History Brief

May, 1905 – HMS Dreadnought approved for construction. Entered into service December, 1907, and served as the flagship of the British Royal Navy’s Home Fleet until 1912. March, 18, 1916, during the First World War, the HMS Dreadnought sank the German submarine U-29 in the North Sea. By 1918, the Dreadnought was assigned patrol duty of the Thames estuary. She was then transferred to the Reserve in 1919 and finally demolished in 1921.

The Product

Kit features 2-piece full hull, internal strengthening bulkheads, separately molded bilge keel, engraved deck plank texture, finely molded fittings, well detailed ships boats, hollow tip main battery gun barrels, 12pdr rapid fire guns, filigree masts and yardarms, display stand with nameplates, metal chains, and plenty of photo-etch parts. Includes 4-view color painting guide and decals representing jack, ensign and stern name lettering.

History

The Austro-Hungarian Army Air Service operated various types of aircraft during their combat operations against the Italians, Russians, Rumanians, and Albanians, and for the most part their equipment was not particularly state-of-the-art. On the Italian side, while some Italian designs were used, many of the aircraft they faced were the latest designs from France and Britain, some flown by British pilots. The Austrians never had adequate resources to prosecute the war in the first place as their aviation industry had been neglected before the war, resulting in only limited successes. They operated on a shoestring and did remarkably well, considering their limited resources.

To spice up that HK Models B-25, Eduard has released its Brassin B-25 wheel set. For those not knowing, Brassin is Eduard’s resin line. It is excellently cast and comes in 11 parts, with the wheels being single pieces and the hubs coming in two parts. There is also a photoetch cover for the front wheel, depending on the configuration you are building. Lastly, there is an excellent set of masks and a nice instruction sheet. There are no air bubbles anywhere, and the resin is easy to sand. There are pour blocks on each wheel which I trimmed with a razor saw and then sanded, with no issues. I used the razor saw to get the seams out of the excellently engraved treads.

Eduard has issued an upgrade set to enhance the detail on the ammunition belts in HK Models 1/32 B-25J. This set includes one fret of 15 parts which replicate the detail on the ammunition belts for the rear guns, waist guns, and, if used, the nose gun.

HK Models’ detail on the gun belts is okay but does lack for some of the detail on the outside of the tracks. To upgrade this, the photoetch parts are added to the outside of each plastic part and are bent at a 90 degree angle to cover the top and sides. This gives a much better representation of the real belts.

I started by trying to glue on a belt and then bend the PE over – not too successful. In the end, I prebent all the needed parts on my Hold and Fold and glued them on in sections, using CA glue and accelerator. It was very fiddly and time consuming but yielded a nice result in the end.

The I-20 was a Type C-1 Class submarine, which was based on the Junsen-type, developed from the Type KD6. The C-1 Class was designed to carry the Ko-Hoteki midget submarine or Kaiten suicide torpedo. All 5 of the boats in this class took part in the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. All of them launched midget submarines near the harbor entrance and they were never expected to return to the mother ship.

The kit was released for the 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. There are examples of the midget submarines at the Naval Submarine School, Groton, Connecticut. While I was in Submarine School I was able to walk around them and take some pictures. In the end, the I-29 was finally
sunk by the USS Ellet in late August of 1943.

The kit comes with a really nice 16-page instruction booklet which leads you through the assembly process. The steps are pretty logical, and the assembly is well represented by pictures.