1/400 ORP Wicher & Burza (JCS scratch)

In the late 1930ies the two destroyers of the Polish Navy (Marynarka Wojenna) ORP Wicher (Gale) and ORP Burza (Storm) built in France in the 1920ies and based on the French Bourrasque class  started showing their age. The decision has been taken to modernise them and the work was scheduled for 1940-41. The modernisation aimed at unification with the modern and powerful destroyers of the Grom class built in Britain. Visual change would entail changing their silhouettes by truncating the three tall funnels into one large resembling Grom’s and Byskawica’s cruiser-like funnel. It has been decided also to rearm the ships by replacing the original French Scheider-Cerusot 130 mm guns with more modern Bofors 120 mm. The same guns were used in the aforementioned Grom class destroyers as well as in the minelayer ORP Gryf, the largest ship of the pre-war Polish Navy. There were discussions regarding the configuration of the new guns, as 5 of them (three single and one double) were ordered in Sweden. It seems most likely, taking into account the stability issues of these ships, that the double mount would be placed in Y position, whilst the single ones would be in A, B and X positions.

In the AA department two single 40 mm Vickers pom-poms located on both sides of the quarterdeck would be replaced by a double mount of the famous Bofors 40 mm L56 guns also used in the previously mentioned modern Polish ships. The mount would be located on the stand between the torpedo launchers (these would remain unchanged, 2 triple 550 mm tubes), whilst the previous places of the 40 mm pom-poms would be replaced by the double 13.2 mm Hotchkiss mounts in addition to 2 of such mounts already located in the wings of the bridge.

The modernisation never materialised for obvious reasons but the surviving ORP Burza was modernised post-war as AA defence ship with her 130 mm guns replaced with 100 mm double purpose ones, torpedo tubes removed and number of funnels reduced to two (first one left intact and two remaining ones truncated into a wide one.

For my model I used a very good JSC 02 paper kit with numerous modifications and hand-made parts, and the inspiration came from an excellent article published in the Polish ”Morza Statki i Okr?ty (Seas, Merchant Ships and Warships)” magazine, issue 7-8 (159) 2015 written by Andrzej M. Bartelski and Marcin Mikiel.

In the background you can find the model of ORP Burza after her 1941 modernisation and ORP Wicher in her original guise.

Gallery updated 4/19/2024

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