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Building the Model in 1/700

Here is my report about the build of the Tirpitz in 1/700 from the Trumpeter kit.

I chose the camouflage she wore in June/July 1942 in Norway. It looked very attractive to me and it’s a very unusual colour scheme for a warship of the German Kriegs-marine. The first thing I noticed which disappointed me a bit was the fact that the sprues are absolutely identical with those of the Bismarck kit. The sprues even carry the name “Bismarck”.

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Here are some pics of the complete kit, which, beside of the mentioned fault, are all very neat and show a lot of very nice small details

I started with the assembly of the hull and decks, which was more or less straight forward.

Then followed the first painting of the deck and assembly of the PE parts (I used the German warship set from Tom’s Modelworks for this model - was very pleased with it

One of obvious differences between the Tirpitz and the Bismarck was the Tirpitz did not have any vents on the second Turret (Bruno), I removed the ones from the turret with some files, corrected the grinding traces with model putty and carried on with the camouflage.

Further assembly of the superstructure, painting and mounting of PE parts followed and gradually, the ship started to shape.

Now, that shop was almost finished, I noticed another mistake. The aft mast of the Tirpitz did not have a “crows nest” as included in the kit. I removed the now installed kit-part and rebuilt the mast to make it correct.

Next step was to start with the diorama base. I wanted to show her lying in a fjord at anchor. First I started with the steep fjord side which was made of crushed newspaper which I covered with kitchen paper which was smothered with wallpaper glue. After that has dried, I covered the whole thing with model plaster and formed rocks etc.

After the plaster had dried, I painted the scene with thinned down grey paint and added some spots of green tans to simulate moss etc. The small trees were places into holes I drilled into the plaster. These are normally used in Z scale model railways…--I chose young trees, which were not too big for my diorama puposes

When placing the vessel on to the board for a check, I was very pleased with the camouflage effect. Following steps were wrecking a few of the trees with a pair of scissors and bending them to make them look a bit “storm crushed” and modelling of the Water surface I used Valejo Atlantic blue and a bit of Valejo Still water which was mixed up and applied to the board with a rolling sponge. I chose this method to give the water a few calm little waves.

Finally, the ship was rigged with stretched sprue and further small details (cable drums, Arado aircraft, crew etc.) were added before it was placed on to the diorama base. I still had a few little boats from the Tamiya Tugger Set which I did up a bit and also placed on to the diorama to make the whole scene look a bit busy.

Last act was the anti-submarine and torpedo nets. I made the floats, which carried these nets from the tips of tooth picks, which I painted in a medium grey colour before gluing them in place with super glue.

I had a lot of fun building the model. I used the colour scheme from the book “Kriegsmarine colours” from Miroslaw Skwiot (ISBN 83-7237-171-7) and also used the only original picture I found of June/July 1942 as a guide.