IJN Shinyo Explosive Boat (1/300)

By late 1943 the war in the Pacific was going badly for Imperial Japan. Anticipating an attack on Japan itself, the Japanese undertook preparation for a number of desperation defences. One of them was the Shinyo ("Sea Quake") class of suicide explosive boats.

The Shinyo were small, wooden, one man boats packing a 270kg charge in the bow. This was triggered either manually, or by an impact trigger (the wooden assembly protruding from the bow is part of this trigger). They were most definitely