Hasegawa 1/430 Battleship HMS Vanguard
Laid down in 1941, launched in November 1944 and completed in August 1946, HMS Vanguard was the last battleship built for the Royal Navy (though
not the last battleship in the world to be completed; that was the French Jean Bart). With a displacement of about 48,000 tons and an overall length of 248 metres - making it also the largest
battleship of the Royal Navy - Vanguard was armed with eight 15-inch guns in four twin turrets; oddly for the RN's last, and most advanced, battleship, these 15" guns dated back to World War 1, and
came from a number of older ships including Courageous and Royal Sovereign. Secondary armament consisted of 16 5.25" twin turrets (the same as used on the King George VI-class battleships
and Dido-class cruisers) and the main AA armament was ten six-barreled 40mm Bofors mounts (an unusual setup only found elsewhere on a couple of post-war RN carriers). Each of these mounts had its own
close-range radar director.
Completed too late to see action in World War II, Vanguard was rather out of place in the post-war world where battleships were more or less obsolete. It was placed in reserve in 1955 and eventually
scrapped in 1960.
Hasegawa's kit is still, currently, the only plastic kit of Vanguard available, and the only kit in any media larger than 1/700 scale. It's rather a pity in this case that
the kit is both out of production + hard to find, and not very good! The kit originated from Hasegawa, but was also sold by FROG in Britain. It is usually labelled "1/450 scale" on the box, in line with Hasegawa's other largeish-scale kits (I believe the boxes of the Frog issue
are labeled "1/500"!) but the actual scale is about 1/430 (It does scale out at 1/450 with the dimensions of the real ship given in the kit instructions, but these are incorrect).
This is actually an advantage for anyone who wants to display it with other RN ships in 1/400 scale, and also happens to be very close to the scale of FROG's HMS Tiger kit.
The kit includes a single-piece hull, a three piece deck, and several sprues of parts. The hull is not bad once the mould lines have been sanded down + the sink marks filled in, and the deck has a reasonably
good representation of planking; it goes downhill from here however. The superstructure - most of which is moulded integrally with the central deck piece - is completely devoid of any surface detail, as are most of the
seperate superstructure parts; and most of the small fittings and parts are simplistic and poorly detailed, including the unique six-barreled(!) 40mm AA guns; many small details like deck fittings, cable reels and rafts are
also absent, except for raised ovals representing rafts (a bit like those on the FROG HMS Exeter) on the turret roofs.
To summarise, this kit will require a lot of work to produce a decent-looking model of HMS Vanguard. Until recently I would not have recommended it to anyone, as the sheer amount of scratchbuilding required - many of the
fittings and AA weapons are unique to this ship and not available as aftermarket parts, or in other kits - would be a daunting and tedious task, it wouldn't be much more work to build the whole thing from scratch at a more standard scale.
However, Atlantic Models have recently released a very comprehensive photo-etched brass detail set for this kit, which includes replacements for the AA guns, walkways, boat cranes, radar and other complex structures, as well as the usual railings, ladders, hatches, etc.;
as it's currently very reasonably priced (by photo-etch standards at least!) at around £17, I'd very highly recommend it to anyone intending to build this kit.
