by Martin Kohring
1/72 DKM U-997 Type VIIC/41 (Revell Germany)
U-997’s keel was laid on 7th December 1942 at the German shipyard Blohm und Voss, Hamburg. Commissioned on 23rd September 1943 under the command of Oberleutnant Hans Lehmann. Until the 30th April 1944, the boat was attached to the 5th training flotilla. On 1st Mai 1944 the boat was transferred to the 9th flotilla and sailed until the end of the month as a front boat. From the 1st June 1944 to the 1st March 1944 the boat served with the 13th flotilla and from 1st March 1945 until the 8th Mai 1945 with the 14th flotilla.
The boat’s career was unremarkable, a 1603 ton merchant ship and a 105 ton warship were sunk with a 4287 ton merchant ship damaged. On 5th November 1944 U-997 was so badly damaged by an escort that it had to return to its homebase. After being repaired, the boat was attacked by an Allied hunter group with depth charges in arctic waters forcing the boat to abandon the mission because of damaged periscopes and returned to its base once again.
At war’s end the boat was handed to the British and transferred to Lisahally, Northern Ireland, where it was sunk during /Operation Deadlight/ by naval planes at position 55.50N and 10.05W on 13th December 1945.
At the outbreak of WWII Germany, faced once again with a materially superior enemy at sea, compensated with extensive submarine warfare.
Long before the war, the type VII sub was considered to be the most efficient when used against convoys. Nevertheless, its design corresponds more to a submersible surface ship, capable of diving to prevent detection by the enemy. As a result, it is safe to say, these boats were operating 90% surfaced. Due to the lack of German air-reconnaissance, their captains were forced to seek the enemy visually. Because of Allied air-reconnaissance, more and more boats were lost from 1943 onwards. Thanks to the introduction of the snorkel-equipped type VII C/41 boats, it was now possible to travel submerged to the patrol areas. Greater anti-aircraft capability was essential due to the increasing number of air-raids flown against subs. This was achieved by re-designing the conning tower to allow greater number of anti-aircraft guns to be mounted.
This is the third 1/72 Revell submarine I have built, it was constructed from a pre-production kit, thus a few parts were not perfectly moulded and some were broken during transport. To make things worse, only provisional instructions were supplied in the form of a 100 page part list with hand-drawn position markings. At this stage, sadly, there was no decal sheet available. One could assume, that the kit is based on the already existing type VII-C sub, however 80% of the kit’s parts were newly developed with only a few VII-C parts being used. Similar to the “old” VII-C, the part’s fit is good done and assembly easy. Only fitting the deck into the hull was a bit tricky and a misalignment of the hull halves at the boat’s keel needed to be corrected by sanding without the use of putty.
One of the boat’s highlights is the enlarged wintergarten with two 20mm twin mount anti-aircraft guns on the upper platform and one 37mm single mount with a splinter shield on the lower platform. Another feature is that the kit’s developers allowed for both a moveable 37mm barrel and a hinged snorkel, the valve of which is functional. Assembling this feature was a bit tricky due to lack of instructions about the correct locations of these parts. Similar to the old VII-C kit, the one-piece propellers are poorly moulded show sink-holes at the transition of blade to the hub. These were repaired by cutting off the blades, filling and sanding the boss and re-fitting the blades.
The eyelets on the aft cable supports were made using the shaft of a Q-tip.
Prior to painting the boat, research into the camouflage pattern needed to be done. Special thanks goes to Ulrich Leverenz. Because of this boat’s exciting paint scheme, I opted for U-997. Onto a white base coat, narrow meandering patterns were painted, which consumed the better part of a whole day for me to complete. The entire basic paintwork (white/dark grey) including the dark grey underwater antifouling was airbrushed. The hull was weathered with both lightened and darkened versions of the base colours. Thereafter dry-brushing distinguished raised details and enhanced the 3D-effect.
For the decks I used a different method. They were sprayed dark grey, almost black, and then drybrushed with medium grey, thus achieving the dark shading of the gaps in deck planking resulting in a pleasing overall effect. My usual method of blackening these with ink pens did not work this time.
The anchor was painted using the Hofmann method. After drying, a thicker coat of Revell #83 was treated with a toothbrush so that crumbling structures occur. After that, a good drybrushing with different shades of red and iron followed.
All parts of the railing and the wintergarten were positioned after completion of the paint job to avoid damage to those fragile parts. The final weathering was initiated with a wash of heavily thinned Rotring ink and it really can lead one to think: “Now you’ve ruined your model!” But after this “brew” has dried out, a fine irregular blotchy finish became visible. I used turpentine-thinned oil paints to simulate wear-and-tear of water pouring out of the flooding holes and down the hull. The rust streaks were more pronounced around the anchor. Light rusting was applied using paint pigments, which have the advantage that they can be removed with ease when “rusting” is overdone.
I did not use the kits supplied paper flag as to my eyes they appear too stiff. I always use the same method for making flags. A decal in this case robbed from an S-100 Schnellboot is applied onto aluminium foil. Once dry, the flag is cut to shape und rumpled a bit to simulate realistic flying in the wind. This method is good for achieving stability because the decal cannot crumble once dried. The halyard for the flag was made from stretched sprue. The boat’s emblem was completely hand-painted and covered with a mixture of turpentine and oil paint. Care should be taken, that the underlying coat of paint is fully dried, as otherwise the turpentine will etch it. Thereafter the rigging was done using 0.05mm copper wire.
All effort put into this model has really paid off, eliciting positive comments from viewers. Photo-etched parts are almost superfluous as the kit produces an attractive model when built out of the box.
