HMS Plymouth, MT Miniatures 1:700

[Shar2]

HMS Plymouth

MT Miniatures1:700

HMS Plymouth is a Rothesay-class frigate, which served from 1959 to 1988. She was built at Devonport Dockyard, in her namesake city of Plymouth, and launched by Viscountess Astor on 20 July 1959. During her commissions, Plymouth served in a variety of locations, including the Far East and Australia. She saw action in the Cod Wars between the United Kingdom and Iceland and also the Falklands War in 1982. In which not only was she the ship on which the surrender of the Argentine forces on South Georgia was signed, but was also hit by five bombs and cannon fire during the landings of The Falklands Islands, all the bombs failed to explode and the ship was saved through good damage control and fire fighting. The following year, she served as the West Indies guard ship. On 11 March 1984 she was involved in a collision with the German Köln-class frigate Braunschweig and in 1986 she suffered a boiler room fire, killing two sailors. HMS Plymouth was decommissioned on 28 April 1988, and was the last Type 12 in service.

The model

The model is packaged in a plain brown cardboard box, on which a picture of the completed kit and the kit details are printed. Inside, the parts are in separate poly bags and covered in poly chips. The instructions, consisting of a single side of A4 are really just an exploded view of the parts with arrow point to their positions. They are not particularly clear and will take some patience to decipher. The hull and superstructure of the ship is moulded as one complete, waterline part. The moulding is very good with some very finely done detail. The only clean up required is the moulding stub under the stern, and a couple of points on the funnel, transom and mainmast.

The metal parts, which consist of the main twin 4.5" turret, two 20mm Oerlikons, director, foremast, ships boat, seacat launcher, limbo mortar, search radar, and navigation radar. These parts look a little rough and will take quite a bit of cleaning up before fitting, whilst the main turret looks slightly odd, perhaps a little too long and the guns are of different lengths, but this can easily be sorted. The Limbo mortar also looks slightly too large. The ships boat appears to have been moulded the wrong way round in that the davits are on the wrong side and. If launched, the boat would be lowered into the water stern first. The Wasp helicopter is very basic and needs quite a bit of flash to be removed.

The small etched sheet is a generic set, based on all the Rothesay class that MT Miniatures do, but gives the Plymouth the required yards, railings, flightdeck netting, and the fore and aft flag staffs. There is a separate fret containing just the main rotor for the Wasp which doesn't appear to be correct, in that it has wider chord tips thatn the rest of the rotor blades. The brass is well etched and with very fine detail, so care will need to be taken when fitting the parts to the model.

The three tiny decal sheets provide the ships pennant numbers, Union flag and Ensign, plus the flightdeck markings.

Conclusion

Whilst it is very nice to have a Type 12 frigate in model form, and considering the work that the designer has taken with detailing the hull and superstructure, it is a shame that the same amount of care wasn't taken with the metal parts. I may have been spoilt with what I see other companies do in this scale, and feel that this could have been an excellent model, rather than just nice and good in parts. I can recommend this model as long as you're prepared to put some work into it.

Review sample courtesy of:

[Chris Hewitt]

A very fair review