Plan Z
by Kieran Griffith

1/2400 Plan Z, German Navy 1943 (GHQ Modelwarships)

This is a collection of all of the ships from the Z-Plan Navy that would have been completed by 1943 if the second world war had not begun. The models were made in 1/2400 scale from Ultra Detailed GHQ Model Warships. It also includes Scharnhorst and Gneisenau

The plan as it came about would have seen the completion of the two battleships under construction (Bismarck and Tirpitz) to an interim design, as well as three heavy cruisers (Admiral Hipper, Blucherand Prinz Eugen),

• Two aircraft carriers, Graf Zeppelin and Peter Strasser
• Three H-Class Battleships, Friedrich der Große, Großdeutschland and Hindenburg
• Two further Hipper-class heavy cruisers (Seydlitz and Lutzow)
• Construction began on the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin in 1936, with a second planned to begin in 1938. In mid 1939, following the launch of both Bismarck and Tirpitz, the keels of the first three improved battleships were laid, while orders were placed for the modified Messerschmitt Bf 109T fighters and Junkers Ju 87C dive bombers to equip the aircraft carriers. However, with the outbreak of World War II, it was decided that the large and expensive construction projects required too much of the materials vital to keep the Heer (the German army) and Luftwaffe up and running. As a consequence, work on the battleships was halted, and the materials were diverted to the construction of U-boats. Some Bf 109Ts were completed, though later stripped of their carrier equipment and stationed in Norway.

There are no kits for Z-Pan Navy ships scheduled to be built after 1943 (another more advanced class of aircraft carrier, O-Class Battlecruisers, Kreuzer P-Class panzerschiffe, M-Class light cruisers and Spahkreuzer-class large destroyers. and none of the ships after that were given names either.

The kits were fun to build and I made them as detailed as they could possibly be made all in one go in an assembly-line with details as small as the propellor heads, canopies and camouflage paint jobs. anchor chains etc, I need a magnifying glass to see the details and my eyesight is extremely good. The general paint job was a very light grey (practically white) which would have probably been the peace time paint job for the German navy ships in 1943 one of the hardest things about making super detailed ships is getting the gun barrels, and masts at exactly correct angles and I do not recommend GHQ ships for wargaming but for collecting instead they are so fragile. Wargaming minis should be tough and robust like Panzerschiffe makes them out of single solid blocks of resin. The ships are stuck on to the display base with Blue-tack so they are removeable and the clear top was made out of plexiglass. I think I will sell it on Ebay for a few hundered to buy some more ships from GHQ.

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