¹⁄72

German Type II A, "Einbaum"

"MSW crew mate Jan Klarbæk (MrMox) shares his latest build with us, Special Navy's 1/72 scale Type II A German Submarine, in this "On Display" Feature!"



You can see the review of the kit here and the building blog here for further information on the kit and the build up.

Building this kit, proved to be anything less than strait forward, as indicated in the review, there were a lot of issues concerning the point, that the kit actually depicted the Finnish Vesikko and not the German type II A. Not that it couldn’t be modified to look like a II A, but it proved to involve a lot more than I initially had though.

I have chosen to do a number of alterations, some has been done in an effort to heighten the detail level, like the inner hull and the new Nautilus deck, and others have been done to get a more true representation of the German type II A.

The extra work is a mix of my own ambitions and the shortcomings of the Special Navy kit and is generally based on, that the kit is a fair CV909 Vesikko but a poor Type II as it along the way it became more and more clear to Me, how much the kit is based on the Vesikko.

An out of the box build is also possible for most modelers, but there are some design errors on the way, that requires some work. First of all the misplaced axel mount for the aft dive planes which have to be repositioned, and second the missing locator tabs and holes on the hull which requires a lot of care to get a strait an true fit.

I have so far done a lot of work on the hull in an attempt to upgrade the kit to a German Type II A, I aim for the 1941 configuration of the U6, but I have undoubtly missed a lot in the process…

Here’s a list of the main alterations done to the kit:

Flood holes: sealed off the ones specific to the Vesikko and drilled out those that where opened all the way and have drilled all the missing round holes in the casing and opened up the long flood hole under the uppercasing.

Keel: Added the cut-out and the 4 bottom vents

Stern: Added the audio sensors and other stuff, added attachments for the wire cutter, these were left on after the cutter itself was removed.

Aft: repositioned the dive planes, added holes for the antenna wire and the mounts for the wire to lift it off the hull.

Deck: lifted the deck slightly and added the small steps front and aft - cut the deck straight in both ends instead of pointed. Opened the rear access hatch and scratched a new hatch - still to do minor detailing like handles and hinges on the various hatches.

Overall: added weld seams .

Inner hull: Scratched an inner hull with various details.

Painting was done with a variety of Tamiya, Lifecolor and Vallejo Air, filter and washing with oils and dry brushing with Humbrol Enamel.

The crew is a merry mix of Warriors, CMK and Preiser. I don’t like painting figures in that scale, and the result is not really that good, but i feel the crew ads a sense of scale and a "lived in" feel to the display that I wouldn’t be without.

Overall it was a fun and rewarding build, but not without challenges, but I think the extra work paid of in the end.