The Ship Model Forum

This is my first post within this forum, and while I have been lurking for a while, I must admit I'm a little apprehensive about posting a WIP thread, but here it goes.
I am going to, or at least try to, construct the IJN Musashi as it sits 3,887ft deep (1185M) on the floor of the Sibuyan Sea, after being found by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allan in Mar 2015.
Now I have scoured the internet for pictures and watched Mr Allan's 2+ hour video of the find. I have found few reference photos as this is such a new find, but what I did find is the bow and stern are fairly close to each other, and the center of the ship was blow to kingdom come and strewn all over the Sibuyan Sea floor by what is suspected as one or more magazine explosions or implosions from compression. The survivors stated that they felt at least one explosion after the ship had gone under. Now apparently the Musashi, after receiving a murderous punishment of 19 torpedoes and 17 1000 lb bombs in six air attacks during the day of October 24 1944, went down 26 ft by the bow and finally capsized to port before slipping under taking 1023 of her crew.
Now I will try to recreate the wreck as close as I can with the reference photos available. I will only build the bow and stern as it would take a diorama the size of my dining room table to reproduce the wreck site in 1/350 scale.

So, with all that said, here is what I have to work with.
My 20 yo hanger queen of the Tamiya Yamato (old tool), which is fine as I wanted to get the re-tooled version anyway.

A side scan sonar screen shot of the wreck site.


A pictorial "notes on the wreck" drawing which shows the known damage to the Musashi.


Here is another interesting bit of information I found on http://www.ussflierproject.com/tags/musashi/.

It shows the hits the ship took after 6 waves of Avengers, Hellcats and Helldivers. Each "mark" is numbered in correspondence to the attack wave and the key denotes a bomb, torpedo or a miss. Looking at the bow section of the initial "live feed" video, I didn't see any damage to the deck, although the ROV didn't fly directly over that area, I would have thought I would see something. There is however, a nasty dent just behind the bulbous bow were a near miss bomb hit was. It just tells you the power of a shockwave in the water.





The Bow apparently broke off just aft of the #1 main turret, so there will be quite a bit of damage on the port side forward to the dent. 5 or 6 torpedo strikes on the port and 3 on the starboard. after wave 6 however, there was probably nothing left of the port side mid section, although oddly enough, when survivors came up from the aft bowels of the ship for the first time to abandon ship, they had thought the torpedo hits were their own main guns firing. WOW, just to be in those massive ships while the main guns were firing must have been incredible.
The aft section will be much easier as it is buried upside down and looking at the side scan sonar, the keel appears to extend to under the aft superstructure. All that will be needed there will be to scratch the interior decks. There is some damage to some of the props, probably from the initial near miss's form the third wave, or from the impact of hitting the bottom, but that will be easy.

It is very difficult to distinguish the actual photos of the Musashi with either Tamiya's Yamato build (labeled as the Musashi), or artist's conception or pictures of other ships, again labeled as the M.
The debris, field, as far as I can tell from the side scan sonar, is a fair distance from the bow/stern resting places, but i'm confident there are some twisted pieces near the bow/stern. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any main, secondary or tertiary guns anywhere near my target area.
So, the first thing I will need to do is some drastic surgery on my Yamato, which was packed and has moved with me at least 5 times in the last 20 years. Maybe this is a fitting tribute to that old model as well. Better in a wreck dio than in landfill.

Here's the start.


Steve

Good luck! I can't wait to see it!

I'm not done with the Musashi myself, and have been researching other battleship shipwrecks (Yamato, Hood, Bismarck, among others, but those three seem to have the closest corollaries to what I see with the Musashi's wreck.) to try to piece together what happened to Musashi in those final moments.

My e-mail is at the bottom of my "about" page, if you want to find me, I'd love to collaborate. No pressure though. There will still be at least one more installment in Mushashi's series on my blog, so keep an eye on my RSS feed.

Good luck--and I can't wait to see your model as you continue!

Thank you for your offer. I'll take you up on that.

Here's an update on the Musashi,
I started building interior decks for the stern, and after studying the side scan images and the Flier Project's hit charts, it looks that maybe a torpedo strike from wave 6 may still be visible in the stern. As there are no public pictures of the port side stern at this time, I'm just going to have to wing it.
The interior deck and port side torpedo strike from the sixth wave.


Last night I heated the stern and collapsed the structure. It appears, again from the side scan image, that the stern has collapsed, probably due to the impact with the sea floor. It is difficult to recreate a detailed replica of the wreck with so little information.
The stern laying in its resting place. The "seafloor" is made from Styrofoam and acrylic gel

That's all for now. I still need to work a little on the area where the stern tore off, the rudder and screws. Then on to the bow.
Steve

Oops, sorry, double posted.

Here is an update. After completed the damage to the stern and the screws/rudder area, I painted the stern with a mix of highly diluted acrylic Raw Umber, followed up with an application of water mixed with Rust colored pastels. I will spray over that with a light coat of pale yellow and a light coat of interior green. The prop shafts will retain their silver color as reflected on the actual ship. This assembly, and the sea floor, will be covered with dirt which has be pulverized into a talcum form to simulate silt. I hope it works, I'm making it up as I go along.

I then moved on to the bow.
I marked X's here there were hits. Obviously the hits on the deck were bomb hits and the hits on the hull were torpedoes. The only exceptions to these are near bomb misses at either side of the extreme forward bow. This thing is going to be a mess. My only dilemma is on Mr Allen's video, the only damage I saw was a torpedo strike and a dent on the port side. As the ROV flew over the fore deck, I didn't see any damage at all. The only thing I can figure is the ROV had a very narrow field of view and it didn't go over any damaged areas.


Here is the internal structure for the bow. It is constructed from cardboard instead of sheet styrene. I's a whole lot easier to cut and form, not to mention much cheaper. My wife's idea. Another of my wife's ideas, is the #1 turret barbette made form a paper towel tube. I was wondering how I could bend the cardboard without making a bunch of creases. Boy, I'm glad I have her.
Sorry for the fuzzy image. I still have to install the bulkheads on the upper deck and a considerable amount of work to do to the barbette to make it look plausible, before I start to destroy everything I made.

Steve

Looking good so far I really find wreck dioramas interesting, and this one is no exception.

Matt

_________________
In the yards right now:
USS Utah AG-16
On Hold
1/350 USS Portland CA-33 1942
1/350 Trumpeter Texas with a twist

Really looking good here... and interesting solutions to construction problems.

Regarding the absence of bomb damage on the bow based on the video footage: Some of it not showing up on Mr. Allen's videos might be the result of the narrow vision of the ROV camera. However I would also like to offer a few other explanations (though more half-educated guesses rather than actual knowledge).

(1) What are these impact reports based on? Actual damage identified on the wreck, or (also or primarily) reports from pilots/aircrew/Musashi survivors? The first major assumption there is that in fact all ID's of impacts are correct (a huge 'if'), and second the bombs hitting the deck might have been duds (a real possibility!), and as a result the impact damage might be minimal if not non-existent (especially in 1/350 scale). As a parallel I would like to offer you the USS Missouri, where the impact of a kamikaze on the rear SB main deck (where it connected to the hull) only resulted in a small dent in the armor, (something completely invisible in 1/350 scale!) and actually for most visitors only noticable because of the sign mentioning it and pointing it out!

I am thinking of this, since IIRC the reports from eyewitnesses of the sinking of the Bismarck and the actual damage identified on the hull of the wreck did not match either (at all or conclusively).

(2) They have a shot from the conning tower roof, where they identified a hole as the impact from / entry point of the bomb that actually exploded on (or close to) the combat bridge killing most of the crew there. Again, the hole seemed to be fairly small, and only standing out because of its location (and hence the ability to identify it as a likely impact), rather than other damage (from the sinking process).

(3) Underlying your question/problem seems to be the assumption that the bombs themselves were powerful enough to actually seriously damage the deck (and its fittings) in the first place. Would that necessarily have been true for (all of) them, since numerous variables factor in (size/shape of bomb, bomb load, angel of impact, where the bomb was at the exact moment it exploded - had it 'bounced', penetrated the armour, burried itself into some structure, presence of surrounding structures affecting the blast and dissipation of blast energy and so on, etc.).

Just my uninformed $ 0.02

Cheers,

and good luck with your project!

Harm

Thank you Matt and Harm for following along, and Harm for you insight.
I had thought about the possibility of either the reports being wrong and/or duds. The probability of a bomb not doing an appreciable amount of damage is well founded as well. Considering all of these factors, as well as the limited view of the bow that we the public are afforded, I am going to have to fall somewhere in between. My biggest concerns, is that I'll be finished with this project and they will come out with extensive detailed pictures of the wreck. Although, it is difficult to find many pictures of the Yamato, and it was found what? 20 years ago? The forward most bomb hit will just be a dent. I figure if that area was hit by a 1000 lb bomb, the anchor area would have shown more damage than I saw. I will show more extensive surface damage near the #1 barbette as that area was the forward part of the citadel and was heavy armored.

I will show the torpedo damage, on the other hand, on the port side, since there was clearly a breach in the video. Also the following chart has been very helpful in pointing out what was noted on Mr Allan's expedition's.

Thank you again for your input. I appreciate it, and it has helped me in my decision making.

Steve

Steve,

thanks for your response...

And whatever your decision is, in many ways the result for you cannot be worse than some armour guy(s) posting in Missing-Lynx seem to experience regularly: having decided (and started) to scratch-build or heavily modify existing (and usually sub-standard) kits into a vehicle (variant) of their liking, by the time they are done one of the major manufacturers will be announcing (or putting out) a kit of that vehicle (variant)...

And yes, as far as the damage done, your guess is probably as good as any. And unless Mr. Allan's expedition has scanned/recorded the whole ship and will be putting that information out there (at some point), odds are you'll have all info available for the forseeable future. You know more about the info available for Yamato than I do, but for instance to my knowledge the info available for Hood and Bismarck is seriously limited as well... and that despite some intensive and focussed research (and multiple expeditions). And AFAIK some contentious questions will remain unanswered forever (like whether Bismarck sank because she was scuttled, or because of torpedoes). BTW, IIRC from the Bismarck wreck, despite the alleged pounding she took - including being hit by Royal Navy battleship main battery shells at close to point blank range, the damage seems to have been quite limited, as far as could be observed. Hell, the whole thing in many ways looked still like a ship, as if it was just stranded and could in fact be raised and float again (the way it was positioned at the sea floor).

Looking forward to your next update!

Cheers,

Harm

Hers an update. I damaged the bow with the torpedo strikes, and some bomb damage on the deck. I also damaged the internal bulkheads. I need to do some more work by adding some cabling, wiring and some work to the barbette.

Steve,

I might be wrong, but I think all modelers long to build a dramatic scene for a model, such as a sunken warship because, among other things, it illustrates the culmination of so many skills. Thanks for showing us your endeavor. I look forward to seeing more!

John

Very nice subject and dio! I have that same book, not bad but for more detailed pics I found this !/700 kit offered for around $800.00 that you build from keel, plates, etc up. I only saw it from an Australian source and can't think of the name, but because of the $$$$$$$$ it had the most detailed instruction manual, photos, diagrams, etc that you could view on the kit. Amazing parts PE, resin, etc that was almost part for part of the actual Yamato. Of course too much kit for me, or most anyone, I found the best info for this BB that I'd been seeking for years. If interested I can find the review and let you know. I spent 5-6 hours looking nonstop the first time I saw it.

Gary, I imagine you're talking about the Model Factory Hiro kit: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10203313

Only $348, though!

_________________
De quoi s'agit-il?

Thanks Gary and Timmy, I'll look into it and thanks for following.
Here is my work this weekend.
The bow and stern complete with the rust wash.



I added some wire strands, 30 ga wire insulation, and two sizes of solder to the internals to simulate conduit, pipes cabling etc.
The bow and stern with at algae green color.



And in their final resting places on the sea floor. I know their not exactly in the same orientation as the actual, but I placed therm where they were due to space limitations.


I still need to do a little touch up painting. I will also fill the floor under the bow and stern with some expanding foam to fill the gaps and affix them to the base, and go over that with acrylic gel. After, I will paint the sea floor and apply silt the the entire project, then add some sea life.

I,m going to place a little ROV in the scene. So I used some left over PE, some pictures of the actual ROV and a little artistic licence to make one up. I realize the umbilical is a little out of scale, but that couldn't be helped with the materials available to me. I just wanted to add a little interest to the scene.



Again, the only LED's available were red, blue or yellow. I thought yellow would look OK against the green of the wreck.

I like the LED color.
Like looking through murky water

_________________
Jeremiah Hoskins
Middle School Social Studies and ELA teacher

Current build
1/350 Bismarck

That's what I was hopping for. Besides, it's the only color I could get with that of small of size and power.

I applied some expanding foam under the bow and stern, after wrapping them in plastic wrap, to fill the gaps and simulate the mud after the impact. I then shaped and covered the foam with acrylic gel and paper.

The I removed the bow and stern to allow for painting of the sea floor.

Here is the build so far. I just have 1 pic at this time. I still need to add some sea life and take the final pictures in my studio with low ambient light to set the scene.
But just an example of what I have so far.

The ROV light is on, but it's hardly perceivable in this light.

I have to say,

it really looks good so far... Nicely blended in into the surface of the sea'bed'

Looking forwards to the end result!

Cheers,

Harm