Named after a Japanese mountain, the aircraft carrier Akagi was Vice Admiral Nagumo's flagship during the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. She went on to serve during the invasion of Rabaul and the attack on Darwin, Australia, and finally met her demise at the Battle of Midway in 1942.
Hasegawa has really raised the bar in 1/350-scale ship modeling with this amazing model of the Akagi as it appeared in 1941. At a whopping 74.5cm long (almost 30 inches), 15.7cm wide (over 6 inches), and 11.7cm high (over 4 1/2 inches), the detail is incredibly dense, and with Hasegawa using the latest available data on the Akagi, it's without a doubt the most accurate model of this ship ever. The molding is Hasegawa-crisp and clean, and the finished model features movable deck-side aerials and hull-mounted guns. This is a full-hull model, and includes a nice set of stands. The aircraft of the air wing are all molded in clear plastic to enhance the realism and ease of painting of the canopies, and the folks at Hasegawa say the little 1/350 Zeroes, Kates, and Vals feature the same level of surface detail as their 1/48-scale kits! I've held them in my hands, and I agree! The kit includes three Mitsubishi A6M2b Type 21 Zero Fighters, six Nakajima B5N2 Type 97 Model 3 Carrier Attack Bombers (Kate) with your choice of bombs or torpedoes, and three Aichi D3A1 Type 99 Model 11 Carrier Dive Bombers (Val). Incredible detail everywhere you look. This initial release includes a 54cm x 84cm poster of the dynamic box art, painted by Noriyoshi Orai.
Straight out of the box, this kit will build into the best model of the Akagi that has ever been produced...but with the separately available photo-etched metal detail and wooden deck sets, this model can be taken to unheard-of levels of detail and realism. The fore and aft flight deck support latticework sections alone are jaw-dropping works of art! Compare the third picture below on this page with the fourth picture down on the Super Detail Set page, and you can see the difference! Check out all the fantastic detail sets, linked below!
