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. The survivors stated that they felt at least one explosion after the ship had gone under. Now apparently the M, 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.
A side scan sonar screen shot of the wreck site.
A pictorial “notes on the wreck” drawing which shows the known damage to the M.
MC, I can’t wait to see how this progresses. I don’t think I’ve seen any modeled wrecks other than Arizona as she sits now and Bismarck. Someone pass the popcorn!
There was a nice Edmund Fitzgerald wreck diorama I remember seeing somewhere. It may have been at a Mariner’s Museum exhibition 10+ years ago. Since that ship wrecked in separate bow and stern sections and if you can find photos of that model, I imagine it would be a reference since you are trying something similar.
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 burred upside down and broke off just fore of the flight deck. 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 artists 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.
Thank you for the interest guys. Just like my Indy project, it’s all of you watching that makes me want to do my best and keeps me motivated.
Actually, I’ve wanted to do a wreck for a while. I just needed a little push. And, at least for now, I won’t be in competition with all those museum built models.
Like the others, I’m looking forward to seeing how you handle it. It’s the sort of project I’ve always intended to do, but never quite got around to. Rock on!
Here’s the start.
After studying the side scan radar, I realize that there’s far more of the stern remaining than I originally thought. It looks like the hull, while torn off, extends along the keel to at least under the aft superstructure. Since the stern is buried in the mud, this won’t pose any problems. I will need to recreate more torpedo damage though. This out to be interesting, and fun, especially since I’ve never scratch build damage before.
The folks in the aircraft forums might be able to help you out with hole damage. They use foil and plastic thinning techniques to achieve amazing results.
Ambitious! I’ve seen wreck models of the Titanic, Arizona, Bismarck, and Yamato. The trouble with ships like Musashi was that they self destructed on sinking, makes modeling such very challenging. Good luck with it
Bear in mind , There wasn’t any main or tertiary guns around much of the Bismark either .Gun Mounts are NOT fastened down like so many folks think they are .Mostly besides drive rings and seals it’s their own weight that keeps them in place .
Turn the ship upside down and yes they will fall out ,sometimes a mile or so in a line following the debris field . Stacks and Masts usually do to because the pressure of the water pushing on the stuff in the downward spiral some take .
I do know of a ship that sank and hit the bottom stern first ! The stern half stayed upright ( pointing up that is ) and the bow and the rest collapsed around it !
