maxim wrote:
As far I as I know: yes. The hulls are different. As written earlier, the division of the hull is different. Prinz Eugen is depicted is fully loaded, Admiral Hipper as completely empty (which looks weird, because the waterline hull is very high out of the water). Therefore very likely also the length is different. I have only the Admiral Hipper, therefore I cannot check myself.
Full load vs light - its ok in full hull terms, so not an issue (but sucks for waterline guys because gonna need to saw down Hipper hull, here I just paint the bootopping on the upper hull).
As for backdating Hipper to 1939 from 1940, my very crude fast first research shows that I need to chop of the nose for the profile ( no need to lower the deck). See pics attached from Eric Leon, they are scaled as closely to each other as I could do on laptop, but shows fairly small difference (same anchor positions etc).
As for the flare I don't know. Probably there is SOME difference but is it enough for 1/700 scale to be worth the hassle of making changes to the deck and hull? Smth tells me this was just an addition of the bow like on Lutzow exDeutschland with minimum flare, sort of version 1.0, where there was not huge amount of new flare. And to continue this example, the Prinz Eugen and Blucher bows were similar to the bow on Admiral Scheer post refit (a full rebuilt with significantly more flare etc). Makes sense? ... How would you go about removing the stem tip and flare yourself, assuming the capstan and anchor positions remain?...
And then just remove the funnel cap and some radars and AA guns, voila a nicer looking (IMHO) cruiser with beautiful straight stem.