I’ve picked up Airfix’s 1:1200 “Sink the Bismarck” set to work on with my 6-year-old son.
He had a great time building the Revell 1:1200 Bismarck. See the photo! He did almost all assembly himself, with my just putting glue on the pieces and helping a bit with the paint for the water on the base.
So now we’re going to work on the other ships that are part of the Airfix set. However, the set does not have the Prince of Wales (Hood’s companion), nor King George V – both of which played key roles in the battle against the Bismarck.
I’m planning on getting two copies of Revell’s 1/1200 HMS Duke of York to build the two missing British capital ships.
After that long into, here’s my question:
Were there any differences in paint scheme, or anything else that would distinguish the Prince of Wales from the King George V?
I’ve looked at photos of both from 1940, and they look pretty much identical.
Always nice to see a father/son project. Brings back some memories of my son and I building. Computers have taken over his life more then girls and cars. LOL Okay he’s a geek.
Bill has been very helpful and I think I’ve got enough information to differentiate the Prince of Wales from the King George V – at least at 1:1200 scale, and considering that they’re both going to be built from the Revell HMS Duke of York kit. I just ordered two copies of that kit today.
Meanwhile, John and I have started on the German ship, Prinz Eugen. We did not paint the Bismarck the last time, so he wants to paint the ships this time. I’ll start a thread an post some photos soon.
Meanwhile, I’ll post the results of my research (with Bill’s very kind help) here tomorrow. It’s nearly midnight as I write this and I’ve got to get to bed.
As promised, here’s the result of my research of how the two ships looked during the hunt for the Bismarck.
HMS King George V – had an interesting camo scheme you can see here: http://gb-navy-ww2.narod.ru/HTM-BB-KGV.html The decks were gray, and she had a degaussing cable (dg coil) that ran from the bow, up over the hawse hole and the aft to the stern. She was the only one of the five ships of the class to have the dg coil. I plan on replicating it with thin wire.
HMS Prince of Wales – seems to have been overall light gray with gray decks and darker gray on the turret tops and upper surfaces of the superstructure. PoW didn’t get her dazzle camouflage until after the battle with the Bismarck.
With this information, we’ll have no trouble telling to two ships apart – even at 1:1200 scale.
This weekend, I ordered two copies of Revell’s HMS Duke of York, so we’ll be ready to build them when they get here; after we’ve built some of the others in the the Airfix set.
We’re going to work more on the Prinz Eugen tonight.
Dont know if they were made in your scale but you need to add the HMS Ark Royal and the HMS Rodney. The Rodney is a really unusual ship as it only had main cannons on the foredeck.
Airfix produced the HMS Ark Royal in this scale; Pyro/Eaglewall produced the Victorious. There is no plastic kit in 1/1200 of the HMS Rodney or the HMS Sheffield. However, there are diecast metal models of each by Superior and the VERY expensive European manufacturers (Neptune, Navis, etc.) Check out the Alnavco website. There are also diecast models of HMS Renown.
If you look on the Alnavco website, they sell the 1/1200 HMS Nelson (1944) by Superior for $25.50; they also sell 1/1200 HMS Rodney by Mountford for $31.50. These are not excellent models by any means, but they will fit with the Airfix set. They also sell an HMS Illustrious by Superior, which can be easily converted to HMS Victorious.
If you want to be really impressed with this scale, check out the European company listings (Navis and Neptun) on the Alnavco website, especially the Spider Navy models. But, at around $200.00 per model,they’d better be impressive!
