Trumpeter

1/350 HMS Repulse

Kit Number: 05312

Reviewed by  Rich Marchiafava, IPMS #39230

MSRP: $169.95 Website: www.stevensinternational.com History HMS Repulse was a Renown-class battle cruiser, the second to last battle cruiser built by John Brown and Company, Clydebank, Scotland, for the Royal Navy in1916. Considered a high-maintenance ship, she was given the unflattering nickname HMS Repair. Her sister, Renown, was nicknamed HMS Refit. Repulse's first re-build took place from 1918 to 1920. The last major refit was 1933-1936, when she received more armor, more anti-aircraft guns (2 pom-poms (40 mm) and 0.5 inch Vickers machine guns) and an aircraft catapult with two hangars. Initially, the aircraft were Blackburn Shark floatplanes (replaced by 1939 with Fairey Swordfish and again in 1941 by the Supermarine Walrus). After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Repulse operated in various missions such as hunting down German commerce raiders and escort duty for troop carriers between Canada and Britain. In January 1941, Repulse participated in the hunt for the German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. In May, she took part in the chase of Bismarck. At the end of 1941, as the threat of war with Japan loomed ever larger, Repulse was detached to the Far East as a deterrent to Japanese aggression. Initially designated as Force G, this squadron was sent without an aircraft carrier to Singapore. Shortly after the outbreak of war in the Pacific on 8 December 1941, Repulse left Singapore with the fast battleship HMS Prince of Wales, and four destroyers known as Force Z, to try and intercept Japanese invasion convoys heading towards Malaysia. On 10 December 1941, after failing to find any Japanese invasion forces, and turning south, the Force spotted Japanese aircraft. The fleet was attacked by 86 Japanese aircraft. Repulse Captained by Bill Tennant who managed to evade several torpedo attacks. However, Repulse's luck was not to hold out and she was caught by a skillfully synchronized Japanese pincer attack and hit by four or even five torpedoes in rapid succession. Repulse was fatally hit and soon listed to port in about six minutes. Repulse was sinking, and sinking fast, resulting in Tennant ordering abandon ship. Repulse finally rolled over and sank at 12:23.

Trumpeter models pays homage this great ship in 1/350 scale. When I first received the box I was thinking this is going to be cool!!!!!!!! Being an aircraft guy this is the first ship model I've built in 30 years. Then I opened the box, Yikes!!!!!! 12 sprues of finely molded gray plastic with very little to almost no flash at all, with 2 sprues of clear that are the Supermarine Walrus aircraft again very clean of any flash. 2 a/c are included in the kit. Then you get 3 frets of photo-etch. 2 frets are handrails (I thought I was going to get off easy) and a single fret of steps and 2 crane assemblies and smoke stack covers, then you get a bottom hull, water line plate, top hull, three main deck plates ,a full color painting guide(typical for Trumpeter models), decals and a base for the ship to sit on. A total of if my counts correct 614 plastic parts and 54 photo-etch parts in the kit. OK now I'm a little worried. My friends say ," don't worry about it. It's going to be nothing but square parts on flat parts. OK that set my mind at ease . A little bit.

The Plan I guess the first thing I initially noticed was the paint scheme on the ship. I noticed it had what appeared to be a black and grey scheme. Which actually turned out to be a really dark gray (rdg) and gray. This was turning out to be an exercise in materials management. Keeping this in mind I tried to pre-paint all the parts rdg gray and gray ahead of the construction. I used model master enamels on the kit. Using a mix of aircraft interior black and gunship gray about 10% to 90% gave me the shade I wanted for the rdg gray. I mixed up a decent amount of it knowing it would have to last through the project. I also used navy agressor gray for the gray parts. The hull was painted using a mixture of insignia red and rust. The included color chart suggests that colors from Mr.Hobby, Vallejo, Model Master, Tamiya and Humbrol. Most of which gave incomplete color listings. Except for Mr.Hobby. I opted to mix my own colors since I don't use Mr.Hobby.. Sub-Assembly The kit instructions suggest that you glue the deck plates to the upper hull first. I decided to do this more towards the end of the build. It would be easier to paint the hull and sub assemblies and deck plates. Next we go to the main guns. The kit gives you a choice of barrels with blast bags or without them. Looking at the full color paint chart I decided to copy it and only place one set of blast bags on one of the turrets. The other two turrets I left the bags off .So far so good. I'm noticing that I'm doing more cutting and cleaning of parts than usual. Now, thinking back to what I was told, its only square parts on flat parts. They didn't tell me that I had to make the square parts first. But not to worry Trumpeter engineers did a absolutely fantastic job designing this kit. Everything just pretty much fell together.

Then we have all the little hose reels, cleats, boatswains posts and (forgive me I'm not a ship guy), the little things they tie rope off to. I started on the stern of the ship and worked my way forward. OK, more ducts here, more gun emplacements there, a locker or two and before you know it …. Your not even half way done. There is a lot of stuff to do in this kit.

The kit gives some choices you can either use the photo-etch steps or the plastic ones. I'm proud to say I opted for photo-etch. They were very easy to assemble and they look dynamite once complete. Okay, more square parts on flat parts then you have the rear structure assembled. Next we moved onto the hangers. This is cool because they are both fully detailed. But the instructions suggest that you build them closed. I opted to keep one open and put a brown wash over the grey paint. Now it looks a little more interesting than just a square part with no personality. The kit will take you through the rest of the superstructure and smokestack assembly. Now remember that I've already pre-painted a good portion of the parts but I still had to go back and re-shoot some here and there. OK more photo-etch stairs, man these look great. Then we finally get to the flying bridge and crows nest. This amazed me that a man would have to climb a ladder inside a tube through rough seas being slung back and forth to get up to these positions.

Now we have to have life boats and rafts and the such don't we? Well there are a lot of them to be painted assembled and installed on the ship I counted eleven rafts and twelve boats that were on the on the ship one of the little boats looks like the SS. Minnow from Gilligan's Island. So humming the theme song from said television show I quickly went about assembly.

Hull Here you have a choice of a water line model simply install the waterline plate and your done or full hull by assembling upper and lower hull halves which fit perfectly. I asked a few ships guys and they said I could run into trouble at this point if they didn't line up perfectly. I'd like to mention that the upper hull has some stiffeners pre-molded into them to keep everything aligned for assembly and I'm happy to report that my copy fit perfectly a little liquid cement down the seam on both sides and it all lined up. Perfect. Add the propeller shafts Paint it hull red and add the propellers . Main assembly

I stared this by shooting the main deck parts wood the followed by a wash of brown and black oil paints to bring out all the deck detail. Then I started install the deck plates to the Hull. Just like joining the upper and lower hulls the main deck plates went together with no problems at all. Now I start installing all of the sub-assemblies together. Once again some more of the photo-etch ladders. The Main guns go on next. It's starting to look like a Battle Cruiser now. After that I added all the little detail parts I may have over looked during assembly and start the touch up process.

Handrails Ok this is new to me, I employed a little common sense here and pre-painted the rails in their appropriate color and carefully cut bent and formed them around the ships decks and superstructures. This process was tedious to say the least. I am quickly developing a new respect for ship modelers and whiskey. In hindsight I probably should have painted and added the handrails before the main assembly. It would have been a lot easier. Ok after 4 1/2 hours of that I'm a little tired. Time to take a break.

Details Next I decide to work on the final ideas for the ship. This will include the fabrication of the photo-etch cranes. Assembly of the aircraft and adding the rigging, The kits give you an option of using the photo-etch cranes or the injection molded ones . While the plastic cranes look great when assembled the photo-etch are the crown jewels of the kits. As I carefully bend them into their final position I'm thinking to myself these are beautiful and look so real. I showed them to my father who was a sheet metal mechanic. He couldn't believe how great they looked despite their tiny size. Now when you assemble the crane to the base there is a super tiny little alignment pin needed to assemble the crane arms to the crane base. Get it all together, add the photo-etch cable to the top of the crane and attach it to the mounting plate. Voila perfection. Once you get the first crane complete, now turn around and do the other one.

Now comes the interesting part, remember I told you I'm an aircraft guy?…. Well it's time to build two tiny airplanes for the massive ship. The aircraft are molded in clear so you can mask off the tiny windows. Now what disappoints me is the fact that the wing supports are molded on the wing . I think they could have been photo-etch as well as the propellers for the planes but they're not. They are huge chunks of clear plastic for wing struts. I decided to use one of the cranes as if it was hoisting an aircraft out of the water and being placed aboard the ship. The second aircraft I decided to cut the wings off and fold them backwards and sit it outside its open hanger. This is where I was really disappointed . They only give enough decals to properly decal one aircraft but I figured the folded wings covers the fuselage of the second a/c so all I really needed was the roundels for the tops of the wings. Remember I said the hangers are detailed and I decided to leave one open for that reason. I posed the second a/c in front of its hanger and added some Eduard photo-etch crew members around the ship. In my opinion this really adds character and a little bit of excitement around the ship. Lastly the point I've been dreading. Rigging. As I look at my reference materials I notice there are 2 yard arms missing in the kit. I added the yard arms and stretched around 27 feet of sprue which was placed as rigging around the ship. Believe it or not I used every bit of stretched sprue. Having to do some repair work on broken rigging was very tedious and time consuming.

Closing I have always wanted to do a large ship and now that I have completed one maybe I'll build another one someday. The ship measured out at around 28inches long and looks great sitting on my shelf. All in all I'm very happy with the kit. It was easy enough that anyone with some basic modeling skills would be able to turn out an impressive looking ship. I would really love to see this kit built by a master ship modeler as there is probably more that could have been done than I knew how to do so as it draws to a close. . I would like to thank Trumpeter, Stevens International and IPMS. for my copy of this beautiful ship.