by Frank Ilse and Dirk Mennigke
1/350 Unloading Supplies, Central Pacific, Winter 1944/45 (Trumpeter/Commander Models/L'Arsenal/Scratchbuilt)
This is a Diorama Dirk and I worked on for about nine months now. We got the idea on one or our meetings at the IG Waterline, a group of ship builders from northern Germany. Both of us wanted to build Trumpeters Liberty-Ship, so why not putting them into a Diorama?
Here is our shopping list:
The Liberty-ships were converted to Navy Transports, Crater class, the Osprey Minesweeper to Auk Class USS Defense. To save money and work Dirk cast another LSM from the Commander model. The LSM and the minesweeper were extensively modified and worked up with different scratchbuilt parts and photoetch details. The LCT landing craft were scratchbuilt. I did a master model and Dirk cast three LCT from it.
The vehicles are from GHQ, we all know, they are a little over scale (1/285), but they match fairly enough and - most of all - they are the best detailed vehicles available in that scale. We brought the scene to life with nearly 400 figures from L'Arsenal and the German company Preiser, who was kind enough to give us the figures unpainted.
The water was made from silicone.
This is our first Diorama and we hope, you like it.
Thanks to Dirk and Christian Bruer for the pictures.
