1/700 HMS Manchester 1942 (L'Arsenal)
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by Jerry Lloyd |
1/700 HMS Manchester 1942 (L'Arsenal)
Converted from a L'Arsenal kit of HMS Sheffield my model of HMS Manchester shows her as she looked in May 1942, built by Hawthorne Leslie on the Tyne commissioning in 1938 she belonged to the second group of Town class cruisers with 3/4 inch thicker deck armour (2 inch) above her magazines, a second gunnery director mounted aft, a rounded bridge front and engine power increased from the 75,000 ship horse power of the first group to 82,500 SHP but top speed stayed around 32 knots, she was designed to stay within a 9,000 ton treaty limit whilst other nations just fibbed, the towns were conceived to counter the Japanese Mogami class, on trials she was 9,394 tons which was 1,720 less than Mogami, HMS Manchester was the only town class to be painted Mountbatten pink a colour designed to be harder to spot at sunrise and sunset, this scheme was not favoured by the Admiralty Camouflage Section who preferred to use colours to disrupt shapes, the two Supermarine Walrus amphibions carried were introduced in 1935, they enjoyed a six hundred mile range with a top speed of 135 mph, in May 1942 HMS Manchester was armed with 12 x 6 inch, 8 x 4 inch, 8 x 2 pdr pom-poms, 1 x 40mm, 8 x 20mm and 6 x TT, she was lost in the Med in August 1942 on the Pedestal operation.
