1/350 Russian battleship Tsesarevich (Trumpeter)
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by Robert Apfelzweig |
1/350 Russian battleship Tsesarevich (Trumpeter)
One of Trumpeter's most recent ship releases is the 1917 version of the Russian predreadnought battleship Tsesarevich. Built in France and commissioned in 1903, it was one of the few Russian battleships to escape destruction during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. The Tsesarevich was badly damaged by the Japanese Navy during a flight from Port Arthur in August 1904 and forced into internment in the German-held Chinese port of Tsingtao, where she remained for the rest of the war. After the war she steamed back to the Russian Baltic Fleet and during the duration of her service her superstructure was reduced and all the hull ports for her 75 mm and smaller guns were plated over. The ship saw little action during World War I and her bored crew mutinied following the first Russian revolution of February 1917; renamed Grazhdanin [Citizen], she was subsequently taken under control by the Bolsheviks and hulked, ultimately being scrapped beginning in 1924.
Trumpeter apparently intends to release a 1904 version of the Tsesarevich, which may explain why the present kit's parts sprues include numerous small-caliber guns that cannot be used on the 1917 version. This kit is a fairly easy build and the parts fit very well; the brass photoetch frets are of good quality (if perhaps with still too many attachment points) and the only aftermarket purchases were the excellent Artwox wood deck (whose instructions point out that a pair of bulkhead parts included by Trumpeter were absent by 1917) and 12-in. and 6-in. brass barrels from SS Models of China.The ship was painted in Model Master Light Ghost Gray (by WWI, the Russian Navy had eschewed the earlier black hulls and yellow funnels) and a mixture of Tamiya Sky Gray and Medium Gray for the masts, funnels and small boat hulls; the lower hull was sprayed with Liquitex Cadmium Red Medium Hue 2. The red stripes on the funnels were made from spare flat red decals, and the rigging from stretched black sprue.
