Just a short update on progress.While the kit is simple with low parts count, it is also a pain.
Issues include brittle plastic, numerous ejector pin marks, and the gun barrel is two-piece. The brittle plastic required some extra patience when snipping, and the ejector pin marks took a fair amount of time to sand into invisibility, but ... the gun barrel halves are totally unsat! This is a recently minted kit, in an age where the competitors are issuing kits with one piece plastic or turned metal guns. Using extreme care was no help because the two pieces together are out of round. Hours of careful filling and sanding and polishing could not overcome the out of round issue. I disappeared the seams, but the out of round is discernible once the tube is mounted on the gun carriage.

Oh well, it is time to break out the Tamiya paints and oils for washes and finish it up. More later.

The original photo that inspired this choice of subject still intrigues me. Kiska Island, where the gun may still sit to this day, is apparently not a tourist destination and remains restricted territory. That said, I imagine in the conflict or in the decades following, that some enterprising GIs or perhaps a fishing boat's crew liberated the gun's splinter shield, and all that remains is the unattended gun and carriage you see. Point is that the wheel spokes are white. Why? I doubt that somebody undertook the hike to paint them for posterity. The Bing Images photo has sufficiently high resolution to see that it is paint, not bleached wood. Does anybody want to speculate that this might indicate the piece was painted white by Japanese to camouflage it?

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.