For ship modelers looking to improve the appearance of their German WWI battleship or cruiser, Master Model has released three sets that will replace the gun barrels from the kit with their beautifully produced brass alternatives. The sets in this review will replace the 30.5 cm, 10.5 cm, and 8.8 cm gun barrels used by the German Navy. Modelers with some experience with aftermarket parts should have little issue in replacing the kit parts with the brass barrels.

From its title, this book purports to be about the Royal Navy, but only a minority of the text is devoted to that service. There is no mention of it at all until page 34 (Out of 144 pages total, or roughly almost 25% of the way through the book), where the fate of some submarines sent to the Baltic in 1915 is covered in one paragraph. The Royal Navy then does not re-appear until page 46. While some Royal Navy ships, primarily light cruisers, destroyers, torpedo boats and submarines, were involved in the fighting in this area during the post war period, the part they played was small, usually only involved a few ships and would only merit a footnote in most histories. One interesting aspect is that the HMS Vindictive, a cruiser converted with a “flying off deck” was deployed to the area and some RNAS aircraft, albeit flying from land bases, were used in bombing attacks against ships and shore targets.

Company Background

New Ware is a company in the Czech Republic that is well known to spacecraft modelers. They were new to me. I looked into their website and the text is a mix of English and Czech, and it is noted that Russian, German and Italian are also spoken. They offer kabuki-type masks for many of the popular scales from 1/24 down to the diminutive 1/144, plus eggplanes.

Their on-line catalog is broken down by scale, with a further breakdown for model kit manufacturer. Each mask description for the kit noted with details for the contents such as all clear parts, interior (when offered), other clear parts and wheels.