Better late than never - finally started my entry to the Dreadnoughts Campaing: the Tamiya 1/700 Gneisenau.
I'm going build the model as Gneisenau appeared in June 1940, after being torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Clyde. While waiting to sail back to Germany for repairs, the ships hull was painted in a one off dazzle scheme, which I'm going to try and replicate. There's a murky picture of the camo over on the
Scharnhorst Class site, in the Gneisenau gallery, under Operation Juno.
I'll be using the White Ensign PE set designed for the Scharnhorst class. If I get really energetic and have the time, I may replace the 37mm AA guns with the WEM PE versions. That last part is a BIG maybe! I'm also going to use the Clipper brass gun barrels designed for the German 11" naval rifle.
To date, all I've done is paint the main deck and assemble and test fit some subassemblies. Here's what it looks like so far:
The Gneisenau I want to build had some changes to her that differed from the out of the box Tamiya kit - the admiral's bridge was enclosed by this time, the catapult was removed from the aft turret and the superstructure surrounding the midships catapult is different. Apparently the Germans changed this area as often as some people change their clothes. However, I think I'm going to leave this structure as is - if I remove the part of the structure that needs to go, I'll have to scrape off the plastic underneath and rescribe the deck. Waaaay too much work to do, especially in 700th scale. Much thanks to Antonio Bonomi over at the K-Bismark site, who kindly provided me with drawings on other research he had.
To get the parts I needed for the version I wanted to do, I bought a "spare" 1/700 Tamiya Scharnhorst at a show (for $10!) and pirated the parts I needed ( then turned the remainder over to my 5 year old to play with when he visits me in my workshop).
Anyway - I hope to get some work done this weekend, family permitting.
and worrying that I'll run out of time. And having nightmares about packing her up for the move to Germany.
(Looks great, Rui!...)
