I’ve visited a friend of mine Mr Zoltán Csizek and he showed me a scratchbuilt ship kit which he started to build almost two years ago. The ship is the Austro-Hungarian cruiser
SMS Novara in 1:400.

The hull and the upperwork were made from wood and plastic. The masts and the rigging were created from sprue. The stacks and guns were converted from the parts of an old Russian kit called Aurora. The basic of the diorama is a piece of wood and glass which got a frame and the wood basic was painted blue.

This is what we have to know about the kit. What about the real ship ? Let me tell you the short story of the battle of Otranto.

Altough the Adriatic sea was a secondary battlefield during the First World War there were battles which became well-known. One of these battles is the battle of Otranto.
When Italy joined the Antant powers in 1915 and declared war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Antant created a barrage between Otranto, Italy and Valona (today Vloré in Albania). This barrage consisted of armed merchant ships, armed trawlers, torpedo boats and submarines.

The barrage was destroyed on May 14th and 15th 1917 by an Austro-Hungarian task force which was formed from cruisers SMS Novara, Helgoland, Saida and destroyers Balaton and Csepel. The operation was successful. 

But the antant ships were alerted and British and Italian warships appeared on the horizon. The task force had to fight his way back to the base. The antant ships started to pursuit the task force. The Novara had gotten several hits (one of these hits wounded the captain and killed the first officer) and one of them destroyed the main steam pipe and the ship stopped. 

It seemed the enemy would capture the ship. But suddenly the Saida had appeared and started to tow the crippled Novara. After two hours of fighting and pursuiting the enemy, the commander of the antant squadron started to fear from a possibly arriving Austro-Hungarian reinforcement, thus he gave up the fight. The Austro-Hungarian ships reached their base in Cattaro (today Kotor in Yugoslavia) and the last moment of this operation was when  HMS Dartmouth was torpedoed by U-89.