1/700 SMS Szent Istvan (Poseidon Models)
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by David J. Salvin |
1/700 SMS Szent Istvan (Poseidon Models)
The latest from my favorite patron, taking us mercifully from the monotony of modern naval shipping, is the WWI era AustroHungarian Battleship Szent Istvan.A bit of history:
SMS Szent István (His Majesty's Ship Saint Stephen) Tegetthoff-class dreadnought battleships built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Szent István was named for the 11th-century saint Stephen I, the first King of Hungary. Szent István was the only ship of her class to be built within the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a concession made to the Hungarian government in return for its support for the 1910 and 1911 naval budgets which funded the Tegetthoff class.
In June 1918, in an bid to earn safer passage for German and Austro-Hungarian U-boats through the Strait of Otranto, the Austro-Hungarian Navy attempted to break the Barrage with a major attack on the strait. This attack was to be spearheaded by all four ships of the Tegetthoff class, but it was abandoned after Szent István and her sister ship, Tegetthoff were attacked by Italian motor torpedo boats on the morning of 10 June. While Tegetthoff was unharmed during the attack, Szent István was struck by two torpedoes launched from MAS-15, capsizing roughly three hours later off the island of Premuda. She is the only battleship whose sinking was filmed during World War I.
Famous for being the only battleship to be sunk by torpedoes from a small torpedo boat, and the fact that the sinking was caught on film makes her sinking one of the most memorable scenes in history and thus the subject of many a model. This build portrays her in earlier days.
The Kit:
Poseidon models can be applauded for bringing us (or at least attempting to bring us) a model of a famous WWI era dreadnaught. However, they are a bit confused. While the kit is marked Szent Istvan and there is indeed a picture of that ship on the box, the kit is not a model of the Szent Istvan, but rather a sister ship, the Viribus Unitus. While a similar ship, it is not the same. Most notably, the upper superstructure involves a long platform starting above the bridge and going all the way back down the stacks. The Unitus does not have that deck, and so neither does the kit. It makes for some interesting scratch building. Beyond that, only small changes are necessary to get the kit looking reasonably like the Istvan.
The kit arrived badly damaged with the rear deck snapped off and a large open hole to the lower hull existing. Curiously, this EXACT same “damage” was reported (and pictures posted) by another model builder on the site as well, making me suspicious that all the hulls are so damaged. This too made for a fair amount of patching and scratch building. The company has no known contact information to get replacement parts that I (or Google) are aware of.
Beyond the damage, the kit is reasonably well molded and comes with frets of PE for many parts as well as railings. However, the brass is very soft and also makes construction more difficult.
The Build:
The build is more or less out of the box, however, the kit comes with NO life boats or other ship’s boat despite the fact that a large portion of the ship is dedicated to them. So, I augmented the kit with left over boats from other projects. I used twin heavy duty threads entwined to simulate the chain torpedo nets running down the side of the hull. Virtually ALL of the masts supplied with the kit are of soft resin construction and of little use to hold the rigging required. I replaced them all with brass and steel wire of appropriate thickness. The kit does come with beautiful turned brass barrels. BUT, they are too large a diameter at the base to actually fit into the turrets. So…. They each had to be sanded down to fit into the turrets. The other disappointment are the representations of the smaller deck guns prominently featured on the turrets and around the ship. The kit only supplied a rather lumpy gun body with NO barrels in the kit. So…. I used PE guns left over from other builds. Also completely missing were the barrels for the casement guns down the side of the hull. No holes were present to show where to install the barrels, and no barrels of any sort were supplied. So….. steel wire was used to approximate.
Anchor chains were added as the kit had none.
The kit certainly is not perfect, (hell, it isn’t even of the right ship), but when it comes to 1/700, you don’t really have many choices.
