| Short history and operational service
The battleship Richelieu was, together with her sister ship Jean Bart
(that entered in service several years after the end of 2nd W.W. indeed),
the best battleship ever produced by the French military naval industry
during the war period.
Her distinctive features were derived from the Dunkerque class battleships,
of which she has the same main armament arrangement and general design;
but she was dramatically improved as to the older sisters, with her main
380 mm. guns (instead of 330 mm. of the Dunkerque class), thicker armoured
belt and new solutions for her general arrangements; in short, she was
recognized to have a very good seaworthiness and protection.
The Richelieu was commissioned in 1940 and represented the French
“alter ego” to the German battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz and to the Italian
Vittorio Veneto class, which she hypothetically would have to face (but
she never did).
One of her most distinctive feature, was the concentration of the two
380 mm. quadruple gun turrets forward the main tower (like the older British
battleships HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson, with the difference of their three
406 mm. triple gun turrets indeed), while the secondary batteries of 152
mm. were arranged in three triple turrets, near the stern.
But the most distinctive feature was, with no doubt, the funnel, that
was incorporated to the second tower and represented one of the first examples,
if not the first, of this kind of naval construction.
As concerned for her operational life, the Richelieu had not a good
start. In 1940, she was damaged by the hits of the 380 mm. guns of the
British battleships HMS Barham and HMS Resolution, while she was at anchor,
still incomplete, in Dakar harbour.
In 1942, when the Free France Navy drew up her ships together with
allied ships against the Axis forces, the Richelieu was sent to the United
States, where she would have been submitted to a general refit that would
have completely changed the a.a. guns and radar apparatus, up to dating
her to the new naval technologies and weapons.
At the end of the refit, in September 1943, the battleship leaved the
U.S. for Europe and joined the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow, ready to fight
the German warships on the North Atlantic and North Sea.
In 1944, she was sent to the Far East, where she joined the allied
forces that fought against the Imperial Japanese Navy, and she participated
to the war actions against Surabaya, Sabang and Andaman Islands.
She was decommissioned in 1959, after a twenty years operational service;
in 1968 she was sold and scrapped in La Spezia (Italy).
The kit and construction
The 1/700 Hi Mold kit (code HM 018) is simply the best you can ever
find on the market, as concerns resin kits, but its price (about 250,00
$ in 1998, when I bought it) could easily be a hard challenge to the pocket
of waterline ship modellers. Anyway, passion is passion…. so I bought it.
First of all, when I opened the box, I’ve soon realized that the hull,
the superstructures parts, the 380 mm. and 152 mm. gun turrets, the rangefinders
directors, boats and all the other resin parts, were extremely fine and
detailed, while the metal parts were not as good as the resin ones.
So I decided to scratch build lots of details (radars, mast, 100 mm.
gun barrels, cranes, jack staff and ensign staff, reels, searchlights and
many other details), using photo etching parts, plastic sheets, sprues,
copper wires and so on.
As for the photo etching parts, a specific set for this battleship
doesn’t exist yet; anyway, there’s more than a simply rumour from Navalis
(in fact there’s just a web site) about a 1/700 photo etching set for the
Richelieu.
Unfortunately, the set is not ready for the market actually; so I decided
to build photo-etching details by using photo etched parts coming from
Gold Medal Models, White Ensign Models and Tom’s Modelworks sets, modified
and adapted for the Richelieu.
So I’ve added photo etched railings, ladders, 20 mm. Oerlikon guns
with shields and the resin Quad 40 mm. Bofors from WEM.
The Hi Mold kit represents the ship at the end of the war; as I liked
to build her in the March/April 1944 configuration, I had to make some
structural changes to the main and second towers
Painting the camouflage
Maybe, painting the Richelieu camouflage is the most interesting thing
to stress out.
At the end of the U.S. refit, in September 1943, the battleship was
painted with a U.S. Navy camouflage scheme, the Measure 32, that consisted
of four different types of greys. Looking at the photos of the battleship,
the presence of four greys is not so sure; on the contrary, it’s more probably
that the greys were only three.
This supposed variation on the Measure 32 scheme, seems to be real
and logical, because of the non-American nationality of the ship and the
necessity of hastening the operations of consignment to the French Navy.
The scheme of the camouflage is different from the starboard side to
the port side; on the port side, the ship presents some squared areas of
darker greys, where colors seem to be incomplete and worn out, while on
the starboard side there are some false bows and false sterns, with the
same general color appearance.
I’ve used WEM enamels, and the colors are:
5-N Navy Blue
5-O Ocean Gary
5-L 1943 Light Gary for hull and superstructures, and
20-B Deck Blue for the deck.
First of all, I’ve sprayed the 5-L on the entire hull; then I’ve sprayed
some patches of 5-O, looking strictly at the photos and drawings contained
in Eric Le Vaillant’s book devoted to the Richelieu and in the other book
“Les cuirassés: Richelieu” by Robert Dumas. When the color has completely
dried, I’ve sprayed the entire hull with a second coat of 5-L, covering,
with paint, all the previous areas in 5-O.
Then, after having masked the areas that had to be in 5-L, as in the
real ship, I’ve sprayed other patches in 5-O again, in different position
from the previous ones in 5-O, and in 5-N.
After a one week waiting (to let the paint completely dry), I’ve finished
the hull by using wet used extra fine emery paper, with a vertical movement.
This kind of work, allows you to shade the colors, as in the real ship
and to age the camouflage; moreover, finishing the hull with emery paper,
gave me the opportunity of letting the firstly sprayed patches of 5-O (the
ones masked under the second coat of 5-L) come back to light again, in
a delicate vailed way, just as in the real ship.
What you can easily realize, while looking at the real Richelieu photos,
is that she gives the impression that the paint was applied hastily on
the hull; this is, maybe, the reason why the colors used on the ship seem
to be not covering and not homogeneous.
Then, I’ve softly drybrushed the hull and superstructures with three
shades of greys, from a darker, to a medium, to a lighter one, always with
a vertical movement of the brush. Then I’ve painted some rusty areas, where
there were water drainings.
The deck, painted in 20-B, was sprayed, like the hull, before the superstructures
were assembled, and drybrushed with three different greys, as above, to
lighten the color because of the effects of the sun, sea water and trampling
of the crew.
The model of the battleship, as I built her with this kind of camouflage,
represents the Richelieu on the very first days of April 1944, when she
leaved the allied naval base of Trincomalee (Madagascar), to join the allied
forces in the Indian Ocean for fighting the Imperial Japanese Navy ships. |
