1/350 Gneisenau, 1940, (Dragon)
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by Stein Gildberg |
1/350 Gneisenau, 1940, (Dragon)
The most beautiful (to my mind) of the Kriegsmarine capital ships is
the Gneisenau: Such beautiful and harmonic lines! I have built the ship
before - many years ago: The 1:400 Heller Gneisenau as well as the 1:600
Airfix Scharnhorst from the sixties (that looks a lot like Gneisenau with
straight stem etc). Those were quite nice models for their time, but they
do not stand up to today’s standard with regards to neither accuracy nor
detail.
For a couple of years I have been waiting and praying for Dragon to release a Gneisenau – it should be simple, I thought, as Scharnhorst and Gneisenau is quite identical sister ships…
But you don’t have to look very deep to discover that the differences are not only to be found in a couple of major superstructure build-ups such as hangar/catapult and mainmast, but virtually everywhere. It seems the two different ship-yards that built the two battleships had relatively free hands in shaping ventilations systems etc etc. Or could it be that lessons learned from Scharnhorst were applied in Gneisenau – even though they were built in almost the same timeframe…
The model shows the ship as she appeared in the morning of April 9th
1940 as she and her sister acted as covering force for the ten German destroyers
heading for Narvik as part of the Operation Weserübung – occupation
of Denmark and Norway. Of this reason the turret roofs are painted yellow
as ordered for the first part of this operation. (They were repainted in
red the following day.)
As dawn broke a British fleet consisting of HMS Renown and screening
destroyers patrolling and mining in the Lofoten/Vestfjord area (entrance
to Narvik) spotted the ships, and a battle broke loose in the storming
sea. The battle ended as the Germans turned away to north-east and fled
from the scene at high speed as they had accomplished their mission: to
draw attention away from the destroyers heading for Narvik, which they
did. All three ships suffered damage due to battle-damage as well as stormy
seas.
Anyhow, I finally decided I could wait for Dragon to make me a Gneisenau, but set you to build my own by modifying and rebuilding a Dragon Scharnhorst. The scope of modifications and scratch-building can be found here.
In addition to the Dragon kit, I used a Scharnhorst precut Artwoxmodel Wooden deck set and a sheet of uncut wooden deck sheet as well.
PE is from the LionRoar Scharnhorst set plus a lot from my parts-bin.
Paint mainly White Ensign and Revell, basically as applied to my other
Kriegsmarine vessels.
Rigging is stretched sprue with a thin layer of paint.
White styrene sheets in different thickness and some profiles plus
plastic from the parts-bin used to build major superstructure units such
as the hangar/catapult unit.
Smaller fire directing and control instruments from Veteran Models.
The base is painted oak, the pedestals are brass door-knobs and the
light teakwood in the plate is genuine teak-wood from the deck of the Tirpitz.
The last picture, “Gneisenau 25 Trondheim June 1940” shows the ship in the same configuration as my model. Note the large hole in the bow: battle damage from a torpedo fired from the submarine HMS Clyde.
