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19430208 S-44 Panama canal 80G 36128 Navsource 0815521.jpg [ 104.78 KiB | Viewed 3092 times ]
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.
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19420901 S-44 (SS-155) crew relax while moored at Brisbane before the start of her 4th patrol Navsource 0815520.jpg [ 375.34 KiB | Viewed 3062 times ]
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.
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Drawing S-44 after wartime mod Navsource 0815516.jpg [ 139.58 KiB | Viewed 3092 times ]
Contents (one half - except of PE) of the Tom´s Modelworks S-class kit:
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20210315 USS S-44 0138_m.jpg [ 250.06 KiB | Viewed 3090 times ]
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.
- I know what they are for but haven´t had the proper term in English!
In all of the right ways of course 