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HMS Urge (N17) Scratchbuild

"In his debut to ship modeling, and to MSW, António Marranita (tmarranita) shares an extremely impressive display of both modeling skill and artistry, in his complete scratchbuild of the HMS Urge (N17) Conning tower, vignette style, in this MSW Feature!"

A bit of history on the U-Class

Built mainly for training purposes rather than direct combat, the destiny of this submarine class was determined for its good performance during World War 2.

For its small size, the U Class was to be used also in numerous "behind the enemy lines" missions, where they would unload, near the coastline, a "folbot", a two-man assault canoe operated by the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (COPP), with the purpose of the sabotage of railway lines on the Italian and Sicilian territory.

N17, named HMS Urge, made its almost entire carreer on the Mediterranean sea, sinking a good deal of enemy ships, and it was where its fate was found, being hit by an escort Fiat CR.42 plane on April 29th, 1942.

Click Here for more information on HMS Urge!

Images used from Derek Walters "The History of the British 'U' Class Submarine", were my main source of information and an excellent book.
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The construction

I used overall 0.5mm styrene sheet, but small pieces of plastic tubing and wire were shaped to build the tower.

Nearly 950 rivets were glued by hand… a task which would take me almost 80% of the time of the construction (many times I thought about giving up the entire project because of this!), but I believe it gave it the desired look.

The figures are originally from Miniart and Masterbox, but were also transformed as to fit the scene. The Lewis gun was originally a Bren machine gun, which undertook some changes. The water is "Scenic water" from Deluxe Materials.

A project that took me a year, but I am humbly very proud of it, and it gave me a new insight about ship modeling, which taught me a lot about structures and construction.