Profile Photo
Jonas Dahlberg
5 articles

Wreck of Morotai – Halmahera

January 15, 2019 · in Ships · · 15 · 3.8K

An oldie but Goldie. I built this one back in 2009. It featured on the cover of Weathering Magazine Wreck & K.O. issue. scale build.

”After the battle, Halmahera, Indonesia”
Halmahera (also Jilolo or Gilolo) is the largest island in the Maluku Islands. It is part of the North Maluku province of Indonesia. Sparsely-populated Halmahera's fortunes have long been closely tied to those of the smaller islands of Ternate and Tidore, both off its west coast. These islands were both the sites of major kingdoms in the era before Dutch East India Company colonized the entire archipelago.
During World War II, Halmahera was the site of a Japanese military base at Kao Bay. Close to the village of Kao lies a mouldering wreck of a Japanses ship from . Very little is known about this particular vessel although she seems to be pretty badly damaged by a torpedo on her left side.

This diorama is inspired by the picture to the right from “After The Battle” magazine, IssueNumber 68, Article “Return to Morotai”.
The build: The whole base is scratch built from foam board and wood. Water is plasticard. The ship is from , Auxiliary Japanses Tanker “Toho Mmaru”. Detailed with PE sets from Eduard and scratch built parts. The whole diorama including the boat is finished in Tamiya acrylics with an Evolution Airbrush. Weathering with acrylics, oils and lots of pigments.

Reader reactions:
15  Awesome

12 additional images. Click to enlarge.


15 responses

  1. Fantastic build!

  2. Excellent modelling and very inspirational.

  3. Wonderfully accomplished, sir...well done indeed.

  4. Very nice. Tankers have a lot of detail by themselves, not to mention all of the extra work on the weathering and so on.

  5. 🙂 … Greetings … 🙂 :
    Very nice and refreshing setup !
    Very nice and well applied rust effect.

  6. Great work, Jonas! It looks very real and natural.

  7. Really awesome! simply amazing 🙂
    Congratulations!

  8. Maravilloso efecto de intemperie en el barco y realismo en la realización de la costa.

  9. Very nice indeed jonas!
    Super work.

  10. Nice to see you here Jonas!
    I saw this model in 2009 , or was it 2010, at 08-OPEN in Stockholm and as a member of the head judges group i was party to the decision of awarding it "Best of Show"
    I still think it's a great model.
    Nice to see it again.

  11. Very realistic weathering. I saw some old rusting hulks from the war back in the navy, and you have really captured this.

  12. Top!
    What a cool looking dio .

  13. Thanks guys! This build put me on the track towards rustier and rustier models. Will soon post the next one. /Jonas

Leave a Reply