HMS
Prince of Wales
Z Force
1/700
scale
Built
by
Rainer
Michalek
Germany
The
model of the Prince of Wales was again available in 2004, so that one
again has the opportunity to attempt a model portraying the Battle of
Malaya . The kit consists of fine injection sprues that require a
minimum of cleanup. With the kit were 6 Torpedo bombers, 3 x type 96
“Nell” and 3x horizontal bomber type 1 “Betty” along with Decals for
the airplanes in high quality.
The
assembly instructions were clear and divided into 10 assembly sections.
The camouflage pattern shows the Prince of Wales as in December 1941.
This scheme is quite complex and required much patience in order to
apply!
The
camouflage pattern in the
instructions call for mixing Tamiya colours, I circumvented this tedium
by using the correct WEM colourcoats. No
photoetch
is supplied with the kit, so I used the GMM (Gold Medal Models) 1/700
King George V.
The
Prince of Wales is a fine kit
which would build well out of the box; however replacing many of the
finer assemblies with Photoetched parts lifts the kit final appearance
immensely. All PE was attached with CA glue.
Much
of the build time was taken up by the Camouflage scheme. I thinned the
Colourcoats with lighterfuel. And applied all with a paintbrush. In
smaller scales I feel airbrushing can give too flat a tone. Afterwards
a wash of oil thinned with lightefue was applied to give depth the
detail. Rust and watertrails from portholes were applied with coloured
pencil. I placed some Eduard figures on the decks to give a sense of
scale and life.
The
Diorama base was created from
a old shelf upon which was stuck a sheet of polystyrene. This was
painted with water-soluble oilpaints in a variety of dark sea colours.
Once completely dry, I fixed the ship to her base with silicone,
thereafter I created the remainder of the sea base using silicone
sculpted with a dental tool.
In
conclusion t he
kit of the Prince of Wales was an enjoyable project . For an outlay of
21 Euro I had much building fun, albeit the Photoetch set did double
this price!
I
used the German language version of;
British
battleships Alan Raven/John Robert of WW2 , Berne & Graefe
2002.
Along
with images on the internet.
Rainer
Michalek
