The 'ShipCraft' series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeller through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sister-ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring colour profiles and highly-detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modelling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic gallery of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references books, monographs, large-scale plans and relevant websites. This volume is devoted to the largest cruisers in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Built in defiance of treaty restrictions, they were the fastest and most powerful heavy cruisers of their day, and were heavily engaged in every campaign from Pearl Harbor to the end of the Pacific War. AUTHOR: Steve Backer is the editor of steelnavy.com, the best warship modeling site on the web, for which he writes extensively on warship kits and accessories. He is also the author of five titles in this ShipCraft series, the most recent being Admiral Hipper Class Cruisers. SELLING POINTS: .Everything the ship modeller needs to know about building a famous warship .Numerous detailed plans and colour illustrations .Focuses on very popular modelling subjects that are represented by a wide selection of kits ILLUSTRATIONS: 130 b/w illustrations & line drawings *