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Monday, September 5, 2011

Z-31 German Destroyer







Here are some images of Dragon Models 1/350 scale type 1936A Narvik class Z-31 German Destroyer as it looked in 1944. Z-31 was taken by France after the war and renamed Marceau. It was scrapped in 1958.
This is one of the most detailed small scale ship models I have ever seen. It's quite an advancement over the models of yesteryear. This model is only 14 inches long and contains almost 600 parts and yet despite this high level of detail I still had to ad extra railing to make it more complete. I would recommend this kit only for advanced model builders.

From Wikipedia"
The Zerstörer 1936A-class destroyers, or Narvik-class destroyers as they were known to the Allies, were a class of German destroyers of the Second World War. In common with other German destroyers launched after the start of World War II, the Narviks were unnamed, known only by their hull numbers - Z23 to Z39.

In terms of armament, they were closer to light cruisers than the typical destroyer. The use of 15 cm (5.9 inch) guns was atypical of destroyers which tended to have guns around 120 - 127 mm (4.7 to 5 inch) in calibre. They were intended to carry two forward guns in a twin turret, but as the twin turrets were not ready in time, early class 1936As carried a single mounted gun forward.

Despite being powerful the ships were not without their flaws. There were problems with the reliability of the high pressure steam engines and seakeeping in rough seas due to the newly designed bow and heavy forward artillery.

The eight ships of the Zerstörer 1936A class (Z23 to Z30) were all laid down between 1938 and 1940. The seven destroyers numbered from Z31 to Z39 were classed as Zerstörer 1936A (Mob); they were laid down in 1940 and 1941 and were slightly larger and had some internal modifications (including engines that caused less trouble than with their predecessors) from the original design to shorten construction times.

2 comments:

FBMinis said...

Well painted, I like your weathering style. The assembly looks nice and clean which, from my experience, is not that easy to achieve once you start micro-detailing like you did.

-Warren Zoell said...

Thanks - Most of this model was built under a strong magnifying glass.