by Horst Muerell
1/250 Fairmile A Motor Launch ML-100 1940 (Paper Model)
Historical Information
At the beginning of WWII the Royal Navy needed many motor launches for anti-submarine and escort duties. In the middle of 1939 Noel Macklin realised the demand for such craft in the upcoming war. Macklin was a businessman with wide spread interests (car-racing, flying, yachting) and owner of a car factory named Fairmile Engineering Company. He founded the Fairmile Marine Company, and with the already available know-how of his engineers and technicians he developed the design of a 33m-motor launch, the Fairmile A-type. The revolutionary feature of this construction was the prefabrication-system. All parts of the boat were prefabricated by furniture makers, sawmills and even piano manufacturers, companies which were little involved in war production. Under coordination of the Fairmile Marine Co. the kits were transported by lorries (seven lorry-loads for one Fairmile A motor launch) just-in-time to shipyards at the coast. There the boats were assembled and the armament added. The average building time for a Fairmile A motor launch was 22 weeks. After some hesitation the admiralty adopted this prefabrication-system and placed orders with the Fairmile Marine Company. During the war a total of 883 Fairmile boats of all types were built.
The Fairmile A motor launch was based on the lines of a fishery protection vessel named Vaila. The boats had three Hall Scott Defender machines with a total of 1.800hp, the maximum speed was 25 knots. The armament consisted of a 3pdr Hotchkiss quick-firing gun, a Twin-Lewis machine gun and twelve depth charges. In service the Fairmile A´s proved to be seaworthy, but the range was limited, especially for escort duties. Therefore early in the war the boats were converted to minelayers. In total twelve boats were built to this design, four of them were lost to mines during the war.
Technical Details:
Length: 33,50m
Breadth: 5,30m
Draught: 2,00m
Displacement: 57t
Speed: 25kts
Complement: 2 officers, 14 men
Total built: 12
Model
The model shows ML100 in the original design of the Fairmile A-type, completed 19. May 1940 at Woodnutt & Co. Ltd., Bembridge, Isle of Wight. During 1941 ML100 was converted to a minelayer. The armament was increased and the funnel removed. ML100 was sold in October 1947.
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.
