Merit 1/35 Scale HMS X-Craft Submarine Kit

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tmanthegreat
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Merit 1/35 Scale HMS X-Craft Submarine Kit

Post by tmanthegreat » Thu May 05, 2016 10:32 am

Here is the latest addition to my 1/35 scale naval floatilla - the British Royal Navy HMS X-Craft Submarine kit made by Merit :D

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I found the kit at my local Hobbytown USA store and it replicates one of the X-Craft used during Operation Source in September 1943. This was an attempt by the British Royal Navy to neutralise the heavy German warships based in Norway, including the German battleship Tirpitz. Six X-Craft were used in the raid, each carrying two explosive charges strapped to either side of the sub. Only 2 X-Craft successfully laid charges; the rest were lost, scuttled or returned to base. Tirpitz was badly damaged and out of action until April 1944. Operation Source was the only operation to use multiple X-craft.

The Merit kit was overall quite simple to construct and in total time took me under 20 hours. The moulding is executed well with lots of well formed surface detail and even large indents where required, which makes attaching smaller parts easy. My biggest complaint is that there are a lot of moulding pips on everything, especially on the smaller parts. This made those parts more difficult to remove and sand smooth. There were a couple parts that broke while I was trying to sand them, which I replaced with some wire. There are some very tiny parts to assemble on the model as well with the most difficult being the chains.

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Interestingly, Merit does not provide any string with the mode for the bow tow cable or the cables securing the explosive charges to the sides of the sub, so I customized my own.
Merit's instructions recommend using a gunship gray color for the paint, however, I painted mine with Tamiya German Grey as I had a bunch of that on hand leftover from my U-boot project, and its close enough to Gunship Gray. I added some light rust weathering as well. It's a bit difficult to see in the pics...

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Part fit was generally good, though you can see where there were some small gaps. These are not really noticeable unless viewed closely... The aft section with the rudders was a bit problematic to assemble... Different parts (rudders, dive plane, stabilizer fins, and strut supports) all have to line up and fit exactly to ensure there is no misalignment. I had parts pop out multiple times and difficulty getting things to look right. Disappointedly, the rudders and dive plane were not designed to move, though I've seen where other builders have customized them to do so on this kit. Given the problems I had getting them together, I decided it was easier to keep everything fixed!

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The snorkel tube elevates and the hatches are designed to open (sadly no interior detail unless one customizes it). There was no figure included so I painted a 21c 32x German tank commander figure into something resembling a Royal Navy officer. The uniforms look similar enough at a passing glance... Save for the goggles, it really looks the part, I think.

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So, overall, I'm happy with how this build turned out. Its another 1/35 scale naval vessel and looks impressive in that scale. Save for a few small issues, Merit did a good job with the design of their kit and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to build it :D
"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

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