by Kelly Quirk
1/72 U-Boat in Drydock (Revell and others)
The Wolf's Den - U-69 in dry dock.
This diorama started life with the dry dock kit from Diorama Solutions,
which is now out of business. The kit was very rough, the resin parts
were all warped and many were, for the most part, un useable. I forged
ahead and used what I could, and scratchbuilt the rest. The U-Boat
is the Revell 1/72 kit, with the addition of turned aluminum periscopes
and gun barrels. I cut open the aft hatch, and formed a pressure
hull out of sheet plastic. The rest of the kit is OOB. The
figures are mostly scrounged together from several different Preiser sets,
with some CMK resin figures thrown in as well. Most of the poses
have been modified to fit the diorama. The trucks, rail cars, and
other equipment came from several different 1/72 sets, both in plastic
and resin. Lamps, streetlights, birds, and other small details were
found in an on-line train shop in the UK. I needed several details
from the Revell S-Boat kit, and since I had the hull I cut off the front
portion and used it to show the "wet" side of the dock. Railings
were all fashioned from styrene rod. The finished diorama measures
4 feet long by 1 1/2 feet wide, and took 11 months to complete.
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