by Timothy Choi |
HMS Dreadnought of the British Royal Navy, sixth of her name, the unprecedented, breaker of naval balances, and sinker of submarines. Little needs to be said about this famous ship, only that it took so long for plastic kits to come out of her.
Trumpeter's kit is all right. Contrary to the boxart, the kit does not come with PE railings (they had merely copied the drawing from the 1/350 kit). The most obvious problem is the height of the barbettes, which were too low to enable Y turret to clear one of the deck fittings. I therefore added 0.5mm plasticard to all barbettes to make their heights more appropriate. Accuracy-wise for 1915, it's unclear - few images exist from that period, but it certainly seems that a number of the non-structural changes in her June 1915 refit failed to make it into the kit, such as turret-top rangefinders and one of the quarterdeck 6-pdr H.A. guns. Still, the main things - like the bridge and searchlights - are accurately reflected.
This was a speed build, with everything other than the bare hull and water completed over three weeks before I had to move cross-continent. The only aftermarket used were GMM's generic naval ships set (railings, ladders, footropes) and Master Model's brass barrels for the mains and secondaries.
Rigging is UNI Caenis, and mast is the original plastic - much relief that there was no bending!
Brush-painted with Lifecolor's Dunkelgrau - blasphemous, I know, but the shade seems appropriate. Deck was Lifcolor Teak gone over with some wash and drybrush of black, grey and brown. Linoleum surfaces were PollyScale NATO Tri Colour Brown.
She now resides at Yale University's Naval and Maritime Studies office/library under the care of Professor Paul Kennedy, author of the famous Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery and ...Great Powers.
