The 76MM Naval Gun developed by OTO Melara in the 1950’s has become the standard medium caliber gun on most western light and medium attack vessels. Pig Models has come out with there 1/35 scale version that has a “stealth cupola” as seen on Norwegian Frigates.

The Build

The build for this kit is surprisingly simple. The most complex part being the actual gun itself. The gun is made up of both injection molded, 3d printed parts, and photo etch. The injection parts make up most of the gun, including the gun shield, barrel, and barrel extension, but the plastic is a bit odd in that Tamyia extra thin didn’t really work but the “hotter” version of it did. The muzzle of the barrel is 3d printed and extremely detailed, so a drop of CA was used to attach it to the barrel itself. Finally, you have the choice of either using a PE part or injection molded part that attaches to the lower part of the gun barrel (I’m not sure the name of the part) I ended up using the injection part as it looked fine to me. One other recommendation I’d make is to paint the various parts of the gun and barrel separately before putting it together. Even in 1/35^th scale it’s small and would require a fair amount of masking. I did go a bit off the paint guide though as I used photos of the real thing. The directions would have you paint the gun shield and inner Cupola sides flat black, but the real turrets have a titanium finish to the shield and flat white for the Cupola. To finish building the gun, you attach the movable mount parts with a poly cap center to the gun shield. If you use a drop of CA you could make the gun un movable but you’ll need to make sure that you don’t set the gun to low.

Next in the build is getting the Cupola ready to attach the gun. The Cupola is molded as a single piece so there is no real seam work that needs to be done. All you do is attach the side shield to the front and the rear entry door. Once those are attached the Cupola is basically done. I’d recommend attaching the forward “stealth” parts to the Cupola from step 12 here as then you can go ahead and paint the Cupola, Again, much like the gun assembly its best to paint the Cupola before attaching the gun or the door handle for ease. As for painting I used Tamiya White Primer as the color guide calls for a flat white.

The last major sub assembly is the Cupola base and turret ring. The ring is made up of 4 circular parts and one base attachment part. Hardest part of this assembly is making sure everything is in the right order. When fully assembled the ring attaches to the Cupola base. At this point you’re ready for final assembly and optional painting

Painting and Final Assembly

Final assembly begins by attaching the gun assembly into the Cupola. I used old fashioned Testors Orange glue to make sure I had a solid bond. Once that was dry and solid I attached the base of Cupola to the top and the turret itself was complete. The turret base was next. The base is made up of two parts, the base itself and an octagonal ring. The base was painted Tamiya Primer Gray and rubber black on top. The octagonal ring was painted steel.

Pig Models gives you a small decal sheet to add a bit of fun to the turret. I chose to go with the Skull and Crossbones decal as it also has you add a blue panel to the sides of the turret. I used Tamiya Flat Blue for the panel. The decal has a lot of decal film around it so make sure you cut it very close to the decal. I used Tamiya gloss clear to help combat silvering but it still has a faint outline. Once the decals had dried I went to attach the last two small parts to the gun. I did have one failure here. There is a 3d printed cable and while extremely well done it did break in half as I tried to remove it from the supports. Then when I went to remove the two separate parts that were left it broke again so I declined to continue with it. The last part to be added was a photo etch brace to the gun. That went on with some CA and no real issues. At this point a final over coat of Tamiya Flat Clear was sprayed and once dry the turret was attached to the base and the build was complete.

Final Thoughts

This kit builds up into a great example of the 76mm Naval Gun and with the “stealth cupola” found on Norwegian Navy Frigates. It’s relative ease of assembly and small part count makes it a great kit to either restart your hobby or as a fun weekend build. There is some learning curve with the PE and Photo Etch parts but not anything thing that would put off anyone that has ever built a kit. I highly recommend this kit and thanks to PIG Models and IPMS for the opportunity to review it.