1/350 HMS Rodney 1942 (ISW)

I have always considered the HMS Rodney and her sistership, HMS Nelson, to be design oddities, and curiously "unbalanced" aesthetically.  They were, nonetheless, the most powerful battleships ever built by Great Britain, albeit slow (23 knots top speed) as a compromise in displacement to conform to the Washington Naval Treaty.  To my eyes, the innovation of having the entire main battery placed forward of the bridge was improved upon by the French Dunkerque and Richelieu classes, but at least the Rodney and Nelson introduced the tower bridge concept, which provided a more stable fire control system (at least in theory) than did tripods or cage masts.  This design innovation was continued by Great Britain in the King George V class and Vanguard, and in the rebuilds of the Renown and members of the Queen Elizabeth class battleships.

This was kit was, for me, one of the most difficult models of recent memory -- ISW’s kit in her 1942 fit and camo scheme.  I purchased this model from a private party as one of a group of 3 resin kits, and selected this as the first to build because of its difficulty.  This kit (which can be used to build either the Rodney or the Nelson, as they differed in certain bridge aspects) is one of ISW’s older ones, and apparently no longer in production, so the precision with which the parts are cast is often quite low, with much cleanup and substitution required for small parts.  Quite a few of the kit’s parts were perforated or broken, but ISW has excellent customer service and the parts I requested (and many additional ones that I did not request) were promptly mailed to me without charge once I sent an email to them listing what I needed.

The hull is in one piece and, with two exceptions, was quite cleanly cast and required only minimal filling and sanding of the keel.  There were no bilge keels at all, so I scratch-built ones from Evergreen plastic strips.  The superstructure deck is in a single large piece that should fit snugly between various block-like fixtures embedded in the main deck – but the fixtures are too close when opposite one another on the port and starboard sides, so that the superstructure block would not fit between them. I had to use an X-Acto chisel to knock them all off and then replace them (mostly with spare plastic parts) once the superstructure block was glued into place.  The kit’s instructions are a major drawback – the actual parts, including photoetch ones, are not labeled or numbered, and one must match the individual part to the crudely hand-drawn line illustrations (shown only in single view shapes) in the assembly sheets.  Nearly all small parts come in great numbers, since most are unsatisfactory due to being misshapen or perforated, and where possible (e.g., the numerous main deck vents) I used spare plastic ones instead.  There is no painting scheme, so I had to rely on internet photos and the few color diagrams I could find, but mostly I am indebted to a Polish modeler, identified (as far as I can tell) only as “Zzb”, who posted an extensive scratch-building description (in Polish) with excellent step-by-step illustrations on a modelbuilding website (http://www.forum.modelarstwo.org.pl/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4906) back in 2004, although this may reflect the ship’s appearance at some time after 1942 as there are some significant modifications to the bridge.  I selected WEM RN 03 light and RN02 medium gray piants, a mixture of WEM Blaugrau (KM08) and dark gray for the blue areas, and a mixture of Tamiya olive green and dark gray for what in some illustrations is very dark blue or green.  The lower hull was spray-painted from a can of Liquitex burnt sienna, which seems to closely approximate antifouling red.  The boot topping, funnel top and part of the mainmast were Tamiya flat black.

ISW supplied crude and useless white metal gun barrels for the Rodney’s 16-in. guns, but I had two spare sets each of 9 brass barrels left over from previous builds – a set of 16-in. ones for the USS South Dakota class (rejected, since they had too many sleeves) and 15-in. ones from MasterModel for the Trumpeter RM Roma.  These had only a single sleeve (as did the British guns), but I had to sand away the widened barrel tips to smooth out the ends.  I used Aber Japanese 6-in. gun barrels for the Rodney’s secondary gun turrets, MasterModel 20 mm Oerlikons, and L’Arsenal 8- and 4-barrel pompom sets.  ISW’s 4.7-in. gun mounts and barrel bases were actually well-enough cast to use in my build, though I replaced the barrel ends with suitably sized plastic ones from my spare parts bin (the resin ones were bent and too wide). The masts were made from brass wire of varying widths and I used Evergreen plastic rod for the propeller shafts.  ISW’s photoetch set provided insufficient Type 282 fire control radars, so I had to scratch-build several of these, along with the two Type 281 radars atop both masts (ISW provided only one radar set, and no instructions as to how to bend and fold it, so I gave up and just made my own from 1-bar railing).  I also substituted spare plastic searchlights for the poorly cast resin ones, and had to scratchbuild a number of structures which photographs of the ship in its 1942 fit clearly showed, but which the kit omitted (e.g., the apparent tall vents on the port side of the conning tower, another one just forward of the stern port 4.7-in. gun, and the structures on either side of the funnel below the searchlight platform). I used a Walrus floatplane left over from my Academy HMS Warspite build and ISW provided adequate photoetch parts for it, though their kit had no decals and so I had to print out the roundel insignia from my computer and then cut them out and glue them to the wings and fuselage.  The small boat and motor launch mounts were taken from a surplus set of GMM Japanese Battleship frets, and the rigging was stretched black sprue.  Lastly, even with solid resin models, I prefer to have my gun turrets rotate, so I determined the center of each turret bottom and barbette and inserted a short section of Evergreen plastic rod into the former and drilled holes in the latter to permit rotation.  At some time in the future I'll add a pair of paravanes (none available in my spare parts kit, and ISW's were unsuitable) and the degaussing cables that ran along each side just below the deck.

There is an extensive chronological WWII service history of HMS Rodney that can be seen on the internet here, so I’ll only mention that she was commissioned in December 1927 and her most famous action was to assist (and assume the primary role) in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck on May 27, 1941, on that date becoming the first, and only, battleship in history to fire torpedoes at another battleship (with one probable hit).  She also served with distinction throughout the Mediterranean and bombarded the Normandy beaches on and after D-Day, and was scrapped in 1948.
 
 

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