by Robert Apfelzweig
1/350 Varyag (Zvezda)
Here are photos of my model of the Russian protected cruiser Varyag as she would have appeared early in the Russo-Japanese War. The Zvezda kit is fairly inexpensive and quite detailed, more so than the battleship Knyaz Suvorov or Borodino, with which it shares a Gold Medals Modelworks photoetch set. Originally built in 1899 in Philadelphia and commissioned into the Russian Navy in 1901, this ship holds an important, and rather heroic, part in the history of the Russian Navy, having acquitted herself very well in battle against a vastly superior Japanese cruiser and torpedo boat squadron at the Battle of Chemulpo Bay (Korea) in February 1904. The ship was scuttled by its crew but was eventually raised and salvaged by the Japanese, who incorporated it into their own navy as the cruiser Soya. In 1915 the ship was returned to the Russians, since Japan and Russia were allies in World War I against Germany, then was sent to Great Britain for repairs, but the Bolshevik Revolution prevented her from ever serving again in the Russian Navy. The British sold the ship to Germany for scrap after the war, but it ran aground off the coast of Scotland in 1920 and was partially scrapped in place, the hulk eventually sinking in 1925.
