A good read: "1/700 Fleet Model Data Base 1 & 2"

[Bill Clarke]

I ordered these last year and on my return home last month got a chance to review them, and the other kits and books I'd bought while away.

These two books are a comprehensive listing of all the 1/700 kits available, they are written in Japanese, though there are some text in English that will assist in identifying some of the kits. It really is a shame that they weren't printed in both Japanese and English as I believe that the information presented would be invaluable to us braille scale modellers out there.

Book one is divided into ten sections, covering the following classes:

Section 1. Battleships.
Section 2. Light Cruiser's 1917-25.
Section 3. Light Cruiser's 1940-44.
Section 4. Submarine Tenders, Depot ships, and Minelayer's.
Section 5. Gun Boats, Escort ships.
Section 6. Small Combat Vessel's, Auxiliary's.
Section 7. Converted Merchants.
Section 8. Warships of the Russo Japanese War.
Section 8. Merchant ships, Incomplete (Cancelled) ships, and Army ships.
Section 9. Accessories.

The book details all the ship kits by all the manufacturer's. The helpful part is that the time frame the kit depicts and the year of manufacture is displayed in English. Pages 6 through 17 are model related information that I'm unable to decypher due to it being in Japanese.

Book 2 follows the same pattern as above but with 9 sections covering the following classes.

Section 1. Aircraft carriers 1919-1930.
Section 2. Aircraft carriers 1934-1944.
Section 3. Auxiliary carriers.
Section 4. Heavy cruisers.
Section 5. Destroyers 1919-1922.
Section 6. Treaty Destroyers.
Section 7. Destroyers post 1936.
Section 8. Submarines.
Section 9. Photo Etch.

Each section has history of the various ship classes, though again in Japanese then the individual ships models are shown, these are built up and painted, a great reference guide.
These come highly recommended, as it will save long hours trolling the internet for the latest kit of the Fuso or Kongo, and provide you with the info on the correct PE set.

Get them here:
http://www.hlj.com/product/MDA871/Nav
http://www.hlj.com/product/MDA877/Nav

[Bill Clarke]

Some more pics

[Dan K]

Thx for posting these, Bill. I've been curious about them. Model Art used to issue a 1/700 compendium volume every couple of years but, these look much more detailed. Just pricey

Does it include resin offerings as well?

[Bill Clarke]

Hi Dan, NP

The only resin ones covered are the Pit Road kits of Nisshin and Taigei

I thought the price was reasonable.

Check out my stash, I've done some culling of kits I'll never really build.

[Dan K]

So nice and neat. The space you have allocated to stash is larger than my work area

[sirpaul]

That is a nice stash. Mine looked very similar just last year. But after switching back to 350th it has gone down big time. As for those mags, I can't see paying anything for something that i can't read. This is the modern ages and how hard would it have been to double the pages in two types of text?? More so seeing they are looking for the English market.

[paulors]

Nice and useful review Bill.

I saw these books and was trying to know more about them.

Best regards,

Paulo Roberto

[ah3000mk1]

Bill,

Do these include only domestic (Japanese) kits, or also Chinese, German, etc.? What about resin kits?

Even without all those, both volumes look well worth having.

Thanks,

-Carl

[Bill Clarke]

Hi Carl,
Mostly all Japanese kits mate. And the only resin were Nisshin and Taiegai