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German Fast Attack Craft S-100 Class  |
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Colors and tools:
Scratch and Modifications
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Building references
In February 2002 Warship Pictorials published their Classic Warships Warship Pictorial #15 Kriegsmarine Schnellboote on just the subject. When I started the model, the book was not available. Long before the actual date of release various Internet pages showed the beautiful and extraordinary cover of the book, the stripe camouflaged S26/S38., which inspired my the give my S-100 just this appearance. My main source was, besides many Naval warfare compilations “Fock, Harald: Die Deutschen Schnellboote: 1915-1945/Harald Fock,- Hamburg: Koehler, 2001, writer of many acknowledged books on the Reichsmarine and Kriegsmarine. Harald Focks book was equally interesting and inspiring to read. It provides a lot of technical information on the development of all kinds of Schnellboote during WWI and WWII. The picture material is all b/w and shows as well in it's original b/w form, which is now –nicely colored- covering Classic Warships Warship #15 Kriegsmarine Schnellboote. The only lack about Fock's book (besides being all German, sorry folks!), is that he does strictly limit the book to the development and does not give information about actual operations of these ships during war period. |
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| STRAIGHT OUT-OF-THE-BOX…
... I told myself, as I started one this kit, but my good intentions lasted for about 10 min. only! After having removed and cleaned up all parts needed for the construction steps 1 to 5 in the booklet, I realized, that I had the option to open the stairway from the combat bridge to the interior of the ship. So I cut open the door in the back wall of the bridge. After that, I added door profiles to the inside walls of the bridge made from plastic scratch. |
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| What the heck! ...I've done it again, I thought. Out-of-the-box doesn't seem to work for me. Next I removed the stairs to the targeting platform and replaced them by a scratch hailing platform 1/350. |  |
| The steps to commence to step 5, I did by the booklet just leaving the armored bridge cover away. As I didn't have any spare parts at hand, I did not replace the stairs on the outside of the bridge. While the glue dried on the bridge section, I cleaned up and spray painted the quarter-deck part all over with Mix 1. Note: You are asked by Revell to drill positioning holes in the aft quarter-deck for the mine/depth charges’ rack and remove the two center holders for fog cans! In case you don't want the racks, you may spare both of the above. I have chosen an accurate third way, which you will see later on, but I still had to drill. |  |
| Then I firmly glued the bridge section to the quarter deck giving me time to take care of the torpedo launching equipment using Mix 1, Gun Metal and Brass colors. |  |
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| Before uniting the hull parts and the deck, I drilled the positioning holes for the trim rudders and propeller shafts. (Note: If you really want to go into detail, you might want to cut out the exhaust pipes below the water line and insert tubes.) To close the hull parts, I glued the deck/bridge section to one part of the hull, but wouldn't let the glue dry completely before attaching the second half of the hull, profiting from the flexibility left. |  |
| This is quite tricky due to the dimensions of the parts. Quick hands you need. I was glad to not have added the armor to the bridge at this stage, which would have made the process even more difficult. Still I couldn't make the deck fit 100%, so I had an uneven edge at the stern. | |
| The time for letting the hull and deck merge, was filled by painting all wood applications on the quarter-deck and bridge armor cover. Finally I added the bridge armor and the already Mix 1 pre-painted forecastle, not forgetting the embedding of the forward 20 mm gun. |  |
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| I masked off the decks, bridge and the waterline, after
having fixed the torpedo tube flaps.
Followed by spray painting the under-water-ship Flat Black, the main rudder and propeller shafts were installed. |
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Camouflage pattern.
First I had to figure out how many stripes I would need of each color. On the order off applying the color I went the usual from-light-to-dark rule of the airbrushing. Due to the lack of picture references, I decided to apply some 25 Stripes of 0,5’’ up to 1’’ of yellow stripes on each half bow and another 3-5 for the bridge and stern. So I spray painted all the hull and bridge armor by Mix 4 and applied about 55 irregularly cut stripes of tape. Now your S-100 looks like a disfigured banana. To get the masking stripes right, I stuck 30’’ of 6 mm masking tape onto a glass platter, cutting close along the edges in a waved line and again cutting the tape criss-cross into the desired lengths. The stripes I applied in a pretty regular pattern, taking care to have the stripes horizontal. Then I spray painted Mix 1 all over. Now I applied some 60 stripes of 6 mm masking tape, cut as above, but 1’’ to 1,5’’ long. Then I painted Mix 2 all over. Finally I masked off another 50 stripes made of 10 mm tape, 1,5’’ to 2’’ long. These were the most difficult, because now I had to “organically” fill the gaps, so there were a lot of adjustments to be done. I recommend to really take your time here, because you want your camo to be scattered but without any gaps. As I applied the finishing color Mix 3, I got cold feet: What, if it doesn't look as you expect it to be? What, if the boat still looks like an old banana? Remove all the color and settling for an all over light grey instead? |
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| What, if…
…to be continued! |
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| Guido Hopp
Düsseldorf, Germany guido-hopp@hopp-import.de PS.: I’ll be glad to give information/help to everyone on the message board of this page. |
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