The Ship Model Forum

This is a kind of unexpected-unplanned side project of my Battle of Savo Island collection, although the S-44 relation to the battle is a very clear one. S-44 managed to sink the Japanese heavy cruiser Kako enroute from the battle some 100 miles East of Kavieng, thus providing a revenge for the four Allied heavy cruisers sunk the day before. I indeed contemplated adding the S-44 sometime in the future, but my friend Martin changed my plans by donating me one half of his Tom´s Modelworks 1/700 S class submarines kit last year.

The S class submarine is really tiny in 1/700, the waterline hull measuring only some 83 milimeters.The kit contains parts for two waterline models, S-35 and S-28. Both units belonged to the first batch of the S-class while the S-44 was parts of the third batch, so she was slightly longer and differed in the shape of her conning tower and some other details.

I wasn´t able to find too many resources for the third group aside from some 28 photos, most of them showing their pre-war fit and some dated 1943 when she underwent a refit that changed the appearance of her conning tower quite dramatically. Navsource provided the only 1942 photo dated September showing the S-44 crew relax while moored at Brisbane before the start of her 4th patrol. This would be an awesome resource if it wasn´t taken from the bridge, so no details of the conning tower etc. are shown at all.

Anyway, it´s quite clear that her conning tower changed a bit from pre-war but it is not quite clear what happened before and after the Battle of Savo Island, especially to the antennae arrangement. For sure she did not have the SG radar as shown on early 1943 photos.

There are Booklets of General Plans available for several S-class units (a BIG thanks to Egilman!), but all of them first or second group of S-class. The only two sketchy drawings of the third batch I found were S-43 from the US Submarines through 1945 - An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman (showing internal arrangement) and S-44 from Navsource showing her after the wartime refit in 1943. The latter helped a lot with the hull but I had to reconstruct the appearance of the conning tower as of August 1942 using only photos and a bit of imagination.

Contents (one half - except of PE) of the Tom´s Modelworks S-class kit:

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Battle of Savo Island Collection (all 1/700)
Recently completed: USS Wilson DD-408
At works: USS Astoria CA-34 | USS Patterson DD-392 & USS Bagley DD-386
Prep stage: USS Vincennes CA-44 | HMAS Australia | Yubari | Kako

While studying the collected photos it came to my mind that the resin kit was not showing the enormous number of small holes puncturing the outer hull of the submarine as seen on many photos of the class.

So it would not be me not to start thinking about depicting somehow this feature. Apart of that I had to address the different conning tower of a third group submarine as mentioned above.

Designing all of this in 3D would be definitely much better chance and give better results but such complex shapes as the hull in 3D are definitely beyond my capabilities. So it was PE once again as the way to go for me. As I´ve been just working on the PE set for USS Astoria I decided to draw a PE overlay for the upper part of the hull and a replacement tower. So the expected quick side project turned into another lengthy design and trial-and-error effort.

This is the result of my first attempt (brass stripes on the bottom are for aux use on any model, I put them there to make good use of outstanding space on the sheet).

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Battle of Savo Island Collection (all 1/700)
Recently completed: USS Wilson DD-408
At works: USS Astoria CA-34 | USS Patterson DD-392 & USS Bagley DD-386
Prep stage: USS Vincennes CA-44 | HMAS Australia | Yubari | Kako

The holes along the sides of the sub are called limber holes and allow faster flooding of the casing which is the decking built over the pressure hull. Pretty tough guys in those S boats!

Thanks for the terminology - I know what they are for but haven´t had the proper term in English!

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Battle of Savo Island Collection (all 1/700)
Recently completed: USS Wilson DD-408
At works: USS Astoria CA-34 | USS Patterson DD-392 & USS Bagley DD-386
Prep stage: USS Vincennes CA-44 | HMAS Australia | Yubari | Kako

The international aspect of these forums is one of their best aspects!

Cheers. Tom

Too funny, Vladi. Imagine that, just one more detour.

Nice start.

I'm looking forward to your eventual take on Solomon Islander canoes scattered about the shoreline.

Tom, I totally agree! I love being in touch with modelers across the globe here. BTW I love your APA efforts, it´s really great. Hope I could build one or two of Kelly Turner´s transports, one day.


Dan, this is not much of a detour, come on, battles are not fought by cruisers only . I am not aware about any canoes participating in the Savo Island battle, but admittedly there was that interisland schooner detected by Chokai after they passed USS Blue. Any info about what class that two masted schooner was? Photos? Plans?

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Battle of Savo Island Collection (all 1/700)
Recently completed: USS Wilson DD-408
At works: USS Astoria CA-34 | USS Patterson DD-392 & USS Bagley DD-386
Prep stage: USS Vincennes CA-44 | HMAS Australia | Yubari | Kako

interesting build.
i have a friend who is building S-44 in 1/72 right now. Its amazing how builds like this are in multiples or no one at all is building the obscure items. Looking forward to following this.

That sounds really interesting! Would you please ask him (or send him here) what resources is he using for his build?

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Battle of Savo Island Collection (all 1/700)
Recently completed: USS Wilson DD-408
At works: USS Astoria CA-34 | USS Patterson DD-392 & USS Bagley DD-386
Prep stage: USS Vincennes CA-44 | HMAS Australia | Yubari | Kako

Probably something very close to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinisi

I knew you´d have the answer

Let´s carry on. As expected, designing a flat PE overlay to match a quite complex (and a bit uneven) resin hull was not an easy task, despite all the prior measurements and later adjustments to the hull that I made. The height of the resin hull was too high when compared to drawings and photos, also the symmetry of the hull was slightly off as it happens sometimes with resin, so some sanding was needed. In the end, after waiting one month for the PE to be produced, it turned out my first attempt failed to match the hull lines properly leaving too wide a gap in between.

Also my first version of the conning tower proved to come out too tall and the limber holes ( ) came out so small they´d likely disappear after airbrushing.


So another attempt was needed. I added many tiny detail parts like a (fancied) inside of the bridge, anchor, periscopes, ladders, horns and both versions of antennae struts (pre-war and early 1943). The production had to wait until I finished revisions of all the other parts on the A4 brass sheet for my other projects (like the prototype of PE for Bagley and Benham class destroyers with Kraken Hobbies ). That waiting period brinhgs us into mid-June, so almost recent.

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Battle of Savo Island Collection (all 1/700)
Recently completed: USS Wilson DD-408
At works: USS Astoria CA-34 | USS Patterson DD-392 & USS Bagley DD-386
Prep stage: USS Vincennes CA-44 | HMAS Australia | Yubari | Kako

Interesting, another super detailing/conversion project related to Savo!

When I had seen the PE parts, I thought you would make the hull using PE parts alone

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Fantastic start! Can’t wait to see the end result

Matt

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In the yards right now:
USS Utah AG-16
On Hold
1/350 USS Portland CA-33 1942
1/350 Trumpeter Texas with a twist

A fun off the wall build! Actually native canoes were very important in pilot rescue and their eventual repatriation. In a battle of attrition, such efforts add up.

I've been to the Czech Republic only once, we picked up the very first manufactured lot of X-Boxes, but have flown over it a zillion time en route from Europe to the Middle East or Shanghai or Hong Kong. I do have several of the famous BRNO Mausers, and a CZ rifle and pistol. Nicely engineered and built.

3D parts (at least home built) have the advantage in that they trim of adjust easily, or you can crank out a replacement after adjustment. There always seems to be some "bend to fit, paint to match" in adapting to an existing structure.

Cheers: Tom

Thank you, Lars, Matt and Tom!

My second attempt on the PE came out definitely more usable. The seam on the port side is just as I imagined it, starboard came out a bit worse. The remaining gap between the resin and the PE would not be a great deal to fill in with putty but that would quite certainly end up with losing the PE detail that I aimed for. So I decided this had to do for the moment, let´s see how it will turn out.

The downside was that the whole brass sheet was overetched by the producer (complaint accepted),but most parts were usable although some were quite fragile. The one missing part (the smaller periscope tower on top of the conning tower) was lost due to my own mistake in the design, but I will be able to use the one from my first attempt. Photos show only the main parts in place.

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Battle of Savo Island Collection (all 1/700)
Recently completed: USS Wilson DD-408
At works: USS Astoria CA-34 | USS Patterson DD-392 & USS Bagley DD-386
Prep stage: USS Vincennes CA-44 | HMAS Australia | Yubari | Kako

Very nice project, and a fun change from cruisers!

Great PE-design work!
Almost nothing of the original kit remains visible...

Thank you, marijn

Now to some detailing. As I mentioned already I haven´t got any direct evidence about the version/position of the antenna struts in summer 1942. As an indirect evidence, this only 1942 photo I had appeared to have the antennae running quite low compared to the original position on struts extending above the conning tower as seen on pre-war photos.

So I decided to use the later version of antennae struts as seen on early 1943 photos. This February 1943 photo (still pre the 1943 refit as evidenced by no 20mm oerlikon platform) was particularly useful to design and detail the conning tower.

So this is the current status as of now. It is still missing the small "ball" on the four-pod near the bow, I am still looking for a suitable part (0.7 mm diameter) to be used for it. Not sure what was the purpose of it, one of the BOGPs marked it as an "S.C. tube", others made suprisingly no mention of it.
Let´s see how it will all look like after airbrushing (after vacations ).

_________________
Battle of Savo Island Collection (all 1/700)
Recently completed: USS Wilson DD-408
At works: USS Astoria CA-34 | USS Patterson DD-392 & USS Bagley DD-386
Prep stage: USS Vincennes CA-44 | HMAS Australia | Yubari | Kako

I have been able to obtain tiny brass ball bearings down to 0.5mm diameter. I have some that are 0.8mm in diameter which is marginally larger than your requires 0.7mm ball.

Maurice

Beautiful work, Vladi.

That is just insane! In all of the right ways of course

Great job sir!

Matt

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In the yards right now:
USS Utah AG-16
On Hold
1/350 USS Portland CA-33 1942
1/350 Trumpeter Texas with a twist