1/350 French battleship Bretagne 1939 (SSModel)

This kit is one of those recently offered to the public via a popular online auction site by a company in China (one of at least two) that uses
3D printing technology for most of its parts -- in this case, everything but the hull sections and brass gun barrels.  The 3D-printed parts are orange resin, sometimes brittle or warped but usually quite robust and easy to work with, as well as being finely crafted and resulting in far fewer total parts to assemble -- once they've been freed from the casting sprues, which are composed of many often interlacing narrow resin rods.  The hull parts of this particular model, however, are standard solid, dense cream-colored poured resin; the bilge keels are included and the upper and lower hulls are quite nicely cast, with the notable exception of the flat surfaces that must be glued together.  In this particular model, those surfaces (the bottom of the upper half and top of the lower half, corresponding to the above-and-below-waterline sections), were slightly warped and unevenly cast, such that there was significant overlap of the jupper hull, and consequent uneven matching, of the two hull sections when pressed together.  I was able to use CA glue to attach the two parts but had to use strong clamps and screws to get them to stick together permanently (the screws being drilled in upward from the keel).  Then, I evened out the overlap areas by sanding and the attachment of Evergreen 1 mm thick plastic strips where extra material was needed, tapering the lower edges to blend in with the lower hull's curvature.  The lower hull section was also a few mm too short at each end, and I solved this problem (along with the remaining gaps between the two hull sections) with a generous use of filler putty and then extensive sanding.  I was satisfied with the ultimate results (after priming and painting) but I will say that I much prefer assembling models to sculpting them.

Now to the rest of the kit.  There are no photoetch frets, so the modeler must supply his own 2-bar railings and ladders (mine were from Tom's Modelworks).  For rigging I used my usual stretched black sprue.  I also had to scratch-build the forward capstan and rear anchor, and its attachment mechanism, which are missing either as part of the upper hull or as a 3D-printed part.  There is a single page of assembly instructions, with small illustrations of how different parts should be positioned (those 3D printed parts are shown in orange, the rest in black and white).  One must scrutinize these illustrations because some parts shown are so small as to be difficult to identify.  The bridge was in just two sections, very well crafted and they fit together perfectly.  There were three superstructure decks -- the lower bridge from the conning tower to the forward funnel, a middle section for the center turret (No. 3) and rear funnel, and a rear section for the boat deck and lower mainmast.  The main deck, which on the actual warship was steel (no wood planking anywhere), had a series of raised ridges in a regular grid, much overscale, and I had to sand away as much of this as I could while minimizing any damage to or loss of the various deck fixtures molded into it.  Photos of the actual ship show these grids but they were quite narrow, flat and thin.  Those deck fixtures also helped to properly position the superstructure parts that fit between and around them -- and, unfortunately, they were slightly warped so that their underneath surfaces were deeper in the center than along their lateral edges, something I mostly overcame by CAREFULLY abrading away those thicker flat central parts on my electric belt sander. The biggest problem I faced here was that, once the forward and central superstructure parts were in place, the rear part (the boat deck) would not fit, and was about 5 mm too long.  A careful examination of relevant online photos of the* Bretagne* (and its sistership *Provence*) showed that the extra 5 mm, along the forward end of the boat deck, was occupied by resin structures that could not be seen on the actual ships, and so I had to CAREFULLY cut this material off with my jigsaw.  A few under-deck supporting struts broke off but I was able to glue them back in place.  Now the boat deck fit nicely against the center superstructure just abaft the second funnel, and the rangefinder platform at its rear fit nicely into place just forward of the raised barbette for turret No. 4 (and with just enough room for this turret, once installed, to rotate).  I installed those turrets, incidentally, with plastic dowels beneath and through a hole drilled into the tops of the barbette centers (through the resin) so that the turrets could rotate, though not so loosely that they might fall out if the model was held upside down.  The kit contains 10 brass and 11 resin barrels for the 13.4-in. main battery guns; I used the brass ones because their hollowed muzzles looked more realistic.  There were also 22 brass and 22 resin barrels for the 5.5-in. secondary guns mounted in casemates, although by the 1930s all three ships of this class had the 4 forward-most and 4 rear-most casemate guns removed, leaving just 14; I used the brass barrels because their muzzles were also hollowed out.  The eight 75 mm AA guns were each 1-piece resin with rather fragile barrels attached to the gunhouses.  There were also a pair 3D-printed quad 13.2 mm AA gun mounts, but these were so fragile that they fell apart when I tried to remove them from their casting sprues; fortunately, I had a supply of these in much better shape from Master Model (one went into each gun tub atop turrets 2 and 4).  I also made the decals for the stern nameplates and flags.

A few issues arose during assembly due to apparent inaccuracies in the design of this kit, which includes eight solo 37 mm AA guns to be installed, per the instructions, mostly on the quarterdeck, but I could not see anything like them in period photos nor any mention of them being added during the ship's final refits, so I omitted them.  I also had to add a number of bits and chocks that were missing from both the forecastle and quarterdeck, plus the bow and stern flagstaffs.  Like the fully 3-D printed Japanese heavy cruiser *Furutaka* (from Globaltoy) that I recently built, this model of the *Bretagne* seems to have been based on the same ship illustrated in the War Thunder video game.  That's largely accurate, but some discrepancies involve differences in the appearance, by July 1940 (when the *Bretagne* was sunk and the *Provence* badly damaged at Mers el-Kebir in Oran, Algeria) between these two ships (the third sistership,* Lorraine*, had had its central turret replaced with a catapult and hangar).  These involve positioning of the steam pipes on the rear funnel (abaft the funnel in the kit and on the *Provence*, forward of the funnel in the *Bretagne*, so I removed and reattached them in the correct locations), details of the foremast tripod and the mainmast searchlight platforms.  The kit has a small platform at the base of the forward tripod strut which the *Provence* had but the *Bretagne* did not (there are several online photos showing the *Bretagne* sinking that show no such platform).  The searchlight platform on the *Provence* extended aft of the mainmast (as on the kit) but that of the *Bretagne* was shorter, and did not extend aft of the mast.  I left the platform as I found it, but erred in positioning the two large searchlights on either side of the upper mainmast (a separate 3D-printed part) instead of forward of the mainmast. By the time I had discovered the error, I had already glued the mainmast in position and both it and the searchlights were too securely glued to risk breaking them apart to reposition them.  Mea culpa!

Finally, a short history of the battleship *Bretagne* itself.  Commissioned in February 1916 as the first of three sisters and the second class of true dreadnought battleships for the French navy, it saw little action in the First World War and indeed never fired its guns in anger throughout its career.  It underwent four rebuilds during the 1920s and 1930s, replacing its pole foremast with a sturdy tripod and a series of ever-larger fire control directors, as well as getting new oil-fired boilers.  When France capitulated to the Nazis in June 1940, much of its Mediterranean fleet was sent to Mers el Kebir to await their fate as the French negotiated with the Germans as to how the French navy (quite intact) should be used and based. The British, fearful that these ships could be used against the Royal Navy, sent a battleship force to Mers el Kebir in early July 1940 and their commander, Admiral James Somerville, gave the French commander an ultimatum -- scuttle the ships, surrender them for internment or face their destruction.  Due to a series of miscommunications, the French at first did not reply, then rejected the demand, and the British opened fire.  The *Bretagne*, anchored (as was the rest of the French fleet) with its stern to the open sea, had no time to get under way and was soon hit by at least four 15-in. shells, which set off the rear powder magazines; she exploded and capsized, killing over 1000 of her crew.
 

Gallery updated 6/26/2024

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