1/350 SMS Scharnhorst (Combrig)

The SMS Scharnhorst was one of two armored cruisers of its class, the other being the SMS Gneisenau (this pair would later be re-born as battlecruisers or fast battleships in the 1930's for the Deutsche Kriegsmarine).  Commissioned in 1907, the Combrig kit portrays the ship as she was when new, in peacetime white and buff colors.  Both armored cruisers were stationed in the Far East when World War I broke out, and they crossed the Pacific Ocean to refuel in Chile, where on November 1, 1914 they were intercepted by a British task force consisting of two armored cruisers, a light cruiser and an armed merchantman.  In the ensuing Battle of Coronel, the two German armored cruisers sustained only slight damage while sinking both of their British counterparts with all hands, but in the process expended nearly half their main battery ammunition.  The German group then rounded Cape Horn and headed for the Falkland Islands, where the Royal Navy intercepted them with a superior force led by the battlecruisers Invincible and Inflexible.  The latter ships had been designed to fight armored cruisers by having advantages in both speed and firepower (12-in. guns vs. the 8.2-in. guns of the German ships) and they pressed home those advantages in good form.  Both German warships were sunk in the ensuing Battle of the Falklands on December 8, 1914.

Combrig's resin kit is generally very well cast, though I noted some alignment problems with the upper and lower hull haves, mainly in the last couple of inches at the stern -- nothing that couldn't be remedied by sanding with emery boards, but still somewhat annoying.  The four torpedo tubes in the lower hull are clearly defined.  The smaller parts were also well cast, and the gun barrels straight.  As usual with Combrig, the masts and booms had to be scratchbuilt from plastic or brass rods, the dimensions for which are included in the 4 pages of assembly instructions.  Those instructions were somewhat more detailed than in my first Combrig build, the battleship HMS Lord Nelson, and a detailed rigging diagram is included.  I used stretched black plastic sprue for rigging; Tamiya Insignia White spray paint for the upper hull, a buff color for the superstructure, masts, and funnels made from Tamiya flat yellow with small amounts of beige, brown and white added (the Combrig instructions recommend the color "warm yellow"), and Tamiya deck tan for the wooden decks.  The dark linoleum of the ship's center and various platforms was a mixture of Tamiya brown and hull red.  I used various spare photoetch railings, since Combrig provides none in its photoetch frets.  The lower hull was painted in WEM flat red and Tamiya flat black.
 

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