by Robert Apfelzweig
1/350 RM Pola (Hobby Boss)
The Pola seems to be the only major World War II Italian navy warship available as a plastic kit in the 1:350 scale, and the latest iteration of this kit, from the Chinese company HobbyBoss, apparently has recently been discontinued. I was fortunate enough to find one available online (and for less than $20, plus shipping), and also purchased the MasterModels 8-in. and 3.9-in.brass gun barrels for it. There does not seem to be a dedicated brass photoetch set for this kit, so I was obliged to search through my stash of spare photoetch rails (dual rails only, as clearly seen in photos of the ship) and other spare parts in order to complete it. The Pola is, outwardly, a very quick and easy build, but it was designed many years ago as a motorized kit and detail is sorely lacking. At least a useful color illustration (broadside and top views) is provided with the assembly instructions. A number of significant structural features, such as struts for the quadrapod foremast and tripod mainmast, are completely missing, and among other oddities are grossly oversized anchors (totally useless) and propeller struts (which can be used, if you cut them down). Therefore, in order to give this model the respect it should be due, I had to research photos and other models of this ship and scratch-build or substitute a number of components. I'll start with those struts. The attractive box cover illustration shows them, as do all actual photos of the ship, so I had to drill holes through the forebridge and rear bridge at an eyeballed correct angle and then insert styrene rods. This worked out fairly well for the forward bridge, less so for the rear bridge. Adding narrow struts and some spare gussets (the triangular, often perforated, supports beneath overhanging platforms) to various platforms was easy enough, and the brass gun barrels were not too difficult to install, so that the primary and secondary gun mounts both turned and elevated. The red-and-white diagonal striping on the forecastle deck was unique to Italian warships and served as a means of identification, but the spotter plane supplied for the kit was a poorly designed biplane, and I had to replace the rear stabilizer (too short, wrong shape) and install brass photoetch struts to separate the upper and lower wings, as well as spare wing pontoons and a photoetch propeller. The decal set for this kit provided the ship's name and tail colors and upper wing decals for the spotter plane, but I had to use a red Sharpie pen to mark the diagonal red lines on the upper wing surface. Incidentally, the decals did not include the Italian flag, for which I had to download an image, then Photoshop it to a suitable size (11 mm long) and print both it and a mirror image to glue onto it. The kit included a rather bulky stern flagstaff, which I replaced with brass wire, as I did for the scratch-built bow flagstaff and the top of the mainmast (which, as provided by the kit, is too short). Folded photoetch 40 mm gun railings served as the angled "wings" on either side of the bridge's fighting top, and I added black slots and windows to the bridge and conning tower from spare decals.
Various online sources stated that the smaller twin antiaircraft mounts (totaling 8) were either 37 mm or 40 mm, so I replaced these with somewhat better shaped spare twin 40 mm mounts. The .50 cal. machine guns in various locations (some single, some twin) are also spare parts, mostly modified 20 mm mounts, as the kit's guns are rather absurdly shaped and barely identifiable as weapons. I tossed away the anchors that came with the ship, but used their shapes to scratch-build one that matched a spare anchor I happened to have. I used blackened 27-link-per-inch copper chain for the anchor chains. The Pola, like many warships from World War II, was famous primarily for the manner in which she was sunk -- at the Battle of Cape Matapan off the coast of Greece on March 29, 1941. In one of many skirmishes between the British Navy and the Regia Marina (Italian Navy), a British carrier-based torpedo bomber scored a hit on the Pola, slowing her down virtually to a stop and leading the Italian command to dispatch two similar heavy cruisers, the Zara and Fiume, along with four destroyers, to her aid. While standing by her during the night, a pursuing British force led by three battleships found them on radar (which the Italian ships did not have) and approached unseen to within 3500 meters before opening fire. Within 5 minutes, the Pola was further damaged and the other two heavy cruisers sunk, along with two of the four Italian destroyers. The British suffered no casualties at all, and were able to board the Pola and even considered towing her back to Alexandria as a prize. But with the coming of dawn there would be a significant danger of German air attacks, and so the Pola was finished off with torpedoes from British destroyers. In a remarkable act of chivalry, the British commanding admiral, Andrew Cunningham, ordered sent a radio signal that was received by the Italian High Command, informing them of the location of the battle and granting safe passage to a hospital ship to rescue survivors of the sunken cruisers and destroyers; the Italian hospital ship Gradisca came to recover them.
