Kamikaze Submarine

This is a Japanese Kamikazi mini submarine.

Submarines not unlike this one were designed to help repel the expected American invasion of the Japanese home islands.

I built this model out of scrap bits from the spares box.

The main hull is a piece of sprue.  The trolly is also mostly sprue.

The periscope is wire, and the fins and propeller are left over from some long forgotten model.

It got an overall painting of primer gray and the wheels are flat black.

Afterwards it got a heavy coating of rust paint.

Subs like this were kept at water's edge and when the invasion landing ships approached they would be launched.

They only needed a short range and a shallow maximum depth, they were not going far and they did not have to come back.