For those not aware Heller makes 1:400 scale models of most of the German capital ships from WWII. Though the 1:350 seems more common with other manufacturers what sets Heller apart is their Kriegsmarine collection, a box of 11 kits including a U-boat, minesweeper, several variations of the Schnellboot, a destroyer and a torpedo boat, all in 1:400. This gave me the idea of building the entire Kriegsmarine using these kits. This thread will be my build log for the entire Kriegsmarine. And I will add pictures of the completed models in this post. Please enjoy your stay!
Nice build but I’m trying to figure out if thats a mini light switch on the stand? I think your plans will take a while but it I would love to see that set in water as a wartime DIO. Awesome.
It is designed to be a light switch! The underside of the ship has two holes drilled in it and the upper deck will eventually have LED’s. All the portholes on the ship were drilled out. I am currently working on the math required to power all of this and right now I am stuck on a wierd voltage, I have to find the paper but I think it was like 22V, I already have everything else but the last thing I want to do is damage the model.
But you sir, you have raised the bar! What about having the ENTIRE fleet in CONNECTABLE wartime diaramas. I already secured wife permissions! Oh how goals change!
G Morrison - for submarines and the the smaller ships like destroyers, minesweepers, and schnellboots I am think of one per class, but the I want to build a matching set of all the Battleships and Cruisers from the Bismarck down to the Nurnberg!
Well, now hearing something like this makes me think “full time job” instead of “hobby”.
Anyhow, I wanted to help with the lighting. 22V? I don’t see why you should do something like this. Please remember, that you don’t have to connect all the LEDs in series - you can also connect them in parallel, as long as every “string” has it’s own resistor. You could, for example, take two white LEDs (4V drop each), and connect them in series with 100 Ohm resistor and power this with 9V supply. Now connect x such strings in parallel and you can have 2x diodes while still using 9V supply.
Hope it helps, good luck with your project and have a nice day
Sounds like a great plan. I have an old 1:350 Tamiya kit of the Tirpitz I’ve been working up the courage to tackle. Ships make some of the best display pieces. Best wishes, and please keep the pictures coming.
There is a Polish line that makes many of the U-Boat variants in 1/400, although the company name escapes me for the moment. I’ll check them out at my LHS. These kits include variations in armament and hull configurations, and include Type II, VII, IX, XIV and XXI. They also have PE frets. If you are interested, I will get a full listing of the available kits.
The company is Mirage. There is an excellent review of the U-803 on www.steelnavy.com under the submarine section of the Model Gallery. It will show what beautiful little kits these are, and they will complement the Heller Kriegsmarine kits well.
I’ve hit a little snag. I cant find the Prinz Eugen in stock on line. Can you all keep an eye out for 1:400 Prinz Eugen? I would like two of them so that I can also have the Admiral Hipper.
The Prinz Eugen is a deal breaker, if I cant get that one I will probably pony up to the 1:350 scale. I also want to do the AMI on these ships and I dont care if I need to redo the Gneisenau. Your thoughts?
The Heller 1/400 Prinz Eugen and Hipper are not currently being manufactured but you can find them on sites such as eBay. They used to cost an arm and leg, but, since the Trumpeter 1/350 releases of these ships, they are more reasonable. I just bought the Eugen for $36.00 on eBay, although there is one listed right now for over $100.00. You can get them far cheaper than that!
Heller does have a great selection of the larger Kriegsmarine ships, and they have a few destroyers and torpedo boats. Concerning Deutschland, they do produce Lutzow in mid-war configuration. The problem with Lutzow is that the bow and foc’sle are far too narrow and sharp. I am converting that kit to Deutschland by kit-bashing the Lutzow and Graf Spee kits.
The major issue with trying to build the entire Kriegsmarine is that there are no plastic kits in any scale of the light cruisers. However, you can find several among the paper-card ship modeling companies. These build into outstanding ship models; you can even use the card parts as templates and scratch-build using plastic stock. Many of these kits are printed in 1:400, and, by using your printer, you can rescale any kit to 1:400. These are also very reasonably priced. Hipper, Prinz Eugen, and Blucher can be found.
