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HMS Illustrious 'Battle of Taranto' 1/700



This photo is heavily influenced and partially guided by Vladimír Karen in his very nice picture of Chokai which can be found in this link.

While many people are aware of the attack at Pearl Harbor, fewer are aware of the Battle of Taranto which greatly influence what happened a year later at Pearl Harbor.

The date was 14 November 1940 HMS Illustrious launch 21 Swordfish in a night attack against Italian ship anchored in Taranto. The result was very devastating for an
attack force of this size. 1 battleship is sunk and 2 are heavily damaged, shifting power balance in the Mediterranean heavily in the Royal Navy's favor overnight.
The Japanese quickly took note of this attack and would make one of their own in a form of the attack on Pearl Harbor which was accomplished
using 6 carrier and over 300 aircraft, the size that would dwarf the HMS Illustrious’s Attack

The model

HMS Illustrious was painted in Alexandria camouflage with medium grey over home fleet grey in 20-26 Sep which means that she'd already been at sea for one and
a half month at the time of the attack which explain the somewhat heavy weathering. Sea Gladiators were not part of her air wing in any period of time,
the one onboard her at the time were from HMS Eagle which was suppose to be another carrier in the attack but have to withdraw due to mechanical defect.



The build

I initially planned to wait for flyhawk's release but has grew impatient so I settled with Aoshima's new tooling kit as a starting point with
photoetch from Toms Model Works, replacement aircraft from Flyhawk, replacement pompom gun from finemolds and brass barrel for DP gun
along with whatever I could find in my stash.
More image can be found in my facebook post

Despite not being as detailed or accurate as what flyhawk might release in the future, very few modification needs to be done to
build an accurate HMS Illustrious during this period of time, namely the submarine lookout post on the forward gun sponson.

Note

I've been using this forum as a reference for a very long time without contributing, so I guess it's about time I do xD

Great looking model, the amount of work that model required is staggering!
Awesome effort
Thank you

Very pretty planes.

Good looking build!

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Nicely done Woraprat!

That's a beautiful build....

Mike E.

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Mike E.

A really great job.