go on or into the recessed expansion joints. I recommend gluing the elevators flush and forgetting about the elevator wells — there is no hangar to see, anyway. Next, glue the flight deck to the hull. Use the painting guide to place the brass strips, then the arrester gear. Paint the entire flight deck, mask it, then paint the rest of the ship. It is much easier to mask the deck than the ship.
I assembled and painted all the guns and small parts separately, then added them to the hull. The radio antennas can be movable; I chose to leave them off until the very end and just glued them in place.
The kit decals are in register and behave well. The deck strip went down nicely over a couple of coats of clear, and there was no problem with silvering.
Fujimi includes a great painting guide, a color poster of the camouflage in 1/350 scale. I used photocopies to make masking templates for the flight deck; Scotch two-sided tape worked well. I painted the camouflage with White Ensign enamels and used Humbrol hull red and Floquil engine black as well. Photos of the Zuikaku are hard to find. My only reference was Perfect Guide: The Aircraft Carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy & Army (Gakken’s, ISBN 4-05-603055-3I).
I spent about 65 hours building this kit, more than I wanted, but some of that may have been self-inflicted. Excluding the problems with instructions for the photoetched metal, this is an excellent kit I’d recommend to anyone who has built some of the newer kits with photoetched-metal details.