A little perspective
OK…
I used to hate this kit, I couldn’t explain the number and severity of off putting inaccuracies that really irked me. But I did a bit of reading about these early 1/450 Hasegawa kits and I’ve changed my mind about all of them. They may have been mediocre or even poor models but they were awesome toys! All of my complaints about poor detail and inaccuracies were based on them being display models but they really were designed as motorized toys, to be handled and used as such. The fact that they’re accurate enough that I thought of them as display models speaks highly of their quality as toys. I’ve seen the light – you’ll get no more bitching from me Mr. Hasegawa!
Unboxing day! Bummer…
As mentioned above, when I purchased this kit back in 2012 from Amazon, it was $42.00 delivered. The price was right but I was pretty sure I didn’t like it. The gross inaccuracies and overall lack of fine detail seemed really hard to justify. My enthusiasm for Hasagawa Missouri faded.
Just do it already
After letting the kit sit around for half a year, a fortuitous event happened. I found an old tube of auto body filler in my basement. It seemed the perfect answer to fixing the bulging external armor hull plates Hasegawa’s Missouri erroneously sported. I really wanted an in-scale foe for my Hasegawa Yamato, so with the tube of Bondo in hand, I took up the Hasegawa Missouri challenge. The hull smoothing complete, I next followed the comments of a helpful poster named Jim, who advised me on how to fix up the stern skeg and rudder mess.
Now fully into it. I spent more time correcting: the bofors, 5 inchers, the range finders on ‘A’ turret, the bridge and hollowing out the AA controller positions. I then moved on to adding more detail. To help with that, I purchased two additional items :
1 – A photo etch sheet from Tom’s Model Works. Of course nobody had a sheet for a 1/450 scale Iowa class BB, so I settled on Tom’s 1/350 scale North Carolina kit. It was a bear cutting the pieces down and I mangled a few but it worked out fairly well.
2 – A mostly intact Revell Missouri kit at a flea market for $8. Talk about a bad kit! Hats off to anyone who can do justice to the Missouri using that kit as a base! Even so there were some Revell parts better than Hasegawa’s so I raided it for parts.
Hasegawa Missouri runs out of steam
My Mighty Mo, mostly complete, then sat untouched from 4/2013 – 1/2019…
Then for no reason in particular, on 1/10/2019 I finally got around to working on Missouri again. I finished her paint job and weathering. For better or worse I followed the same paint scheme I used on the Revell USS Helena. I added more details, did the dreaded rigging and then the final PE deck rails. I even used my Ender 3 Pro to print life rafts originally made for the Allen M Sumner and sprinkled them about – DONE!.
Kit pictures:
All told, I do like the final results. Now, did the USS Missouri ever look remotely like this? I haven’t a clue but my Hasegawa Yamato finally has her in scale foe!
Hasegawa USS Missouri 1/450 scale warship ship model, WW2 US Battleship