This page will be dedicated to the 1/700 Waterline Series

When I started modelling, i also discovered the 1/700 waterline series.

My first build ship back in the seventies was Tamiya's Heavy Cruiser Suzuya (WL-C003)

Of course, when i was 12 years old, I had no idea about the Imperial Japanese Navy and the large ammount of ships they had.

It was years later that i found out about the cooperation of Tamiya, Aoshima, Hasegawa and Fujimi and their
intention to make most of the Japanese fleet in 1/700 scale.

Unfortunately only the Tamiya ships were (partly) available in the Netherlands
so i was only able to buy the Tamiya ships.

Of course now with the internet i am able to get most models from all the firms so I will show some of them here.

First of all, i was very impressed by the box art so the first thing i want to make is a list of the initial Waterline series with the box art.

The list of the original series can be found HERE

Things i'd like to show here :

Reviews of kits

List of the ships available (almost impossible task :) )

Builds

Other firms (like Pit-Road, Tomytec, Kamizukuri,  Fivestar Models etc)

Kure Harbor in 1/700 scale (a huge, huge project !!)

etc. etc.

A little bit of history (taken from a japanese site )

When Tamiya's president went on a business trip to Europe in 1967, he was strongly impressed
by a group of 1/1250 models of marine ships displayed at a model shop in Hamburg. |
Tamiya's suggestion, "Isn't it possible to do the same thing with Japanese warships?'' led to
the start of the 1/700 scale model ship genre, created through the cooperation of four companies .

In May 1971, four companies, Aoshima Bunka Kyozai Co., Ltd., Tamiya Model, Hasegawa Seisakusho, and Fujimi Model,
jointly developed and manufactured a 1/700 scale model ship.

Since then a lot of ships have been released and although the quality isn't what we are used to today, it was a big hit.

Below : Page from the 1972 Tamiya catalog which show the first ships in the Waterline series.

The intentions of the 4 companies were shown in this folder which shows the Ships they were planning to make.

Unfortunately I don't know the date of this folder but i understand it was included in the first models that were released.

A few years later a lot of ships were produced .

below an image of the 1981 Hasegawa Catalog

and an image of the 1980 Fujimi Catalog

I remember that i loved the Battleships and was kind of frustrated that these were not available in the Netherlands.....

It was also somewhere in the 80's that another firm surfaced; Green Max / Skywave.

My local hobby shop ordered a few models because they knew i was into 1/700 and even the importer who knew i loved this scale send me a Catalog.

Very thoughtfull and it shows how customeres were treated in that time ;)