Intro...

The Austro-Hungarian Navy, like the Imperial German Navy, had a negative opinion of submarines originally. The decision was made in 1906 to purchase three proven submarine types from abroad and to subject them to tests, hoping that this would provide a more precise definition of the Navy's requirements.

This led to the purchase of two units each of Lake Germania, and Holland boats. The single hull boats U 5 and U 6 were Holland boats, a design by the American engineer John Philip Holland that was based on the US Submarine Octopus. The boats were built at the Electric Boat Company yard in New York, disassembled and the parts reassembled under a license agreement by Whitehead & Co., Fiume (now Rijeka). Because of their distinctive

Ship Specifications

The U 5 was 105 feet, 4 inches long, the beam was 13 feet, 11 inches, and the draft was 10 feet. The main engines were Craig gasoline engines, likely changed over to diesel engines, capable of running at 10 knots surfaced, and electric motors which were capable of 9 knots submerged. She was armed with 2 x 18 in torpedo tubes in the bow.

Inside the box...

The kit comes in an end opening style box, featuring a photograph of the U 5 cruising on the surface, with a portion of her crew manning the rails. Inside the box you will find two small self-sealing bags and the instruction sheet.

Bag A contains the one piece hull, a pour stub with two sails and two pour stubs with the forward and aft dive planes and screw hub each.

Bag B contains the photo etch fret, decal sheet and card with two small brass and steel rods for making the periscope and railing stantions.

The photo etch fret contains all the needed detail parts to super detail the two different types of Holland submarines, U 5 and 6 and U 7 through 12. Included on this fret are eight screw blades, two round hatches and one rectangular hatch, foot rungs, hand holds and various stabilizing fins.

Markings...

The decal comes on one small sheet, since this is a small model. On the sheet, you get one set of white hull numbers to make all eight boats, nos. 5 through 12. Also included on the sheet is the red and white Austro-Hungarian naval markings for the bow.

Personal Reflections...

Upon receiving the kit, I was surprised at the small size of the kit. But despite its size, the model is packed with detail. The finely molded detail is as good as on any resin kit I’ve seen.

While the amount of photo etch is not overly excessive, the size of the delicate pieces can be intimidating to a novice builder. Overall, this is an excellent kit of a little known subject to this modeler and I would recommend it for modelers with some experience in photo etch.