Review by Felix Bustelo

The book is essentially an English language translation of "Vom Originale Zum Modell: Schlatschiff Scharnhorst". This softbound volume has 64 pages and a wealth of photos, plans and technical drawings. The book opens with a brief overview of the history of shipbuilding, the process of constructing a ship, and an essay of Kriegsmarine crew training and engine room combat readiness. While this is interesting, this is not the reason to buy it.

The introductory text is followed by a section of 49 black and white photos of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau throughout both their peacetime and wartime careers. These photos offer a variety of detail views as well as a glimpse of some of the internal spaces. Extremely helpful to the modeler is the series of 17 photos of a 1/100 scale model of the Scharnhorst built by Mr. W. Fraider for the Kuestenmuseum in Wilhelmshaven. The quality of this model and the excellent close-up shots showing some excellent detail views is essentially a virtual tour of a post-1939 refit ship with the Atlantic bow and modified cowl-funnel.

The series of technical drawings are also very good and focus on differences between the two ships in the class and the ship before and after the 1939 reconstruction. The back of the book has a set of 1/300 scale plans for the Scharnhorst as built and post reconstruction. These plans have been significantly reduced to fit on an A4 sized page and you will need to blow them up to be useful. The numbered key legend on the plans are written in German but a table in the last few pages after these plans provide an English translation for these.

Two pages are dedicated to some of the camouflage schemes used on the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the war. Black and white Ship profile drawings graphically depict the camouflage patterns and the correct colors are noted but in general terms such as light gray and dark gray. Information is provided for the Autumn 1940 for Gneisenau, Scharnhorst at Norway (no date provided), Scharnhorst during the Channel Dash in February 1942 and for both ships in January 1941.

This book is an excellent reference for anyone wishing to build a model of the Scharnhorst, be it the Airfix 1/600 scale, Revell 1/570 scale and Heller 1/400 scale kit. While this book focuses on the Scharnhorst, some of the information would be relevant for the Gneisenau.