DKM Prinz Eugen and Sisters
by Paul Helfrich

1/720 DKM Prinz Eugen and Sisters (Revell Germany)

The German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen is one of my all-time favorite ships. I love the sleek, lean lines of this beautiful design. Face it, put this next to a typical American or especially British WWII heavy cruiser, and it's just a much prettier ship. In addition to my regard for the actual ship, I also have fond memories of butchering this particular kit, the Revell 1/720 offering, when I was a kid (along with the old Revell Arizona, John Paul Jones, and other classics).

I like it so much I've built the Heller version (also featured among my ships on this site) and these three versions of the Revell 1/720. I have an unbuilt copy of the Airfix 1/600, so maybe I'll be working on that one sometime soon as well.

I built these as the Prinz Eugen in overall dark gray, the Blücher in pre-war light gray, and the Admiral Hipper in a splinter scheme. One of the drawbacks of the kit is the main gun turrets are molded in one piece, with the guns a solid part of the turret and thus unmovable. I tried to remedy this in the Blücher and Admiral Hipper by cutting off the gun barrels and then re-attaching them at more realistic angles. But other than the paint jobs, they're all basically the same thing. Whatever name Revell has put on the box, you're getting the same kit. I did not attempt to model the differences between the ships (Blücher and Admiral Hipper were pretty similar, but Prinz Eugen had enough differences to be something of a class in itself).