Cruel Seas Imperial Japanese Navy

Having completed the Imperial Japanese Army and partly inspired by Mike's efforts with the rather poor Italian ships I thought I'd invest in a discounted Warlord Imperial Japanese Navy fleet starter set for Cruel Seas from Warlord via Wayland Games. The set comes with quite a few ships and seems much better value than buying everything individually.

On opening it the first ship, a Hei-type Escort Minesweeper, was a HUGE model compared to all the others I have. As with the IJA I put a bit more effort into painting these models:

A view from above showing the extensive armament the ship has, if it hits anything it will ceratinly do some damage! However being a 'large' vessel it will also be very vulnerable to torpedoes:

Next in the box were some large Sampans, ancient technology which became far more important for the Japanese as their conventional merchant marine was sunk leaving them to rely largely on these old boats and specially adapted Destroyers and Submarines to move supplies. There are two slightly different versions:

The second version:

The Japanese apparently didn't have much enthusiasm for MTB and the T-14 class MTB perhaps demonstrates this having a mere 15 hull points (one moderate hit could sink one!) and being armed only with a single 20mm gun plus a couple of machine guns and two torpedoes:

Viewed from above:

As with the other branches of the Japanese military in desperation some suicide weapons were developed by the IJN. Three Maru-ni Kamikaze boats make up a group in Cruel Seas. These are armed with a depth charge which very optimistically the pilot was meant to drop in front of an opposing ship:

The second type, Shin'yo Kamikaze boats, are armed with rockets:

Finally the box contained a single aircraft, the Aichi D3A 'Val':

The box provides a decent force to start off playing the IJN in Cruel Seas without the need for any additions really though it would be possible to add some landing craft and a Sub-Chaser for some more variety and extra aircraft. The initial resin model of the Minesweeper was badly buckled so Warlord sent me a replacement leaving me with the hull of the first one unused, after some hot water treatment I managed to straighten it out a bit and there are some spare guns from the Sampans I could fit it with perhaps. I certainly don't think I'd ever need two Minesweepers though so perhaps if I gather sufficient enthusiasm I'll try to make it into a stripped-down cargo carrying version (my almost total lack of naval knowledge means I have no idea if they did this but they certainly did with destroyers so it is possible I guess!).

Unlike when I put a bit more effort into painting the 20mm IJA and they looked a bit better than the 20mm Vietnam forces I'd just painted to play with I think these ships look substantially better than the other Cruel Seas stuff I've done and making me wonder if it is worth repainting some of the earlier models or just accepting that these ones just look nicer!

One thing that is lacking is flags, the ones Warlord supply are printed in a 'wavy' format and are extremely hard to cut out and glue being so tiny. I tried printing some out on paper and painting over them but again, being so small and with the rising sun design being very difficult to print or colour they didn't really work either so I'm still thinking about that!