by Michael Maynard
1/300 Ting Yuen (Zhengdefu)
I purchased this model kit from a toy store that was going out of business. At $2.99 I figured how bad could the model be? I found out when I opened the box, it was another beauty from China, sort of a un assembled toy. The parts were heavy, misshapen, and with very little detail. But it came equipped with a neat electric motor! I almost tossed the model in the trash but I like a challenge and this “kit” fit the bill. I kept the hull, smoke stacks and torpedo boats, the rest of the parts were junked.
I did some research on this particular vessel and discovered it was referred to by a variety of names, probably owing to translation into English. The “Ting Yuen” was built by Vulcan Yard in Stettin Germany in 1881 and 1882. At 7670 tons the battleship was considered a “Citadel Ship”, a 14” armored belt of compound steel protected the magazines and machinery, and all located amidships, hence a “Citadel”. Armed with two thinly armored turrets, (each housing a pair of Krupp 12” breechloaders) the Ting Yuen was considered, at the time, the most powerful warship in the Far East. In addition, two 5.9” gun turrets (bow and stern) six 37mm Hotchkiss guns and three torpedo tubes offered secondary armament. Further, the ship carried two second class torpedo boats as a defensive weapon. In a battle with Japanese naval forces in September 1894, the Ting Yuen suffered 200 hits yet the ship’s “Citadel” area was not penetrated proving the worth of the design. Eventually, the tactics of the Japanese campaign and superiority of equipment led to the defeat of Chinese forces, both on land and at sea. It should be noted the Ting Yuen, and its sister ship, Chen Yuen, fought with distinction and valor in fleet encounters. But corruption of the Chinese officials was as much to blame as the overwhelming Japanese forces. Many of the Chinese munitions hit their target but failed to explode; the powder old and shells filled with cement rather than gun powder. Disabled by continuous Japanese torpedo boat attacks, the Ting Yuen was sunk by its crew. In 2005 the Chinese government built a full size replica of the Ting Yuen as a naval museum, making it the most modern “pre-dreadnaught” in the world today!
There was so much work to do in building the kit; I’ll just touch on the major improvements. The deck was covered with wood planking and an armor belt was added to the hull using Evergreen sheet plastic. The ram prow was cut off as it didn’t line up with the rest of the hull, and a new one fashioned from wood. The superstructure, gun turrets, flying bridge, pilot house anchor pockets were constructed of Evergreen sheet plastic as well. The gun barrels, masts and boat booms were fashioned from brass tubing; the davits were made from brass stock. The many detail parts such as ladders, ships railings, port hole covers, mast ratlines, were from the leftover PE box. Other items like the ships boats, mooring bitts, deck guns, searchlights, anchors, deck vents and chain were taken from the scrap box. I airbrushed the hull with Testors black, white, and bottom red/brown paints. The stacks and masts were custom mixed Floquil buff paint with a little yellow added. As I mentioned the model was a disappointment at first but with a little work one can recreate the interesting pre dreadnaught phase of naval warfare design.
