Home » The Rest » 1/700 Admiral Hipper 1941, Pit Road W157 Unboxing

Share This Post

Military | The Rest

1/700 Admiral Hipper 1941, Pit Road W157 Unboxing

Available at HobbyLink Japan

20160924_114528

Admiral Hipper, the first of five ships of her class, was the lead ship of the Admiral Hipper class of heavy cruisers which served with Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine during World War II. The ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1935 and launched February 1937; Admiral Hipper entered service shortly before the outbreak of war, in April 1939. The ship was named after Admiral Franz von Hipper, commander of the German battlecruiser squadron during the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and later commander-in-chief of the German High Seas Fleet.

Admiral Hipper saw a significant amount of action during the war. She led the assault on Trondheim during Operation Weserübung; while en route to her objective, she sank the British destroyer HMS Glowworm. In December 1940, she broke out into the Atlantic Ocean to operate against Allied merchant shipping, though this operation ended without significant success. In February 1941, Admiral Hipper sortied again, sinking several merchant vessels before eventually returning to Germany via the Denmark Strait. The ship was then transferred to northern Norway to participate in operations against convoys to the Soviet Union, culminating in the Battle of the Barents Sea on December 21, 1942, where she sank the destroyer Achates and the minesweeper Bramble but was in turn damaged and forced to withdraw by the light cruisers HMS Sheffield and HMS Jamaica.

Disappointed by the failure to sink merchant ships in that battle, Adolf Hitler ordered the majority of the surface warships scrapped, though Admiral Karl Dönitz was able to convince Hitler to retain the surface fleet. As a result, Admiral Hipper was returned to Germany and decommissioned for repairs. The ship was never restored to operational status, however, and on May 3, 1945, Royal Air Force bombers severely damaged her while she was in Kiel. Her crew scuttled the ship at her moorings, and in July 1945, she was raised and towed to Heikendorfer Bay. She was ultimately broken up for scrap in 1948–1952 and her bell is currently on display at the Laboe Naval Memorial (From Wikipedia).

The Pit-Road kit number W105 is a rebox of the Trumpeter kit and consists of light gray sprues. Hull pieces are provided in two red styrene parts, one for full hull and the second for waterline, with a clear sprue for the Arado 196A seaplane, a decal sheet, a black Trumpeter-style plastic display stand for the full hull version, a color sheet which includes painting instructions, and a black and white instruction booklet.

The model is very well cast with good details, and could be built into an impressive model straight out of the box.

Construction starts with the upper hull and deck. The fit seems very well, though fitting the lower full hull section to the upper hull may require some fixing as they are not exactly aligned.

At this stage working on the deck details such as the main batteries and cutters is done, and construction continues to building the superstructure.

I would recommend not to glue the small subassemblies and detail to the deck, but paint them separately and fixing them at the later construction stages, especially if planning to use an aftermarket wood deck. Also, in order to ease painting the tan wood deck, it would be better to leave the details for later stages.

When all the superstructure subassemblies are complete, the model can be brought together. The ship displayed a camouflaged painting scheme of dark and light gray with hard edges. This can be achieved by masking with Tamiya’s masking tape or similar items and it would be much easier to paint the hull and superstructure separately and then glue them all together.

The painting instructions are clear, and many color options are provided including Vallejo, Gunze, Model Master, Tamiya, and Humbrol.

There are a number of aftermarket sets available for this model. I would recommend using at least a PE detail set as the ship would benefit from extra details. It’s also possible to add a wood deck, and replace the masts and barrels. The ship is impressive and very slick looking, and can be upgraded with some aftermarket love.

Another fine offering from Trumpeter/Pit Road, and highly recommended.

Share This Post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.