1/700 DKM Prinz Eugen 1941 (Trumpeter)
|
by Pavel Lupandin |
1/700 DKM Prinz Eugen 1941 (Trumpeter)
Prinz Eugen was an Admiral Hipper class heavy cruiser, serving in the Kriegsmarine during WW2. Launched in 1938, she became widely known for her taking part in the Battle of Denmark Straits alongside Bismarck against Royal Navy's Hood and Prince of Wales, the Channel Dash and Bikini atoll tests as a prize ship of the US Navy.Armed with 8x203mm guns and displacing almost 19,000 t, at 212m long she was the longest of her class. Considered lucky, she was the largest capital ship of the Kriegsmarine that survived the war, ending it in Copenhagen. The heavy cruiser surrendered to the Allies and was for a short while in service with the US Navy as USS Prinz Eugen IX-300, where she was studied and then sent off to be expended as target during nuclear tests at Bikini. Surviving Able and Baker tests, she was nonetheless in bad shape and was beached on Kwajalein in an attempt to prevent sinking, where she still is today.
My model shows Prinz Eugen during the 1941 training runs conducted in the Baltic.
The build:
This is a conversion of Trumpter's 1942 Prinz Eugen into the 1941 version. Unfortunately in full hull there is no 1941 kit, so one has to go through a few changes - luckily they are pretty straight forward. As the aim was to make an earlier ship with colourful camouflage, dating her to the service in the Baltic, I had to remove domes on forward radars, add searchlight covers (3D printed) on the funnel, remove a few 37mm guns, add a couple of lifeboats near the funnel still, and paint red turret tops and the aerial recognition markings on bow and stern - all for the sake of strict historical accuracy. I did remove her Arado 196 plane and a couple of lifeboats amidships to better display the catapult and the davits (which are intricate in PE and a feature of the ship).
I used a combination of Tom's Modelworks and a generic Hipper class PE set for the ship - Tom's being very fragile as usual and giving me a lot of work, especially on the railings. The masts were scratchbuilt from brass as usual, to take on the tungsten wire (0.06mm) for the rigging. For blast bags I used white glue, I also scratch built the ship's bell using a styrene rod, and the anchor chains were made using Flyhawk's PE set (which I found pretty good). Flag is done by putting the decal on a piece of foil that is shaped using tweezers. I also use tungsten wire of heavier thickness for flagstaffs and spreaders.
Paint mix was a custom Tamiya, all airbrushed, including the Baltic stripes (I painted white first, then masked it, painted black, masked that and painted all light grey). Weathering was done using a variety of pencils, oils and washes.
The base is plastic and styled after a simple dry dock floor, with keel blocks built from styrene. The ship is attached to the base using screws, and there is an acrylic cover. I hoped to have a dry dock base tie everything together on a weathered full hull ship.
