1/700 S036 Fairy Kikaku Nippo Maru Freighter - Sunk At Truk
Resin Model Kit, Box Condition: Exc
This is a rare 1/700 scale waterline kit made from high-definition cast resin. Very highly detailed and finely molded. The kit has never been started. All the parts are still in the internal factory sealed bags. Includes plans which double as the instructions. The Nippo Maru was a medium sized freighter, some three hundred and fifty feet long with a fifty-foot beam. She was built by the Kawasaki Dockyard and launched in September 1936. At first she was used as a fruit transporter, shipping bananas from Taiwan to Japan. Then she was converted into a water transport ship and munitions carrier. She would frequently stop at Truk to take on water and then distribute it and any munitions around the garrisons on the smaller coral islands that did not have enough of their own supply. On one of these supply trips, she was torpedoed and sank on February 16, 1945 and now rests at Truk in 160 feet of water. The ship is now a famous dive site and rests upright with a heavy list to port, and her stern almost buried in a sloping reef. The Nippo Maru is often called the "The Million Dollar Wreck" because her five holds are packed full with ammunition and armaments of all kinds. Hemispherical mines, cannon barrels, gun mounts for shore batteries, machine guns, gas masks, bronze range finders and small arms ammunition of all kinds lie scattered all around this wreck.
This item has been sold.
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