Reviewed by Timothy Dike |
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| The Tannenberg was laid down as a ferry in 1935 and commisioned
in February 1939. He was taken over by the German Navy and converted into
a minelayer. As part of the conversion three 15 cm, four 3.7 cm, and six
2 cm guns were added for protection. The Tannenberg helped lay mines in
the Baltic Sea in 1940 and later served as a training ship. Tannenberg
was active in the North Sea and returned to the Baltic in 1941. On September
7th 1941 he ran into a Swedish mine field and was sunk with two other minelayers.
HP Models has produced a wateline kit of this unique ship in resin. |
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| HULL | |||||||||||||||||
| The hull is cast with quite a bit of surface detailing. Wooden deck planing with the base for the forward main gun are nicely done. The hull includes portholes and nicely done square windows. My sample had a few spots where air bubbles had marred the surface details. Nothing that isn't too hard to fix though. |
to enlarge |
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| SUPERSTRUCTURE PARTS | |||||||||||||||||
| These parts are cast on thin resin wafers. Deck planking is pretty good here too. The gun tubs and splinter sheilds are nice and thin. The bridge also has nice deeply recess window frames. Thesupport for the aft searchlight and gun platform would be better if it were photo etched. The main guns came out well and the searchlights look pretty good. The gun barrels on the light guns are a bit thick but not bad. There are also about 48 mines that can be mounted to the deck rails. |  |
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| DECALS | |||||||||||||||||
| Non-censored German flags are printed on paper in a variety of styles. |  |
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| INSTRUCTIONS | |||||||||||||||||
The instructions are three pages with specifications, a
parts list and an exploded view of the ship.
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| CONCLUSIONS | |||||||||||||||||
This is a neat little kit of a warship with a passenger look. It reminds me of the German Q ships. If your bored with the typical battleships, try this ship for an interesting build that will look great, espeically if painted in the Green camouflage scheme. This kit was listed for $79.00 US in Pacific Front's catalog. Bill Gruner carries tthe complete line of HP Models and many other hard to find resin kits. |
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