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This is a piece I wrote on Airfix’s little 1/1200 scale Bismarck for the IPMS/USA Journal many years ago. At the time – well before its 2012 re-release as part of the “Sink the Bismarck” set – the 1973 model was a rare kit. Airfix 1/1200 Bismarck (kit 4204) Perhaps the most famous warship of all time, the German battleship Bismarck is one of those ships whose legend has come to overshadow reality. Displacing more than 50,000 tons and shipping eight massive 15 inch guns as well as an imposing array of secondary artillery, Bismarck was indeed an awesome weapon. According to a 1942 U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence assessment, “Bismarck was probably as formidable as any battleship then in service”. Yet the ship’s major claim to fame, the sinking of the HMS Hood and mauling the battleship Prince of Wales, was a bit of a fluke. The German task force was actually sailing under orders to avoid British warships in order to focus on its real mission, the destruction of merchant shipping. As it happened they were unable to elude the Royal Navy, and the epic pursuit, Battle of the Denmark Strait, and the Bismarck’s dramatic final destruction have earned the ship a kind of mythical status. Still, despite its immense firepower and the valor of its crew, the Bismarck was, in the final analysis, a dinosaur. Built and deployed at staggering cost, Germany’s most famous battleship failed utterly in its primary mission: Bismarck never sank a single merchant ship. By contrast, the U-Boats, smaller and comparatively cheap to build, were to sink over 5,000 merchant ships and nearly starve Britain out of the war. Had Germany taken to heart the lessons of the First World War and abandoned the useless big gun fleet in favor of the U-Boat arm, the Kriegsmarine could have used its over 8,300 battleship sailors to man an additional 166 U-boats at the outset of the conflict—enough to quadruple the vital submarine force at a time when Britain was most vulnerable. Splendid as they were, the very size, power, and cost of the mighty Bismarck and the other battleships may well have cost Germany the critical Battle of the Atlantic. This kit was one of Airfix’s first 1/1200 “Naval History Series” clip-together models issued in 1973. I hadn’t even heard of this series until recently; apparently there was also a Prinz Eugen, Hood, Ark Royal, Suffolk, and a Tribal class destroyer (all ships involved in the Bismarck chase). These kits have long been out of production, but you can often find them on auction sites fairly cheap (I paid less than ten bucks for this one). The 50 gray plastic parts assemble into a basic but good looking little battleship. The waterline hull is a single part with a solid bottom and separate single-piece main deck, so there are none of those annoying mid-deck seams so common on larger scale kits. This is fortunate since the raised deck planking is beautifully delicate. In fact, it is some of the best I’ve seen in any scale—they really got it right way back in 1973! I wish more model manufacturers had continued this style of depiction for planked decks, so much more effective than the overdone trench lines so often seen today. Assorted deck hardware is also well done with bitts, hatches, vents, and other details sharply depicted. Unfortunately, the model overall doesn’t quite capture the graceful lines of the original. The length/beam dimensions are right, but the hull form is too pudgy fore and aft. Also, the armor belt is too low, and the numerous portholes are missing. Worse, the funnel, superstructures and aft turrets are placed just a little too far back. The problem isn’t too noticeable until you get to the fantail, which is about 20 scale feet too short as a result. The superstructure is simplified. The distinctive spherical hoods of the 4m type SL-8 antiaircraft directors are molded integrally with the superstructure and represented as rounded tops on the mounts rather than as spherical shapes. Not very good. Also, the aft mounts shouldn’t have the hoods at all (unless you intend to build the model as the Tirpitz). The two-part funnel is hollow with an open grating represented on the top. Main turrets are ok, except that the barrels are about 6 scale feet too long and the rangefinder hoods extend too far down the sides—but they are fixable. The 150mm secondary turrets have simplified shapes and the barrels are also too long. In addition, the ‘midships pair of secondary mounts just forward of the funnel should have rangefinder “ears”. Smaller parts vary in quality from fair to excellent. The tiny Arado Ar-196 floatplane is only so-so with no floats and an overlarge canopy, but the aircraft/boat handling cranes are fairly good. The 10.5m rangefinders atop the superstructures are delicately rendered, as are the masts. The best parts are the ship’s boats, 37mm, and 105mm antiaircraft guns, which rival comparable parts in many larger scale kits—if this kit were more readily available I would be tempted to raid these to outfit a Revell 1/1200 scale Scharnhorst or Gneisenau. Incidentally, this kit is unrelated to the 1/1200 scale Bismarck/Tirpitz kits currently marketed by Revell Germany as part of their “Miniships” line. Those models seem to be reissues of the old Casadio/ESCI kit, which was mediocre at best. Though harder to find, Airfix’s model is much better. This is a clip-together model, so assembly was a piece of cake. The deck, hull, superstructure, and funnel went together in a matter of minutes. The kit parts look decent, but the bulkheads and hull sides are almost completely featureless. The only details in evidence are the numerous “Aztec temple” style inclined ladders on the decks. I’ve never been a fan of these, but in this small scale they actually don’t look too bad, so I left them. To add a bit of further visual interest to the plain bulkheads I added some of the many portholes with which Bismarck was festooned. Using line drawings of the ship reduced to 1/1200 scale on a copier as a guide, I drilled out over 140 of these things using a tiny #77 bit chucked into my X-acto. These little scuttles were a simple (if tedious) way to busy up the highly visible surfaces. It was not a very difficult operation, just requiring a bit of care to keep the holes evenly spaced and in line. The wood decks were excellent, with delicate molded plank detail and various hatches, breakwaters, and assorted deck gear cleanly rendered. One small problem here was on the second deck between forward superstructure and aircraft catapult, which Airfix had depicted as wood. It was actually unplanked steel on the real ship, but a little sanding and it was good to go. The configuration of the ground tackle and forecastle deck was also a little off from my references, so I removed the molded anchor chains and corrected the area as best I could. Airfix did not provide anchors, so I fitted the ship with new photoetch anchors and chains (Tom’s Modelworks 1/700 scale photoetched brass anchor set #724) both here and at the stern. Next came the weapons. The main 15 inch turrets, molded integrally with the guns, came first. These weren’t perfectly accurate, but the only changes made were to reduce the thickness of the rangefinder “ears” (the kit parts came down too far) and to hollow out the muzzles using the tip of a new #11 X-acto blade. An additional alteration was to remove the rangefinders entirely from turret Anton, the forward turret. Airfix depicted these rangefinders in place, which was correct for the ship as built. However, during initial trials the Germans found them to be useless in that position due to seas over the bow, and they soon removed them. The smaller 150mm secondary turrets were similar to the main guns, except I didn’t hollow out the muzzles (a dab of black paint at the ends is enough to fool the eye in 1/1200). The 105mm and 37mm antiaircraft guns were fine out of the box, just needing a minimum amount of mold clean up. The kit omits the 20mm single mounts entirely, but they would have been almost invisible in this very small scale anyway. Sensors and fire control fittings varied in quality. The 10.5m rangefinders atop the superstructures were nicely depicted, the only improvements here being to add small photoetched screen material to the radar faces. The armored domes for the type 1937 rangefinders, on the other hand, were pretty poor. I didn’t take the trouble to replace them with corrected spherical shapes, but I did remove the domes from the aft mounts. The Airfix mold makers probably used builder’s plans showing these in place, but in fact Bismarck was rushed into service and the planned domes were never fitted to these positions. I removed them and filled the empty mounts with parts adapted from spare 1/700 Japanese destroyer rangefinders. The parts box also yielded searchlights to fill empty positions near the mainmast and on the main tower. The ship’s boats, cranes, and aircraft were ok from the kit, if lacking in detail. The masts weren’t bad either, except that the mainmast was way too tall. I ended up using only the lower half of it and fabricating the upper part from portions of the kit part, copper wire, and leftover photoetch bits. The other masts and rigging were made up in the same way. Some additional detail for the aircraft catapult and the two small triangular cranes on the after part of the funnel were also 1/700 scale photoetch leftovers pressed into service. The most fiddly part of the build was the railing. Now 1/1200 scale is very small indeed (1 inch equals 100 feet!), and I’d never tried to rail a ship this small before. Still, it would look very cool if I could pull it off, so I ordered the only set I knew of designed for such a small scale, Tom’s Modelworks’ 1/1250 3-bar photoetch brass railing. When the rails arrived, I couldn’t believe it! These things were unbelievably fine, consistent, and in-scale. The shiny brass parts were just beautiful, and I couldn’t wait to try them out. I painted them up, cut out a test section and glued it on and they looked, well… disappointing. What happened? The rails were straight, consistent, and in-scale as expected. The problem was, these things were actually too fine. Yeah, they were correct, but I could barely see those test runs once they were on! I decided to try another approach. I had some 1/600 scale railing on hand (Gold Medal Models Merchant Ship detail set #600-2), so I took a length of 4-bar rails from the set and cut them down lengthwise to create 2-bar rails a little less than 1/16th of an inch high. Though still small, these rails were somewhat less delicate than the brass set—and looked much better. The stainless steel photoetch was not easy to cut (my scissors were junk by the end of this project), but these rails worked great. I liked this tougher material, which was less prone to damage than the softer brass. Methodically trimming each run down was not the most exciting of tasks, but once cut the rails went on without any problems. And I was satisfied with the final effect: busy, delicate, yet still clearly visible, even if you do have to move in close to see it! The Bismarck carried a number of paint schemes during its short existence, but its most colorful was the scheme worn between March and May 1941 while working up in the Baltic Sea. The colors consisted of Hellgrau 50 (aka Silbergrau, or silver gray) superstructure and upper works and Dunkelgrau 51 (aka Fehgrau, or squirrel gray) hull. Dunkelgrau 53 (aka Anthrazitgrau, or anthracite gray) was painted on the hull ends fore and aft in an attempt to shorten the apparent length of the vessel, complete with white false wakes to enhance the illusion. The primary and secondary turrets were Silbergrau with dark gray tops (not maroon as is sometimes depicted). The teak decks were left unpainted wood, and the steel decks were dark gray. Aerial recognition panels, each with a large black swastika inside a white circle on red panel, were painted on the main deck fore and aft. The most distinctive aspects of the scheme were large, angular black and white stripes across the hull and superstructure. I don’t know how these were supposed to work; maybe they were to disrupt directional observation, or perhaps the black and white bands were supposed somehow to blend visually with the background at a distance, or they might have been intended to make identifying the ship more difficult by obscuring the ship’s configuration. In any case, U.S. Naval intelligence assessment of the stripes’ effectiveness as camouflage was scathing, dismissing them as “ineffective.” They still looked kinda cool though! Finding paints to approximate the various colors was not difficult. Model Master Italian Blue Gray (lightened) was a reasonable match for Silbergrau, while Model Master Neutral Gray worked for Fehgrau and Model Master Gunship Gray stood in for Anthrazitgrau. I used a lightened Model Master Armor Sand for the wood decks, Model Master French Khaki for the floatplane, and the boats were painted with Model Master Military Brown. Out of sheer laziness I brush painted the entire project, but if I were to do it again I would use the airbrush to get a more even finish. Bridge windows were little squares cut from black decal scraps as were the vision slits in the armored tower. The Hakenkreuz air recognition markings are decals from I-94 Enterprises www.I-94enterprises.com (product GR-105, German WWII Battle and Air Recognition Flags for 20mm-1/285 armor). Intended for armor models, they aren’t 100% correct for the Bismarck, as they should cover a larger deck area and the swastikas shouldn’t have the quarter turn, but they still look good. I had originally intended to use larger, more appropriately sized panels adapted from a 1/48 aircraft decal, but the larger size tended to highlight the model’s too-short fantail. These markings actually worked better! Airfix’s little 1/1200 scale Bismarck is an attractive model, noticeably superior to the more widely available Revell “Miniships” Bismarck/Tirpitz. If you want a small scale Bismarck for your fleet (and aren’t bothered by a few inaccuracies), this kit is an inexpensive, fun choice! References http://www.kbismarck.com/ A terrific website with info on all things Bismarck including color profiles of the ship and a great model gallery. http://www.bismarck-class.dk/ Another excellent website with lots of Bismarck info. http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq118-2.htm An interesting summary of the Bismarck sortie prepared by the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence in 1942.

Most recently released by Revell Germany, this small scale Yamato was originally produced the Italian company Casadio as one of their pre-assembled "Miniships" way back in the early 1970s. Over the years It has been reissued many times as an unassembled kit by Revell UK and Almark in England, Revell/West Germany, ESCI in Italy, Sablon in France, and by both Model Power and MPC in the United States. The same plastic has also been marketed as the Musashi. Apparently the only differences among the various releases have been in the instructions and box art. This toy/model from the early 1970s is a very simplified, snap-together affair designed for quick building. When I built it as a kid back then I was among those for whom the kit was apparently designed: wargamers and young modelers (even though it was snap-together, the instructions recommended kid-friendly NOTOX plastic glue... I can still remember the weird lemon scent of that stuff!) At the time I liked the snap together design, but the poor fit of the parts was annoying. And the model is very basic: while the one piece hull is recognizably a Yamato, the shape is vague and toylike. The complex main guns and funnel are reduced to single parts, and the prominent mainmast is missing entirely. Aircraft are only generalized single float monoplane representations, in any case wrong; if they are meant to be Aichi E13A "Jakes", they should have twin floats, if Mitsubishi F1M "Petes" they should be biplanes. The 127mm type 89 guns are only vaguely correct, and the numerous 25mm triples are molded directly to the decks and turrets. Still, the kit has its good points. First of all, at a mere 27 parts the ship goes together quickly, and although basic, I remember that the completed model does resemble the Yamato. The bridge windows are neatly represented as recessed squares, and two alternate main turrets are provided so you can depict the ship at an earlier point in her career before she got the extra antiaircraft guns on the turret tops, or perhaps as the Musashi. Examining the parts this time around, I was struck by the crudeness of the molding with its chunky shapes, flash, goofy pits and bumps... but oh, well. At least the simplified kit wouldn’t tempt me to go nuts superdetailing it! Refering to the overall general arrangement drawing from Janusz Skulski’s Anatomy of the Ship - The Battleship Yamato, the model rides a little high, so I sanded about 2mm from the hull bottom. The hull shape is mostly ok otherwise ...except the bow. After gluing the deck down I added a plastic shim and sanded things into a little better shape. There is adequate representation of planking on the main deck, but the second deck was also shown planked – this particular deck was actually steel, so I sanded the area smooth. A bigger problem was the configuration of the antiaircraft guns. The model is pretty accurate for Yamato (or Musashi) in October, 1944 (Battle of Leyte Gulf) with all those 25mm singles on the main deck. Unfortunately, it also has the six additional 25mm triples along the deck edge amidships which were added to Yamato only later when the single mounts were removed, so the model as is wouldn’t be accurate for either time frame. The simplest fix would have been to remove the center six 25mm triple mounts and go for a Leyte Gulf Yamato, but I liked the powerful look of those triples all lined up on the deck edge. Keeping these meant going for a Yamato in her final 1945 configuration. The 1945 Yamato would require eight more 25mm triple mounts, so I bought a second kit to raid for parts. After trimming off all those 25mm singles (24 of them!), I added the eight 25mm triples from the spare kit in the appropriate places to make an April, 1945 Yamato. ] It was a lot more alteration than I had originally intended, but the mini battlewagon’s air defense is now more accurate for 1945! The main 18 inch guns, though reasonable, were too long compared with my references. Cutting the ends down was the obvious solution, but then the steps in the barrels would have ended up too far forward. Doh! To solve this I removed the barrels, drilled holes in the turret faces and reinstalled the rifles with much of their length pushed inside the turrets. This left guns of the correct exterior length with the steps where they should be. After that I drilled out the tips of the 18 inch barrels with my X-acto and added Milliput blast bags. Also, I improved the aft fire control station (part #12) by combining it with the forward fire control optic array (part #13 with the radars removed) from the spare kit. One of the strengths of this little snap-together kit is the combat bridge windows which are clearly defined, even see-through from the sides in places. I left the kit tower pretty much as is except for a simple wind baffle over the combat bridge using a part from a wrecked 1/350 Tamiya Musashi as a guide. I also replaced the solid kit radars with simple photoetch parts. These were re-purposed floater net baskets from a Gold Medal Models 1/700 scale WW2 USN Cruiser/Destroyer Fittings set. I wanted to avoid scratchbuilding for this quick battleship project, but a shortcoming of this kit is the absence of any representation of the Yamato’s distinctive mainmast. That mast was just too prominent a feature to ignore, so I went ahead and built one up using Detail Associates (part 2505) .015 inch diameter brass wire. This makes for a scale mast about 1½ scale feet thick in 1/1200. Since the complex-looking mast assembly measures a mere ¾ of an inch in height, I made only a simplified representation of it. This model is certainly no masterpiece of the kit maker's art, but it was superior to comparable Pyro and Lindberg offerings of the time, and it is still way less expensive than the various pre-assembled wargaming and collector models out there. I spent less than ten bucks for it, so taken for what it is, this little Yamato isn’t a bad kit at all.

Hello everybody, Before posting my latest 1:1200 battleship, the HMS Rodney, I present the three ships I built first, all in 2020: the German Bismarck, the British King George V, and the Japanese Yamato. While they might be too rusty, and King George V's color scheme is from pure Revell designer's fantasy (in the beginning I didn't question the properness of such plans) you can detect a slight increase in my modelling skills. In addition, the setting for taking the pictures isn't too atmospheric. However, these days I don't build them out of the box anymore, because my aspiration for accuracy and detail has grown. That's why it took me more than a year to complete the Rodney, which's pictures will follow soon... Cheers, Leo

Dearest Brits and modellers, Let me present the result of my leisure hours from mid 2021 until early 2023: HMS Rodney in 1/1200. For more details about the building proces please check https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235125214-hms-rodney-11200-the-progress/ For now, let the music play (some imperial pathos might be accurate at this occasion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2c5QHtgFxY) and the pictures speak (thanks to Felix Streuli for his great job presenting the model in the right light):

Hello everybody, In this thread, I want to show you the HMS Rodney's development from a shapeways "fine detail plastic" 3D-print in 1/1200 into an even more detailed "pocket battleship" with self-built elements. Another challenge beside the refining were adaptions which had to be done to represent the ship in the conditions of May 27th 1941 when the famous battle against the German battleship Bismarck took place, because the original 3D-print shows the ship in its appearance in 1942/43. I was quite surprised that there is no assembly kit or plans / scheme / pictures on the net or in books showing the ships conditions on that decisive date! However, of greatest help for the research where the two books "HMS Rodney: Slayer of the Bismarck and D-Day Saviour" from Iain Ballantyne and "Rodney and Nelson (ShipCraft Book 23)" from Les and Robert Brown. Here you see the original workpiece, the numbers indicating parts I had to scrap of and to replace by modified PE or self-built lead sheet parts, and tools I do work with:

Johnny Horton, you don't know what you've started! I bought this set back in 2011, cost 28 Euro. It seems like only yesterday. Actually, it seems like only yesterday when I first "built" the Bismarck, circa 1978. I built it again in 1984, but I've never built any of the other kits. It's a pity Airfix never added more ships to the original "Naval History" range. Surely a KGV/PoW kit, and another of Rodney, would both have been sure-fire winners? Almost all the parts (nearly 300) seem in good condition. These kits are going to be built mostly out of the box. Some parts may have to be thinned (masts, some guns). The first task will be to cut the Bismarck hull down to size, which could take a while. Basically, I'll have to remove the base, and maybe a small bit more. I prevaricated over what to build, but I didn't want to renege on my original commitment to build something "floaty". I thought about the Airfix Belfast, but as someone else is doing that, I came back to this set. Other candidates included the Revell 1/700 Tirpitz, and even the ancient 1959 Revell HMS Victory. In the case of the latter, sanity eventually prevailed, and I put it back into storage. I also thought briefly about the Heller 1/400 KGV, and even the Trumpeter 1/700 Hood (1941), which is actually a considerably more complex and detailed kit. The Heller 1/400 Jean Bart and Richelieu were both briefly considered, but they are going to be kept for the proverbial rainy day, or more likely retirement. Ditto for the Revell (ex-Otaki) 1/350 Missouri. I'm not committed to any other Group Builds for the next few months, but I do have plenty of other "in progress" kits (and then some) that need to be completed. Between that and the fact that I rarely build ship kits nowadays, this set seemed the sensible, if somewhat conservative choice. If time allows, I may add another kit to the build.

Aircraft Carrier HMS Ark Royal – Airfix 1/1200 This one is a small but nice snap-together kit from 1976 that was designed to go together quickly. This is another quick build, so I plan to forgo any improvements to this one and simply bang it together as God and Airfix intended! Airfix cleverly depicted the hangar and other decks visible behind the Ark’s outer skin with snap-in inserts. The insert boat and hangar decks go aboard quickly, and they impart a pleasing sense of depth and complexity to these areas. Snap! On goes the flight deck. The little Ark’s island was a sraightforward assembly; only six parts, including a lower section which was already molded as part of the flight deck piece. Cleanup of the small parts was simple but fiddly. A homemade sanding stick helped! The only glitch was a set of visible locator pins inside the funnel halves, but these were easily removed. Although the well engineered parts do snap securely together, I’ve been cementing everything in place anyway for a more positive fit. The mast consisted of two parts which fit together well – that is after I figured out that the instructions had incorrectly shown the mast mounted backwards so that the little mounting pips for the support legs faced the wrong way! Still, I appreciate this little kit more and more as I work with it: the parts are so small I hadn’t even noticed the faint depressions at the front of the bridge until I saw this enlarged image. Bridge windows! Some of the nicest moldings were the eight tiny radio antennas. Though only 12mm in length, they show Airfix’s game attempt to depict the lattice structure of the originals. Here’s Airfix’s 1976 HMS Ark Royal finished out of the box with no alterations other than parts clean up. Out of production since the 1970s, Airfix has finally re-released this kit, along with a 1/1200 Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, Hood, Sufolk, and Tribal class destroyers as a combined “Sink the Bismarck” set. Very cool. Having finished the little Ark Royal with an out-of-the-box unpainted build, I liked the kit so much I went and bought the new Airfix “Sink the Bismarck” set to get the 1/1200 Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, Hood, Suffolk, and destroyers to go with it. Upon opening the box I was surprised to find a flight deck stripe decal for the Ark – a nice plus not in the original 1976 release I built! This was so cool I went ahead and shot the Ark with a coat of Model Master Acryl 4755 Dark Gull Gray (approximate for 507B) and again with a darker mix of Dark Gull Gray and 4752 Gunship Gray to highlight the catapults and lifts. After coat of Future to gloss the surface, the flight deck stripe went down with no problem. Even the clear decal film within the circle aft disappeared completely under a second coat. Sweet. I love it when companies add value to re-releases with little upgrades like this. Go Airfix! After the gloss coat was dry I reinstalled the masts and gave the ship a thin wash of Grumbacher Raw Umber artist’s oil with a bit of Titanium White & Ivory black added to grey it down. The mixture was also applied to weather the hull sides (unfortunately, I may have gone a little too subtle earlier with the catapult and lift color contrasts, since they almost disappear under the oil wash...) Airfix had provided faint depressions to represent the bridge windows, but I added a decal to make them more visible. This was a cut down set of victory markings from a 1/72 German fighter aircraft - you never know when those odds and ends you keep in the scrap box will come in handy! This is a great little kit, highly underrated.

Hi I will try to build HMT Olympic in 1919 dazzle scheme out of Revells 1/1200 Titanic kit. Since model has full hull, start has been made by water-lining. Here are some photos during the process. Next steps involve lot of sanding and creating new waterline plate... Cheers!!! Rade

Hi all, I'm mostly an aircraft modeller but have the Airfix Sink the Bismarck set as well as a couple of Revell 1/1200's in the stash. I've never built any ships before and was just wondering how much love there is out there for 1/1200 ships. Cheers eveyone, Viv

This is the 1/1200 scale model of the Norwegian cruiseferry MS colour Fantasy (launched 2004) released by Revell. She plies the waters between Oslo and Kiel in Germany, and at 75,000 gross tonnes, is the second largest crusieferry in the world – surpassed by her sister ship MS colour Magic. The model was a joy to build with a great parts fit and excellent decals. Painting was a little tricky in places and I elected early on to drill out the cabin windows with a pin vice.