by Stuart Horley
1/700 HMS Ark Royal (Various)
This is my build of the L'Arsenal HMS Ark Royal this ship has always been a favourite of mine and so I decided to do a diorama of her showing the ship after the fatal torpedo hit however some viewers may wonder why the destroyer assisting is the Laforey and not the much photographed Legion this is not an error but a much less well known scene of which very few photos exist. The Laforey went along side to supply the Ark with power and she also put a damage control team on board as the Arks had been taken of for fear the ship would sink in the same manor as the HMS Courageous (very fast) one of many errors which happened on that fateful day.
The Ark Royal is a very good kit overall everything fit together exactly how it should however I did choose to add extras and these included whiteensigns 8 barrel pom poms which replaced the ones supplied with the kit I also scratch built chocks for all the boats as these are not supplied with the model. The only structural change I made was to scratch build the compass platform which is built onto the front of the bridge the model did come with a brass part to represent this however it did not match with the photos I have of the ship sinking. Other extras included doors/hatches and various small details. One of the big problems with my diorama idea was that the model was a waterline and so I had to find a way of creating the list, I did this by building a base which had a hollow centre I then drew round the edge of the hull and cut a whole into the base in which the ships hull could be sunk, for the raised side I built this up with milliput and then shaped it appropriately to represent the exposed side of the hull I have to say I am very happy with how this has come off as it could of back fired and left me with a very expensive model ruined. The HMS Laforey is built from the whiteensign HMS Milne This is a very good model and the detail is the best I have seen at this scale the changes included a tripod mast in place of the lattice one and a new paint scheme however everything else is pretty much as the kit came.
