Sixty-thousand ton secret

Shinano was built and launched in absolute secrecy. She set out for the first time with construction crew still aboard and without a load of aircraft. At her launch she was the largest aircraft carrier ever made, built on the basis of an eight-hundred seventy foot-long battleship hull. The pall of secrecy was drawn so tightly around her that nobody in US Naval Intelligence believed the vessel existed-even after it was sunk by the submarine USS Archer Fish. Kit features five carrier-based planes and full decals.