HMS Repulse
by Robert Apfelzweig

1/350 HMS Repulse, 1941 (Trumpeter)

Here are photos of my recently completed HMS Repulse, with the WEM photoetch set and Model Masters 15-in. and 4-in. brass gun barrels. I also used their Vickers .50 cal gun barrels for the scratch-built quad machine guns on the mainmast gun platform, which devices were absent from the Trumpeter kit. As anyone who has read reviews of this model is aware, there are a number of inaccuracies in the kit's design if you want to model her (as portrayed in the painting scheme and assembly instructions) in her late 1941 configuration, when she was sunk, along with HMS Prince of Wales, by Japanese land-based torpedo bombers on December 10, 1941 off the coast of Malaya. I am grateful to RNFanDan and Andrew F. (my apologies for not knowing their full names) for their excellent descriptions and photos of their HMS Repulse builds on the Calling All HMS Repulse & Renown Fans section of the Model Ship Forum; their assistance in modifying the Trumpeter kit in a number of ways to improve its historical accuracy (listed below) was invaluable.

1. The kit has three long ladders for the bridge structure; only one should be used (on the port side).
2. The mainmast gun platform for the Vickers quad .50 caliber machine guns had to be re-built to get the larger size needed to accommodate these gun mounts, which, as mentioned above, I had to scratch-build.
3. The enlarged housing below the starboard rear 4-in. single mount gun, added to the ship in 1939, is missing from the kit, but is included in the photoetch set; I chose to scratch-build this with Evergreen styrene sheet plastic.
4. The four small 3-pounder guns included in the kit, and which Trumpeter's instructions say are to be mounted on the deck behind the conning tower, were omitted, as these had been removed prior to this ship's demise.
5. The Trumpeter kit includes too many 20-mm Oerlikon guns and tubs; these were reduced in number to several pairs on the forebridge and either side of the aft bridge. The two atop the third turret are correct but in fact had no tubs, so that is how I displayed them.

A couple of other peculiarities of the Trumpeter kit are the foremast design, which seems to place the platform beneath the fighting top too close to the bridge and thus had to be re-positioned, and the fact that, although parts for two Walrus floatplanes are provided (and WEM's photoetch set has some, but not all, the brass struts to connect the wings), there are decals for only one floatplane. Also, the photoetch set provides two REPULSE nameplates, but no instructions as to where they are to be placed -- again, my thanks to the contributors to the Model Ship Forum for pointing our their correct location (either side of the rear bridge). One inaccuracy I can't blame on someone else is my assembly of the upper mainmast, which is backwards -- but I didn't discover that until it was already glued into place.

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