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This is an in box review of Triumph Models 1/700 waterline resin kit of the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious. Now I like aircraft carriers, but my stash rule limits me to ships that participated in Spanish Civil War neutrality patrols. The Royal Navy’s only carrier in the Mediterranean for most of that conflict was HMS Glorious so I was intrigued when this kit was announced. I was aware it had some problems with the lower flying off deck and some odd hull detailing but I thought it worth a go, those errors being correctable without too much effort.
The kit consists of a large single piece hull plus a flight deck with upper hanger deck moulded to it and 18 sprues, a PE fret and decal sheet. Well, I say 18 sprues but my kit was missing sprue H. However, most of sprue H are cranes or other stuff which has PE alternatives provided; annoying but not a major problem as I was going to use the PE and for the other missing stuff, I have suitable and probably better in the spares box. The instructions cover 5 pages of A4 and are adequate although one stage is repeated twice. There are no instructions for the PE nor any painting instructions. Overall, the kit is a very mixed bag frankly. Parts of the kit are superb, others, to be polite, disappoint. Really disappoint.
It is the hull that requires the work. Mine had a casting fault which meant the stern has dropped. Should be fixable without too much effort. I was aware the lower flying off deck is incorrect. It is modelled as overhanging the superstructure which stops at the forecastle. All the pictures I have seen show the sides were built up to the bottom of the deck around the gun platforms. This also makes the side profile of the piece that makes up the middle of the flying deck wrong, but the piece needs work anyway as the supports that rest on the forecastle deck are about 1mm short. I think these errors can be sorted relatively easily with filler.
There is some exquisite detail cast in the hull, which makes the clumsy wood planking on forecastle and quarter deck look poor. But most of these areas are out of direct sight so perhaps some careful painting will mitigate this. A bigger problem is the recessed plating and exaggerated raised lines that cover the hull. I have seen a couple of pictures that perhaps shows some raised lines but it is very subtle. The effect on this kit is not subtle. I have seen one photo which might suggest some of plating was recessed ever so slightly but this is really subtle. Quite why they decided to go to town on this recessing to the extent they have is beyond me. The effect, unaltered, is way too much and rather steampunk; quite a lot of careful scalpel work and some fine filler will be required but it’s going to be tricky and slow going to ensure you keep some of the other lovely (correct) fine detail.
Most of resin parts are very good, the island being a first-class piece of casting in my view. The 4.7” HA guns are very good as well, although the barrels on 3 had broken but they provide 20 and you only need 16. The boats are fine, I have seen better aftermarket 3d printed but hey are mostly hidden so I won’t replace them. The highlight for me are the wonderful crossbeams that support the upper hangar deck. But the few photos of hangar decks on 30s British carriers I can track down don’t show such beams so I am not sure how accurate it is. And the underneath of the resin elevators are also well detailed (but will never be seen) as is the lower hangar deck (unlikely to be seen). I was thinking you could model the two elevators in the lowered position to reveal some of that lovely detail but I hadn’t worked out what to do about the upper hangar deck which is just solid resin. Thinking about the hanger decks made me realise there are further major errors in the kit which has knock on impacts that will mean making an accurate model of HMS Glorious will be a lot of work.
A relatively minor error is that both Upper Hangar Deck (UHD) and the Lower Hangar deck (LHD) are set too high up. Both hangers were 4.9m high, which scales out to 7mm. The LHD was built on the old battle cruiser deck, and the UHD was at the same level as the lower flying off deck. Indeed, the UHD ran right up to the lower flight deck and there were doors which when opened allowed you to push planes onto that flight deck. As modelled the LHD is 6.5mm high (good enough for me) whilst the UHD is 7mm from the front elevator, which is where I suspect the problem has arisen. They have measured top down from the front elevator forgetting that the flight deck on Glorious was not level; it kicks up. At the rear elevator the UFD is only 4mm high, which is way too short.
The LHD should open up directly on to the quarterdeck post 1935 refit (which this kit depicts). Unfortunately the LHD is about 3mm too high for this. But prior to that refit the quarterdeck was one deck lower and there was a box like section of superstructure between the quarterdeck and the LHD. But it went when the quarterdeck was raised in 1935. Triumph models have added something like it back in one deck level higher than pre 35 to match the incorrect height of the LHD. This extraneous superstructure can be cut or filled away, but you need to replicate the quarterdeck wood planking and the rear 4.7” (I think) are now set to far back. All in all a right pain to correct. I certainly think that means an awful lot of work to model the Ship with the LHD shutter in the open position and/or with the elevator down.
Perhaps you could model the front elevator down – I doubt people will notice the hanger decks are too high – but you still need to reduce the negative visual impact of the solid UHD with some careful perspective painting or some very tricky grinding with a rotary muti tool. But that’s a lot of work and it could easily go wrong. Which leads me to the second major problem. The front of the UHD is the wrong shape. They have modelled the superstructure angling inwards like the bottom half of a capital A. In most photos this area is in deep shade and details are difficult to interpret. I also had a look at the model of HMS Glorious in the Fleet Air Arm museum. It is modelled with the hanger doors partly open which sort of mimics the kit’s configuration but without the joining piece of superstructure. So I can understand why they have done this but they are wrong in my opinion. If you search hard enough there are photos that show the UHD ended in two opening doors square to the ship’s side. And there are photos out there with one or both doors fully open (but never partly open like the FAA model). When open they seem to reach the crane uprights which makes sense to me. That odd shaped extension to the superstructure is just plain wrong. More delicate work with a razor saw beckons on both the hull and the UHD moulded to the flight deck.
For aircraft there are 3 Hurricanes, 3 Swordfish and 3 Sea Gladiators. Quite a few were damaged, mainly broken undercarriage but there are PE replacements provided. The Hurricanes are late war with cannons and underwing rockets so not correct for 1940. All 3 Swordfish suffer from drooping lower wings and I have seen better Swordfish in this scale. The Sea Gladiators look nice though.
The PE fret looks good but is slightly eccentric. You can make the 4.7” HAs from PE but you only have enough to do 8 and not the 16 you need. On the other hand you have enough PE for 8 octuple pom-poms but you only need 3. And you get 38 aircraft propellers and enough undercarriage legs for 30 planes. Nor do you get the observation and pilot platform either swung out or against the bridge. I think Triumph Model have launched a supplementary PE set recently which includes this but the rest of that PE sheet doesn’t interest me so looks like I will be scratch building it.
On whole the kit has some excellent details let down by some basic mistakes, the odd piece of clumsy detailing and mediocre quality control. I get the impression that it was released too soon and needed more development. But I like it despite it’s faults and it has leap frogged to the top of the stash queue. It just needs lots more work than I hoped. If I can be forgiven for this, I would say a courageous effort but one that falls short of being glorious.
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