Some more "bottom of the boat" stuff:
I habitually get lazy on the bottom of my model ships... someday I'll probably only do waterline models because of it. Usually I can get away with it, but with the Gato kit there is LOT to see below the waterline, so I can't just ignore it. %&#*ing submarines!!
My humble internet research on
what lies beneath suggests the bottom of a gato class sub looks something like a cheese grater with naked ladies climbing out of the holes
... but that's where all agreement on the subject ends. Anyway, I decided to just stick with K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid!) and did what the Eduard PE instructions claimed was there.
Earlier in the build I drilled and carved out the holes:
And here is the mostly finished result:
It would appear wartime boats dispensed with the grating for faster dive times, but I put them on anyway because they look good and am assuming they went back on after the war (the timeframe I'm aiming for). I was also told the square holes (which Eduard provides screens for) weren't actually holes, but were places where square plates were welded to the hull. So I did likewise, even though I had already cut them out.
Anyway, it ain't perfectly accurate, but it will have to do.
I have also noticed that I have completely forgotten to do the sonar heads... I'm still debating on whether to add them.
Back on the stern, I traded the plastic propshafts for slightly smaller (and rounder
) brass ones, reworked the surface of the rudder to make it look like it's actually a skin-on-frame piece instead of a slab of plastic and reshaped the stern dive planes.
Revell gives stern planes that are the wrong shape; the real thing looks more like an airplane wing:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0822309.jpgThe unmodified kit looks like this:
... and here's where I am now:
With the standard kit engineering, the dive planes and rudder aren't moveable but I did some quick mods to change that on my boat, mostly so I could paint them easier down the road.
If anyone is wondering, the black propshaft strut was lifted from the old gato because I accidentally drilled the hole for the brass shaft crooked on the new one. This was easier than refilling and redrilling... It's now my "parts boat" anyway.
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) but it didn't end up being as hard as I expected. I just superglued them on and held the bend down with tape while it dried.
