Test Ships

Ghukek's Miniatures on Wargaming 3D makes some of his .stl files free to download, so I did, and sent them to the Mad Padre to test out to see how they printed at my desired 1:2400 scale and how they painted.

His aircraft and submarine files are all free, which is nice. The aircraft are originally scaled at 1:900 to go with his 1:1800 ships. You could easily do up forces in 1:900 scale for Bag the Hun for free really. Coastal Command Beaufighters going after German convoys in the North Sea is now quite economical.

The Mad Padre handed me these at Hot Lead and I'm just getting around to putting some paint on them. I fixed them to nails for handling, then runny black followed by some layers of medium and light grey dry brushing. Brown for the Japanese decks and dark grey for the CVE's deck.

Done. Simples.

The hybrid battleship Ise is an odd-duck. It was part of the Aleutians task force during the Battle of Midway. Afterwards, to replace carrier losses, it's two rear gun turrets were replaced by a flight deck and an air group of 24 aircraft. It could recover it's E16A "Paul" sea plane fighters, but it's D4Y "Judy" dive bombers needed to find a conventional carrier or island airstrip to land on. In this configuration it participated in the Battle of Cape Engano in October 1944.

Ise as hybrid battleship

In it's pure gun version it didn't see much action, but I may get the Padre to print me a second to fill the battleship part of my IJN collection. although it does have a couple more turrets than the more active Kongo class.

Ise before conversion

For the Americans I've got a CVE and a battleship, the USS South Dakota. The Mad Padre gave me two prints of each. I cannot tell the difference from one USN battleship to the next, so the two copies of the South Dakota will be just fine.

There is a Victory at Sea scenario featuring 2 battleships on each side, so these models may actually get used. The escort carriers could see the table in a scenario based on the quite remarkable exploits of "Taffy 3" at the Battle of Samar.

I'm pretty pleased with the detail and ease of painting. Now to go buy the .stls for the destroyers and cruisers.

Trying some cheap shell splashes