Military Model Scene

Title:  Japanese Cruiser Maya

Author: Waldemar Goralski and Dariusz Miszczak

Publisher:  Kagero

ISBN:  978-83-65437-87-7

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Another one for the Naval fans again with Kagero's excellent series of computer generated Super Drawings in 3D.  This one covers another ship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the IJN, and this time a cruiser.  The Maya was the one ship of the Takeo-class which was converted to have a greater level of anti-aircraft armament.  It was a conversion prompted by their experience in the defeat at Guadalcanal.  This book gives a series of their marvellous 3D computer generated illustrations, in colour, show the vessel in this later anti-aircraft equipped configuration, as best as information allows.  In the end it was not aircraft that ended the career of Maya, but four torpedoes fired from the submarine USS Dace at around 6 in the morning on October 23rd 1944.  At the time she was part of a group of ships which included the IJN Battleship Musashi, which was sunk the following day by US carrier aircraft.

The 81 pages hold the background details of the ship, and then their marvellous 3D images which show every section of the ship in good clear detail.  Things like the main superstructure and gun turrets, the secondary and AA armament, the funnels and masts, the ships boats, depth charge chutes at the stern and the catapults and handling arrangements of the aircraft deck, where she carried two floatplanes.  The colours and details are ideal references for modellers interested in the ships of the IJN generally, not only the Maya itself.  Also tucked inside the pages of the book is a large, separate, fold-out sheet which has multi-view plans of the ship in 1/350 scale.  Another fine addition to this series from Kagero

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Distributed by Casemate Books, who kindly provided my review copy.

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Robin