by Kieran Griffith
1/600 INS Krishna (Airfix)
INS Krishna is a Leander-class frigate of the Indian Navy. She was built at HM Dockyard Portsmouth, the last ship to be built at that prestigious dockyard that had built the revolutionary Dreadnought. She was launched on the 24th May 1967 and commissioned into the RN as HMS Andromeda on the 2nd December 1968.In the subsequent years of the 1980s, Andromeda performed a number of varied duties, thankfully all peaceful, patrolling the Persian Gulf on Armilla Patrol, and deployments to the Falklands and West Indies. . Andromeda was sold to the Indian Navy in 1995. Recommissioned as the INS Krishna, the frigate remains in the Indian Navy as of 2004, and is used as a training ship. Her armament has been reduced to two 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikon guns. Must be quite an experience to train on her for a naval career.
I used the 1/600 Airfix Leander kit and converted it from a Batch-1 Leander to a Batch-3 Leander type frigate and using photoetch details from the spare parts box. The kit was so fragile I decided to put it in a plastic box that was made for display of 1/24 scale car models.
