by Timothy Choi |
The world's first submarine to fire a self-propelled torpedo underwater (and sink a target), Abdülhamid and sisterboat Abdülmecid were from the Thorsten Nordenfelt steam designs. Built in pieces in England and reassembled in Istanbul, these odd vessels ran on coal while surfaced and compressed air underwater. However, their slow speed made them unsuitable for the strong currents of the Dardanelles (something also experienced by British minesweeper crews in the First World War), and their poor balance was exacerbated by the launching of the two torpedoes in the bow "hump". Despite these limitations, it wasn't until 1910 when they were officially decommissioned.
A fun little build, Combrig's kit of the vessel is sharp and well-cast, with the bulk of the work involving the removal of hull casting grate. The twin 35mm Nordenfelt guns are rather basic and would've best been done in photoetch. I replaced the resin barrels with wire, though even that's too out of scale. The funnel tip was drilled out a bit. The kit's untapered brass mast was replaced by an Xacto-scraped tapered styrene version. Rigging with UNI-Caenis, sailors converted from Fujimi's Japanese sailors (fezzes from built-up paint).
Photos taken on my Lumia 950XL phone; high depth-of-field versions made by stacking multiple exposures using CZM image stacker.
