by Mike McCabe
1/700 ORP Garland (Niko)
One of the G class of destroyers, HMS Garland was commissioned in 1936 and later transferred to a Polish crew in 1940. She spent much of her war years escorting convoys in the Atlantic and on the Murmansk run, hard enough conditions for any seaman, but the early days were particularly hard for a crew used to the calmer waters of the Baltic. The original fit of two banks of torpedo tubes gave way to an increased depth charge load for anti-submarine work and a 4” anti-aircraft gun, the aft funnel was also cut down to improve the arcs of fire for the aa guns. My model shows Garland shortly before setting off to join convoy PQ16 on the run to Murmansk. Within a few days she was bombed with the loss of eight crew members. Later in the war Garland returned to the Mediterranean where she helped to sink U407 before returning to British home waters. Garland remained in Polish service until 1947 when she was transferred to the Netherlands navy as Marnix, surviving there until being broken up after long service in 1964.
The kit is by Niko, and a very fine one too. Casting is excellent, the oerlikons deserve special mention as one of the most amazing I have seen. Given the quality of the kit I wanted to build it with little alteration, though I wasn’t very keen on the camouflage pattern. A mention must be made here of the template provided with the kit to act as a mask for this scheme, a novel approach but one which I didn’t use in this case. This mask also includes hull numbers though they are duplicated in a comprehensive decal sheet.
Looking through references I found a very nice Western Approaches scheme for the ship in 1942, so I decided to use that. Other than substituting two of the oerlikons for White Ensign etched Vickers quad machine guns and a little alteration in radar fit, there would be little change required from the fit as it came out of the box.
The only issue I found with this kit was in the casting plug underneath the bridge section, this has to be carefully removed to ensure that the base is flat, especially with the vertical sides of the bridge. An eduard etched fret is included, as with all their etch it is in very soft metal, I used a few of the parts from this but most of the radars, cruciform supports etc came from a mix and match of White Ensign frets. Railing is GMM ultrafine as none is included, crew are also GMM. Rigging is stretched sprue and paint is Humbrol mixed to the correct shades. Not much else to say really, this was a very nice kit to build, excellent detail which required very little addition, all finished in a very attractive camouflage scheme. All in all I would highly recommend this kit, it could be used as a very sound basis for a number of British destroyers with a little effort.
By the way, ORP stands for Okret Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej, ‘Ship of the Polish Republic’, and no, I’m afraid I don’t know how to pronounce it.
