1/350 Soviet battleship Marat 1941 (Zvezda)

The Soviet battleship Marat began life under the name Petropavlovsk; her keel was laid in 1909 in St. Petersburg, she was commissioned in 1914, saw little action during the First World War, and somewhat more action against British counter-revolutionary forces in 1919 following the Bolshevik revolution (the only surface action of any Russian Baltic dreadnoughts in their careers).  After more internecine fighting between Bolshevik and anti-communist ground forces, the ship was renamed Marat, after the French revolutionary leader Jean Paul Marat, in 1921, soon afterward becoming the flagship of the Soviet Baltic Fleet.  The Marat was modernized between 1928 and 1931, given a new forecastle (with a pseudo-clipper bow), larger fore and rear bridges and a raked back forward funnel that gave her and her similarly rebuilt sisterships a distinctive profile.  Oil-fueled boilers replaced the coalburning ones, and the forward bridge mounted a heavy pole foremast to which were attached platforms for searchlights and new fire control directors.  As World War II engulfed Europe, prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 the Marat was fitted with new 3-in. AA guns (3 each on the roofs of the first and fourth turrets, replacing older models) and two new twin 3-in. gun houses on the quarterdeck on either side of the fourth turret; six 37 mm AA guns were placed, three each, on platforms of the fore and rear bridges, and about a dozen 12.7 mm machine guns on platforms in the same locations and a pair on the second funnel.

The Marat took a small part in the so-called Winter War against Finland in 1939, but as with most Baltic Fleet vessels spent at least half of each year ice-bound in port.  When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in late June 1941, it was enemy aircraft and not warships that were the Marat’s nemesis; her antiaircraft armament was found to be woefully inadequate and so she even fired her main battery 12-in. guns (using fragmentation rounds with proximity fuses) at Nazi planes attacking her and the surrounding port facilities.  Transferring from Kronstadt to Leningrad as the Wehrmacht moved toward that city, many of her crew joined Red Army land forces fighting the enemy, and her big guns were first used in support of them on September 9, 1941.  As the Germans advanced toward Leningrad, the ship came within range of their artillery; on September 11 her three forward 37 mm AA guns were knocked out and the ship was attacked by Stuka divebombers, suffering 3 hits with 250-kg bombs.  The Marat withdrew back to Kronstadt, but was attacked again on September 23 by the Luftwaffe, and a 1000 kg armor-piercing bomb struck the forecastle just in front of the forward 12-in. gun turret (apparently dropped by one of the Luftwaffe’s best aviators, Hans-Ulrich Rudel).  The explosion detonated the forward magazine, with the result that everything forward of the second turret was destroyed, killing the captain and over 300 crewmembers.  The Marat settled onto the shallow harbor bottom, with the main deck about 3 meters above the surface.  The rest of the ship was still fairly intact, and a major salvage effort resulted in the Marat being refloated by the end of October.  With turrets 3 and 4 functional, and the second turret operational again a year later, the Marat was used as a stationary battery for the rest of the war.  She was renamed Petropavlovsk on May 31, 1945, but plans to repair and even modernize the old warship never came to fruition; in late 1950 the ship was renamed again, this time becoming the Volkov, but was finally decommissioned and scrapped in 1954 or soon thereafter.

I’ve waited several years since purchasing Zvezda’s model of the Marat before finally deciding to build it, hoping for an aftermarket detail set (as was the case with its WWI-ear sistership Sevastopol, also from Zvezda), but none has been issued beyond the excellent Artwox wood deck, now apparently discontinued.  The plastic model is very well-cast and easy to assemble, though some care is needed in gluing the main gun turrets in place so that they will rotate.  I used Model Master brass barrels for the 12-in. main guns, 4.7-in. casemate guns, 3-in. and 37 mm AA guns, and spare IJN 25 mm or German 20 mm AA gun barrels for the single machine guns.  I used Model Master and Flyhawk ladders, North Star and misc. other 2-bar railing, and a good deal of scratch-building of various small details.  I was immensely helped in this regard by the Kagero “Super Drawings in 3D” book of the Marat by Oleg Pomoshnikov and Jan Radziemski, from whose work I have summarized this ship’s history.  Rigging is stretched black sprue, and the ship was painted with MasterModel gull grey and Testor’s sprayed flat black; the white boot topping was conveniently provided by Zvezda as a series of decals on their included decal sheet.

Gallery updated 5/15/2019

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