by Horst Muerell
1/250 Fairmile C Motor Gunboat MGB-328 (1941) (Paper Model)
Historical Information
In 1940 German E-boats began attacking English convoys in the channel. To fight these boats the Royal Navy needed fast, heavily armed craft, the motor-gunboats. But newly developed boats of this type were not yet available. So the Fairmile A design of prefabricated motor launches was altered to fulfil the requirements of motor gunboats, the construction proved to be strong enough to carry the additional armament.
The new Fairmile C type was fitted with three supercharged Hall Scott engines of 900hp each to give a speed of 26kts, the average building time was six months.
In total 24 motor gunboats of the Fairmile C type were built, five of them were lost during the war, one of these (MGB314) during the St. Nazaire raid.
MGB328 was completed 13 October 1941 at Lady Bee Ltd, Shoreham by Sea, Sussex. She was sunk 21 July 1942 during an attack on a German convoy in the Dover Straits by German escort craft.
The armament consisted of
Technical Details:
Length: 33,50m
Breadth: 5,30m
Draught: 1,90m
Displacement: 72t
Speed: 26kts
Complement: 2 officers, 16 men
Total built: 24
The construction of the model and the information about the original were based on the following sources:
The Model is to a scale of 1:250 and 13cm long. It is made of grey-coloured card, the railings are of painted fly-screen.
