by Robert Apfelzweig
1/350 Richelieu, 1943 (Trumpeter)
Here are photos of the French battleship Richelieu, as she appeared after her first USA refit in late 1943. The Trumpeter kit has an excellent fit, particularly the decks, very little flash, and even provides two sets of 15-in guns for the dual quad turrets -- one set, used here, permits the individual guns to elevate, and the other has the blast bags attached and requires gluing them in place onto the turret faces. The triple 6-in. gun secondary turrets elevate individually. As designed by Trumpeter, all the primary and secondary gun mounts seem meant to be glued in place, but I wanted rotating guns, and had to scratch-build devices beneath the decks that allow the turrets to rotate without the risk of them falling out. A few words on the L'Arsenal photoetch/resin upgrade kit, which seems to be, at this time, the only one designed specifically for this kit. L'Arsenal provides extensive photoetch parts for the 40 mm guns and tub ammunition racks, and probably the most detailed 20 mm Oerlikon guns I have seen in this scale, though they seem slightly overlarge. The 40 mm Bofors guns themselves, the Oerlikon mounting pedestals and the liferafts comprise the resin components. However, the 40 mm tub ammunition racks (of which there are an excess over those needed for 2 racks per mounting) are slightly too large in diameter to fit evenly into the gun tubs without significant distortion and bending, so I had to cut out about 1.5 - 2 mm from each one, leaving a slight gap once glued into place. The assembly instructions provided by L'Arsenal are not always helpful; some diagrams are not clear as to how various parts fit together, and although the three photoetch frets are illustrated and the parts numbered, some of the labels are incorrect or confusing when referred to in the instructions. The photoetch set includes optional parts for the later post-October 1944 refit, which apparently added a mast and additional radars to the bridge tower, but on the front page of the instructions it strongly urges modelers to obtain any of 4 different books on the Richelieu, all of which (appropriately) are French publications and not readily available in the US. L'Arsenal's instructions also cryptically inform the modeler that "unfortunately, the model suffers from many errors, some small, some much more difficult to correct" --without telling you what these errors are! The brass photoetch material is thicker than many other sets from Lionroar, Gold Medal Models or Tom's Modelworks, and the ladders are unusually wide when compared with those from these manufacturers, with the individual steps in the ladders quite difficult to bend outward. I only used a few of the brass 20 mm ammunition box covers because they had little detail on the surface and the separate Trumpeter parts already came with molded locks and hinges. Among the more interesting features of the photoetch set are the four placques that are to be placed on the superstructure to remind the crew of why they served in the Free French Navy during World War II -- Valeur, Discipline, Honneur and Patrie. Those interested in obtaining online photos of the Richelieu at various stages in her quarter-century life should Google "cuirasse Richelieu" to access French sources.
