I’ve already found and am assembling the 1/720 scale kit from Revell Germany of the Graf Zeppelin, But I was wondering if anyone knows of a larger scale version, 1/350 perhaps.
I do hope you meant 1:350…or that you have a big house.
Yes I did mean 1:350, I blame this POS Compaq keyboard. And let me tell you, the place I ordered my Graf Zeppelin from sucks as far as shipping is concerned. They wrapped the display box in foam type padding, then dropped it in a thin plastic shipping bag/pouch, and mailed it too me, the upper side of the box was crushed, one of the screws was damaged, but repairable, the hull was cracked in two places. The merchant is netmerchants.com or something like that, they’re UK shop/business in County Antrim North Ireland. I’m never ordering from them again, when I mentioned the model was damaged due to their lack of protection they told me it was the royal mail services fault.
On a side note, if there aren’t any other kits available at larger scale, when I have a job and the money to do it I plan on custom ordering a larger scale Graf Zeppelin, and may even get an even larger Graf Zeppelin to fit out for Radio Control Operations. For the R/C version I would increase the scale to around 1:175/144 whatever works.
Any kit for the Graf Zepplin is speculative especially since the ship was never completed. After launching and starting to fit out it was discovered that the ship had a serious list problem and would have needed to have some reconstruction/ modification to be brought to service. It also didn’t help that the KM high command were mostly dreadnought enthusiast. [:)] And with personalities like Goreing and Raeder I’m not surprized that the ship never went into service. Typical third reich fiasco. [:D]
Raeder was actually an enthusiast about Carriers, he initially called for 4 of them in Plan Z, later reducing them to 2. But it was Goering and Donitz’ meddling with his visions of the navy that made him resign his position. Anyways, there’s enough data available to work up a model kit of the carrier at the points where she was supposed to be finished that a model can be created, and the ship was actually launched, just never commissioned or used.
i’ve got some drawings & pictures off the net that includes her hull framing
Graf Zepplin after the beginning of the war ended up being towed east to East Prussia to Koenigsburg to get it out of the range of bombers based in Britian. It was a floating warehouse at that time. All work on large surface units was suspended in December 1939 with the exception of Bismarck, Tirpitz, and Prinz Eugen. Graf Zepplin still had a considerable amount of construction to be done after she was launched. Even if she had been finished and did not have aircraft she would have made a goood surface raider with her 8 150mm guns and large 105mm and 37mm AAW armament. It would have been quite an anomaly though.
Well all the data I’ve gathered says that she was scuttled in Stettin before anyone could capture her. Then after the war the Soviets raised her and were planning on repairing her. But in the end they decided it would cost too much or something, so they designated her PO-101, or floating base 101, might have been 01, but whatever. After designating her that they used it as a target ship for soviet pilots to train on how to sink a carrier.
Here’s a link to the wikipedia entry for the ship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_aircraft_carrier_Graf_Zeppelin
Do you still know the URL for the hull frames, I would certainly be interested in making a 1/144 R/C version, and maybe even making moulds for a fiberglass hull.
if you want can email them to you. altogether about 2meg of pictures
I guess nobody knows of a larger scale version of this ship/kit.
I’d like those diagrams you have, my e-mail is adamwehn@yahoo.com.
i am currently building the same 1/720 scale zeppelin…i added the first coat to the flight deck…im working on weathering it and trying to make it perfect.
That’s cool, I like to do my ship models as if they were fresh out of construction, no weathering or anything. Makes them more authentic in my mind.
That would be great, I’ve been thinking of tackling a carrier for while now, but I really didn’t feel like doing the 1000th Interprise or the 500th Foch, I wanted something a little more special.
My e-mail is danytalloen@skynet.be
i actually do the same exact thing…if you go to the new members section i have a link there with a bunch of pics of my ships…all of mine look like they rooled right out of drydock…so far for my zeppelin, i coated the flight deck in light tan.i let it dry then dry brushed dark brown over it to make give it an aged looked sort of…i just have to do something with the brush strokes to make them go away and it should be ready to get the detail going…im going to groove out the inlays across the flight deck.
Other than painting the flight deck I don’t plan to do anything, and I’m just curious what the final color your going to use is. All my data points to the deck being just straight armor/metal.
i painted the deck wood color just to bring out more detail.i am thinking about going over the flight deck with a very watered down gunship grey color…i think the flight deck was made of wood, like our US carriers were…here are some pics of someone else who built this carrier
http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/ships/carrier/grafzeppelin/scale.html