World War 2 Naval Miniatures

A couple of years ago I read an essay that pointed out that the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 would have resulted in higher losses for the American fleet if the latter had been alerted to the Japanese intentions. What the American military did not realize was that (except for the carriers) their Pacific Fleet was practically obsolete even before so many were destroyed or damaged on that Sunday morning in Hawaii. Had the battleships and cruisers sailed out to meet the Japanese Fleet that was bearing down on their anchorage at Pearl Harbor, it is likely that many more American ships would have been sent to the bottom, and this time it would have been in water thousands of feet deep with no change of salvage.
I thought this would be an intriguing subject for a wargame, so I purchased and painted a number of the Figurehead line of 1/6000 scale warships.
If you haven't done the math, these models are small -- about 1" to 1 1/2" long. Here is a photo for comparison:

USS West Virginia next to a US quarter dollar.

Here are the rest of the ships I have painted so far.

USS Arizona.

USS California.

USS Tennessee.

USS Pennsylvania.

USS Oklahoma.

USS Lexington.

USS Nevada.

Hiryu.

Soryu.

Akagi.

Skokaku.

Kaga.

Zuikaku.

A note on the decks: I used CorelDraw to draw artwork for the decks of the carriers, then printed them out on white decal paper and affixed them to the ship models after painting the models in their base coats. Here is an example of the artwork I recently generated for the Soryu (not the same as in the photo above):

Feel free to download this artwork and print it out for your own use.

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