by Abram Joslin
1/350 DKM Tirpitz, 1942 (Tamiya)
This is my 1/350 Tamiya DKM Tirpitz, 1942 in Trondheim in the Faettenfjords. The ship was painted in a combination of greys, greens, and browns on the starboard side. This camouflage was on the Starboard side only, as the ship was moored closly to an island, the port side was hidden. Some believe the colors were a combination of greys only, but after research and help from Antonio Bonomi I can tell you it was indeed green. The ship wore this scheme from June until July of the same year, a very short period. German ships changed camouflage a lot!
The model was built using all of WEM's photoetch sets except for the deck sets. The WEM sets provide parts for both Bismarck and Tipritz, so careful study of the instructions is very important!! As I mis-read some parts and put Bismarck parts on my Tirpitz model. The WEM sets provided excellent detail and I highly reccommend it, but I would not reccommend them to the beginner. The ship is painted in Model Master paints. I've never weathered any of my ships before, so I kind of tested some things on this. It looks OK, but I am not too pleased with the result, but I'll live with it. The ship is missing one 20mm veirling AA gun, this is due to one of my WEM guns being over etched, but WEM has offered to send me a replacement, very kind of them. Again I would highly reccommend their PE set(s). I didn't do any rigging, but this can be added at a later point.
I received the kit for Christmas two years ago, but I only really started working on it a little while ago, and in all I would say it took 3-4 months to build. The pictures aren't all to great, but I hope to take more (and better) pictures once I have my display case. All in all this was a fun build and the WEM photoetch sets really spruce it up. Now that my "slipways" are cleared its on to another build!
