The Ship Model Forum

As some here may already know, Airfix has come out with a 7-model, 1:1200 (100 feet per inch) set of ships involved in the Bismarck battles: Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, Ark Royal, Hood, Suffolk (heavy cruiser), and 2 Tribal (as in HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh, and Zulu) class destroyers. It is unfortunate it didn't come out in time for the 70th anniversary of Bismarck's battles, but I was surprised at so little historical coverage of those in the media anyway.

Not included (and never produced at this scale by Airfix) are other ships directly involved in the Bismarck operation: battleships Rodney, King George V, (and her sistership) Prince of Wales, heavy cruisers (and sisterships ... fortunately) Norfolk and Dorsetshire, the Polish J/K/N class Piorun, and other Tribals.

Well, I have been staying up to all hours working on those. I have completed the basic designs - the KGVs' bridge and quadruple gun turrets, let alone those twin 4.7" destroyer turrets! - are NOT as simple as they may appear. On their grey hull sides and sterns - the latter tricky, because the hullsides join at the stern as well as bow - I have in white the destroyers' Gnn pennant numbers: G03 for Cossack, G65 for Piorun, etc. I envision a set of 14 ships on 4 size A4 colored sheets. Rodney (and bonus sistership Nelson), KGV and Pow, Norfolk, and Dorsetshire, and 8 destroyers. (Airfix has supplied minute white pennant numbers on the set's decal sheet for Vian's 4 Tribals.)

I have even designed a 1:1200 Walrus observation sea plane with camouflage coloring and am thinking of doing some also-simple little Swordfish biplane torpedoplanes, which the Ark Royal doesn't have. Also, I'll provide 7 extra twin 4" gun turrets, in case, someone wants to replace the funny-looking ones in the Airfix kit.

By the way, an old Renwal (full-hull, for some reason) 12-model 1:1200 set of 1950s era U.S. Navy ships went for $483 on eBay recently, and some of the old 1:1200 Eagle(wall) plastic model kits were selling for $33 for destroyers and the carrier Victorious went for $65!

In the first accompanying photo ... which had to be reduced ... you can see the Airfix models on the right and the building hulls of the 5 classes of mine on the left: Cossack, Piorun, Dorsetshire, Rodney, and KGV. The battleships are about 7 inches(17.5 cms) long and the destroyers a little over 3.5 inches (9 cms) long. The cruisers and destroyers I'm printing out at 400 pixels to the inch, and I have gone into the drawings pixel by pixel to correct distortions and inconsistencies. They should be able to be enlarged to 1:700, for example, easily. I re-testbuilt Norfolk's hull at 1:600 and test-built the destroyers at slightly under 1:300 scale.

(On mostly unpainted PoW, when it sailed forth from Scapa Flow on that May 1941 day, the only verticals with gray lighter than the horizontals were the sides of the quadruple turrets.)

I had hoped Dorsetshire's Mountbatten Pink and the destroyer numerals would show up better in the photo, but .... The Airfix Tribals seem to have very high freeboards, and the lower stern suggests room for a full-hull shafts and rudder.

As usual, assembling the hulls were an ordeal, and at this scale, the slightest mistake is glaring. I was literally sweating over KGV's ... and I don't have to tell you what one drop of sweat would have done to hours of work. Somehow, they all come together ... with the requisite sheer on the sides of the bow. These are NOT the far easier (albeit far less accurate) Micro Models. It takes a really good eye in very good light to build these and there is no tolerance for imperfect scissoring and folds' groovemaking. Happily my close vision is abnormally good for my age.

I'm hoping that, of necessity, plastic model ship builders and naval game players will try my set too and become interested in the potential of ("pre-painted") cardstock paper models. Paper is greener.

I've now about finished Rodney, Dorsetshire, and Piorun, and will add these photos soon. Of course, the sheets can be easily resized up to 1/700, and I note that Trumpeter has now come out with a LONG overdue Roma ... which is selling out everywhere. (WHY didn't Italeri do the Venetos in 1/720 ages ago?)

I've also recently completed designs of the K class German light cruiser, Garibaldi class Italian light cruiser, Sendai class Japanese light cruiser, Maasz class German Z1-20? destroyer, Shigure class IJN destroyer, H class British destroyer, etc., etc. ... which will come out in various formats. (See my webpages for photos of them, and there are free plans for the Butler class DE, British Hunt Type 1 escort destroyer, and German Raubvogel torpedoboats, and Norwegian Sleipner class coastal destroyers.)

I'll post more photos as /1200 Bismarck Battles ships progress. They are keening to get Bismarck, already.

Hmm ... How do you upload photos here? Anyway, here is the webpage for them: http://www.coatneyhistory.com/3D1200cardmodels.htm

I've made progress despite a chaotic, diaper-frantic summer, and I posted some new photos last night.

I've put most of my cardstock model ship plans complementary to the Sink the Bismarck set up on my webpage at http://www.coatneyhistory.com/FreePaper ... rships.htm

These are free for personal/individual recreational use from my CoatneyHistory website, but they are not public domain able for anyone else to republish.

I have also put my fast, simple Naval Action naval miniatures rules up there, at http://www.coatneyhistory.com/NavalAction.htm, under the same conditions.

I build *fighting* model ships.

From ORP Piorun I've done HMAS Nestor, also on that free paper model ship plans webpage.

And I've just completed design of the Hunt type 2 escort destroyer HNoMS Arendal, previously HMS Badsworth L03, as Arendal appeared coming into Norwegian port in May 1945, after the Nazi surrender. A photo of my prototype of her ... at 1:371 scale ... ... is on my photos page on CoatneyHistory ... and here.

Note the 1945 Royal Navy distance-deceiving camouflage side panel and the radar tower forward of X turret, instead of the searchlight platform.