@calvinhobbesliker:
Yeah, I get that. My confusion is that when I looked at pictures of, say, HMS Kent vs HMAS Australia, they didn’t look as different as the A&A cruiser sculpts.
I’d say that the issue breaks down into two components. On the one hand, the A&A sculpts may not be all that accurate. They’re very small scale, and by necessity they’re simplified and lacking in detail. But even allowing for that factor, some of them could have been designed a bit better – like the Yamato sculpt, whose pointy stern is a poor rendering of the actual ship’s stern, which was scalloped. On the other hand – and in fairness to the sculpts – it has to be remembered that major warships of that era are hard to pin down in terms of their precise appearance. Even ships which are nominally part of the same class sometimes feature differences. The lead ship of the Iowa class, for example, was distinguished from her sisters by the shape of her bridge structure. Furthermore, it was common for WWII ships to be modified to various degrees during their careers; the modifications could be minor tweaks, major overhauls, or even complete rebuilds. And if I remember correctly, the Kent-design ships did have their funnels modified at some point to correct a flaw in their original configuration.