Last year at Scale Model World at Telford I took one of Peter Hall's H-class destroyers off his hands for a project:
The kit is Atlantic Models ATK35058 HMS Hesperus, a Brazilian H with the later design of bridge.
Due to a family connection, I wish to build the I-class destroyer HMS Imperial, pennant number D09, which was built by Hawthorn Leslies in Tyneside in 1936. The I class was a continuation of the Brazilian H making Peter's kit a very good starting point, however there are some differences to be addressed. The easiest problem is that the I-class had 4 of the 4.7in QF Mk.IX single mounts. The Hesperus kit provides 3, lacking Y-turret. Peter kindly supplied my kit with a fourth mount knowing my plans for this kit.
Next up, the H-class funnels were unequal height but both had oval cross sections. On the I-class, the aft funnel was taller, approximately equal in height to the forward funnel. The forward funnel was circular in cross section. Armed with a set of plans (again, thank you Peter!) I set about extending the aft funnel and replacing the forward funnel.
This is the aft funnel from the H-class in situ:
I cut out a piece of modelling board the correct thickness to insert into the funnel, then chopped the aft funnel in two. Unfortunately the steam pipes had to go to enable shaping of the insert. The modelling board was glue in between the two resin parts:
The fit of the upper and lower parts of the hull is excellent. I will go as far as to say that Peter's resin kit fits together far better than any injection moulded ship kit from Trumpeter that I have assembled.
I have purchased some photographs of HMS Imperial for reference. Whilst well photographed before the war, I know of only a single image taken during the war.
I have ordered (for £21) a high resolution copy of this image from the Australian War Memorial:
https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/133585/I hope that in high resolution it can offer some clue as to how HMS Imperial was painted in the Mediterranean in 1941. If not, then she shall be painted in 507C in pre-war guise. There is a good reel of footage on Roland Smith's Royal Navy in Colour DVD taken from HMS Ivanhoe which appears to show some of the 3rd Flotilla in all-over Mediterranean Grey (507C) whilst others look to have Home Fleet Grey hulls with Mediterranean Grey upperworks. I cannot make out HMS Imperial's pennant anywhere on the footage, but all of the destroyers in the footage clearly show the 3 bands on the aft funnel to be in red. The neutrality stripes on B-turret are in the usual red, white and blue.
I have started work on the deck painting. Those who have been steering me on paint research have also been helping me more recently with deck coatings. What a minefield! The I-class were trialled with 3 comparable latex-based trowel-on deck coatings from 3 different manufacturers. Semtex Ltd was one supplier. The trouble is, that the three products were different colours, one described as "the colour of dry asphalt", one green and one brown. There may have been 9" high bands of contrasting colour around the base of superstructure items the troweled on stuff butted up against. So far, I cannot determine which manufacturer's product was which colour, nor even which groups of 3 I-class ships received the products from each of the 3 suppliers. Whilst I am keen on getting things right, I am also pragmatic and in the interests of actually building this model rather than pontificating until I depart this world, I had to make a decision. There is reasonable evidence to support the bridge and platforms being linoleum covered, which gives us some brown colour, so I chose a grey that looks like the roads around the North East of Scotland, on the rare occasions when they are dry. I have sprayed the main kit parts accordingly.
At this point, I realised that the little platform at the back is surplus to requirements, as Imperial carried two pentad 21in torpedo tube mounts. The H-class kit provides a single quintuple torpedo tube mount. I
could scratchbuild them, but am exploring alternatives presently.