S-56, 1/350, AMP

Another addition to my submarines collection.

S-56 is one of the famous Soviet subs.  She was built for Soviet Pacific Fleet, but with the beginning of World War 2 S-56 had to move to the European  waters. On October 5, 1942 S-56 under captain-lieutenant Schedrin command with her sister-ships S-51 and S-54 began her 16700-miles long voyage through the Pacific, Panama Channel, Atlantic Ocean to the Soviet North Fleet. During 1943-1945 S-56 performed 8 patrols and destroyed 4 enemy ships. After the war, in 1953, S-56 passed to Vladivostok and became first Soviet submarine completed round-the-globe voyage. Nowadays S-56 stays at Vladivostok as a museum ship.

The AMP kit is a short-run, but not to hard to work with. I've added some etched parts and made guns by myself. The kit contains etched parts from Eduard, but unfortunately many of them are too big comparing to the photos and drawings. The model is painted with ModelMaster enamels and some oil weathering.

U7, 1/350, Scratchbuild

German U-Boots of WWI are rare subjects in 1/350 scale. This is my scratchbuilded model of U7 – one from the first large series of German submarines (U5-U8). The submarines were equipped with Kerting engines. The next series (U9-U12) was based on the modified project. Eight boats of these two series formed the core of the pre-war German submarine fleet.

The original idea was to build a model of the famous U9, however, it was hard to find acceptable drawings. So I continued with U7. U7 took part in first patrol of the Kaiser's submarines right after the declaration of war against Great Britain. Her service lasted less than one year (August 6, 1914 - March 4, 1915).

Article on building this model was published in Russian M-Hobby magazine.