The Japanese Navy had requested a repair ship for a long time. At the time Akashi was the only one newly built repair ship. Her keel was laid down in Sasebo dockyard in 1937, launched June 29, 1938, and completed July 31, 1939. In the same year she was posted into the Combined Fleet. Akashi resembled contemporary British submarine depot ships, but with diesel engines and sported two exhaust stacks. She was flush-decked with a much lower profile. She was 507 feet long at the waterline, with a beam of 67 feet and a displacement of around 10,000 tons. As main armament she had two 127mm (5 inches) Antiaircraft guns. The fore stack was for repair facilities only. Five large cranes were arranged fore and aft to transfer repair parts and replenishment. She had world class ability for a repair ship at the time. With a machine shop, assembly plant and other facilities for casting, forging, welding, copper working and woodworking, Akashi could repair almost anything. Furthermore, she was installed with a tool room and a blueprint room. In March 1944 she was sank by US Forces at Palau.

Repair ships of WW2 were some of the missing heroes of the war in kit form. Thanks to resin cottage industry, some of these warships are available. As an example the Vestal, the US repair ship, which was next to battleship Arizona at the Pearl Harbor attack, is available in 1/700 and 1/350 scales in resin. The Japanese version of the Vestal was the repair ship Akashi. About 12 years ago, when Japanese resin kits started to appear here in the States, Waveline produced a resin kit of her in 1/700. I don’t know the quality of the kit because it never made it to the U.S. By the time Pacific Front Hobbies started importing the resin kits from Japan, the Akashi kit was out of production. The main reason being the parent company of the Waveline, Skywave/Pitroad decided to develop an injected molded kit of the Akashi.

The Pitroad kit of Akashi in 1/700, should be regarded as one of the best warship kits available. It is wonderfully detailed, simple to assemble and straight forward. The only decision I had to make was to choose which photo-etch parts to replace all those cranes on the deck. Tom’s Modelworks and Gold Medal Models both have very detailed sets for IJN Auxiliary ship kits. I used both sets for different parts.

The improvements to the model: I cut off the molded bridge windows and 17m pinnacle’s windows and replaced with photo-etch framing. After the model was completed, I filled the empty PE frames with Micro Krystal Klear to achieve the realistic window glass look. I redrilled all the portholes and at the end filled them with Micro Krystal Klear. I cut off the 12.7mm gun barrels and replaced them with fine brass tubing. All the boat davits were replaced with brass wire and completed with photo-etch rigging. I tossed away all the plastic masts and fabricated new masts with brass rods. That provided some good practice for soldering. I also fabricated fore and aft flag posts with thin brass rods. I cut off two ship’s boat’s funnels, replaced them with fine brass tubing and left them unpainted to give them the realistic brass look. I further improved a couple of parts with brass rods. All the cranes, fittings crane rigging, hooks, railings, yardarms, radars and couple other details were replaced with photo-etch parts. The flag came from Duane Fowler’s set. Weathering was in a particular order to achieve what I wanted. Once I painted the model and waited for few days for the paint to dry, I sprayed the whole model with Future floor wax. I waited another couple of days for the future to dry and applied a black wash with turpentine to give the model an overall dirty look. With glossy water based future under it the turpentine flows really nicely on the model and won’t attack the future. Turpentine takes a long time to dry, so I had to be patient for a week. At this point it is the best time to apply the model rust streaks with pastels, because the turpentine will help you apply very small amounts on this small-scale model. I feathered the pastel rust application with a wash of Windex thinned with water to keep the weathering in control. It is very easy to overdo the weathering in this scale. As a final coat I applied a mix of Future with Tamiya flat base.

Akashi might not have the gracious lines of a battleship or a heavy cruiser, but she definitely has her own eye appeal. I like to look at my model on the shelf very much.

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