by Mike McCabe
1/700 HMS Kingston (HP Models)
To me the J and K class destroyers are synonymous with the Mediterranean campaign so when I came to build one I wanted to show a scene that would convey the feel of that theatre. For me that would mean something involving aircraft, which were an ever present danger and sank many allied ships. I decided then that I wanted to show the ship under attack from aircraft, heeling over in a hard turn and trying to bring all guns to bear.
The kit I chose was the HP Javelin in 1940, although I decided to model it as Kingston as I liked the camouflage scheme she wore in 1942. There are three companies currently producing 1:700 resin models of the J,K and N classes, I had a White Ensign Kelly, one of their older kits now which I felt was a little heavy in the casting, Niko make a Nizam, which appears to have some accuracy issues, but I decided to try the HP kit, of which they make a number of these classes in various fits. Once the kit arrived I was happy with the choice as casting is very good with excellent detail and fine splinter shields. As I tend to always replace small parts with etch replacements I wasn’t concerned about the quality of those, and intended to use the White Ensign J,K, N etched brass sheet in any case.
The first job was to add on a section of lower hull to allow the ship to be shown heeling over, which I did with plastic card. At this point I noticed a problem with the kit, the scuttles were poorly done and did not follow a straight line. To cut a long story short I used various means of trying to fill in and redrill these, none of which proved satisfactory as I couldn’t find a filler hard enough to keep the edge when being drilled, or which didn’t leave an air pocket. After attempting to produce decals to reproduce the scuttles, I eventually drew these on with a pen, an outcome I am not particularly happy with but it was a lesson learnt.
Other than this issue the kit goes together well, the only items I replaced were the gun mounts and pom pom, both Niko accessories. I fell the barrels on the pom poms are a little large but otherwise they are the best I have seen so far, although I have yet to try and assemble the new Lion Roar items.
The remainder of the build followed my usual procedure and favourite items, as I said previously the white ensign etched fret was used for many small items, Gold Medal ultrafine railings are used along with a mix of their and Eduard figures repainted. Rigging is from sprue. The aircraft are White Ensign SM84 torpedo bombers, a nice change from german aircraft I felt. As with all aircraft there is the issue of supporting them on a model, I used brass wire but on the final photos I used photoshop to remove the supports only, apart from the photo which shows the ship returning fire, which is also edited using the same software.
On completion I realised I had left off the funnel bands, there always seems to be something but once it’s done I never go back unless there is damage done that needs repair, so on to the next one!
