Haven't posted here in a long while, but I thought people might be interested to see this build as it's not a kit you often see built - maybe it'll inspire anyone else who has this kit gathering dust in the attic to give it a try!
It's a 1/48 scale model of a 55ft Coastal Motor Boat (CMB). These were basically the predecessors of the WW2 MTB and were built by Thorneycroft. They were of all-wood construction and developed from a pre-war motor speedboat, which is certainly evident in the boat's lines and stepped planing hull! The torpedoes (one in the smaller 40-foot variant, two in the 55 and 72-footers) were launched from the stern. Two CMBs are on display in British museums (a 40-footer at Duxford and a 72-footer at Chatham Dockyard) but no WW1 55-footers survive, though
MTB-331, built in 1941, is a later modification of the 55ft design. Google "WW1 Coastal Motor Boat" for more information.
The kit (resin) was produced by TC Models, a small South Africa-based producer who have been out of business for some years AFAIK. They also produced a kit of a 40ft CMB as well as several 1/48 aircraft including a WW1 Short Seaplane. Other than a couple of 1/200 (tiny for boat this size) white metal models, the TC kits are the only commercial models of WW1 CMBs that I know of. YS Masterpieces have recently produced an excellent 1/35 resin kit of a 55-footer, but this is a post-war type used by the Greek Navy (it might well be suitable for conversion to a RN WW1 type, though)
The hull is a two piece (upper and lower) resin casting. Torpedo bodies, launching pistons, front hatch cowl, storage locker and some smaller fittings are also resin, and the Lewis guns are white metal castings. Everything else is photo-etched brass - brass wire and tube are also provided for making up the masts, prop shafts etc. The casting quality of the resin is reasonable with few air bubbles. However, the smallest parts (cowl vents and wheel) were so difficult to remove from the casting blocks that I substituted them with parts from the spares box. The PE is very good quality though without any relief etching. It's quite heavy gauge brass (about 0.5mm) which is appropriate for the large scale and the substantial nature of most of the parts (cabin, torpedo guide rails, etc.) it's used for.
The worst part of the kit by far is the instructions. You basically get a few paragraphs of text, giving (along with a brief history of the CMB) a very cursory and vague description of how to assemble the kit; numerous very grainy, poor-quality and small photocopies of photos of a finished model; and a similarly grainy photocopy of a contemporary photo in a book. There is no information, dimensions or drawings provided for assembling the masts, torpedoes, gun mounts or other subassemblies, nor any information on rigging. At least the painting instructions (basically "paint it grey"!) are adequate - as far as I know, most of these boats in RN service were painted overall grey, even the lower hull.
To summarise, despite the reasonable quality of the kit parts, it would be a serious challenge even for an experience modeller to actually build this kit. With the average WW2 or post-war warship, it would be fairly easy to find other reference sources to help with the build, but there appears to be very little out there on the CMB. I could only find a handful of photos of RN CMBs, many very low-res and/or not very clear.
However, my web searches eventually turned up something more useful - the
NMM website has several high-res photos of a large, detailed model - not sure if this is a contemporary "builder's" model or not, though the style is similar. It's a different variant of the 55' CMB from the kit, having a single torpedo and depth-charge racks, but appears to be identical otherwise. These photos were invaluable for assembling, detailing and rigging my model, but also showed up just how many details were missing from the TC kit! I ended up scratchbuilding or modifying almost all of the fittings and details, though the basic hull is unmodified (as are the torpedoes)
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