Italeri Biber 1/35 OOB

[Silenoz]

The biber is a 1-person submarine from the kriegsmarine, length 8.9m, width 1.6m , height 1.6m. With those dimensions these were the smallest submarines in service. They were armed with either 2 51.5cm torpedo's, 2 mines or a combination. Their main purpose was to protect the coast in case of an invasion and attacking ships/convoys near the coast.

Due to their simple construction, there were also a quantity of flaws in the design, together with insufficiently trained personnel, which caused their added value to the war effort to be almost zero, despite 342 delivered units.

The hull was made of 3mm steelplates welded together, with a cast aluminium turret placed on top. This turret has 4 windows for visibillity. In the hull there were 2 diving tanks, one in the front and one to the rear. The rudders were made from wood. Controlling the sub was hard, because of a work overload for the driver (simultaniously checking direction, depth, periscope) and no trim= and compensationtanks to reduce some of the workload. The periscope was of bad quality, and useless in night attacks. These had to be done from the surface. A lot of drivers died due to CO-intoxication (a common problem for most mini-subs) when the snorkel was filled with water. 

(bron: http://www.militarymodelling.com, Biber washed ashore with dead driver)

The drivers had missions that could last for 2 days. Therefore they received often a drug called D-IX or chocolate tablets induced with cafeïne to be able to perform without sleeping.

As armament there were either 2 TIIIc torpedo's which had a reduced battery compartment compared to the regular torpedo's, so that they were floating, 2 sea-mines, or a combination. These were transported in recesses underneath the hull, which reduced the total width. Therefore they were easy to transport over the roads on special trailers. There they were vulnerable from attacks by aircraft...

(bron: http://www.militarymodelling.com and discovery)

Operationele valeu was minimal. In the first operation from Fécamp harbor (30 augustus 1944), 22 subs were launched, 14 managed to leave the harbor, and only 2 reached their patrol area...

By attacks in the "Schelde" (harbor of Antwerp) 22/23 December 18 Bibers departed, only 1 returned and 1 allied ship was sunk. By further operations, 14 Bibers were launched without result. All were lost... On 27 december a torpedo was launched prematurely, and by "friendly fire" 11 Bibers were lost, only 3 could be recovered and made operational. Further operations were more from the same, much losses, no allied ships sunk.

 

In januari 1945 an attack was planned on a russian ship "Arkhangelsk". Bibers were brought within reach from the harbor by their larger cousins. Due to vibrations from the diesel engines, the seals started to leak and at the moment off the attack, no ships were in the harbor. Thus the attack was cancelled.

 

On to the kit:

When opening the box there are three sprues, and a lot of broken and lose parts...

 

tss....


een beetje PE en decals:


I'll try to build this kit OOB as per boxart within 4 weeks, ... No weathering is allowed.

Some ejection marks in the hull:


after a bit of scraping with a knife:


then on to the torpedo's:


These seams needed to be cleaned up. There were also some pits in the surface. i filled these with shavings from the spreus and tamiya extra thin. Works better then putty, especially for small crevices.

 

the screws were pretty screwed up... and needed a lot of attention to be presentable:


Same for the contact fuses at the tip, which are very brittle by the way, they break when looking at them..  feel free to try...

I don't know whether i will remove that seam...

 

Further to the hull then:

 

 

 

 

Would have tried to open the hatch, but there are some ejection marks there that won't be easy to be cleaned...

 

[AndyPG]

I like it.

Especially looking forward to the painting for inspiration.

 

Andy.

[Martian]

Nice work. I think it would be worth having a bash at those marks on the hatch, if it doesn't work out you haven't lost anything, just revert to plan A and glue it closed.

 

Martian 👽

[Courageous]

I second our alien friend.

 

Stuart

[Silenoz]

Will see what I'll do with the cover, meanwhile I've sanded the hull and torpedo's and checked with black primer to check for blemishes.

I chose black for 2 reasons:

 

- It is part of the camouflage, I know it's better to go for dark grey, but as it is the instructions call for black as one of the camouflage colors (as stated in the intro, it is the purpose to build this one OOB, also without deviation from the instructions)

- it makes all blemishes pop out...

 

The sanding sessions paid off, no blemishes in the hull f the sub (except for some slight scratches), some blemishes in the torpedo's but none will be visible after mounting, because these are on the side of the mounting rail....

 

 

 

I know, photographing black isn't easy...

 

 

 

[Silenoz]

Pets, a blessing or a source for disaster...

 

The sub was drying, and one of the cats used it as a toy, luckily, only the cover with the pipes broke off, as has been fixed preliminary... all tubes there didn't survive and broke off, but only one has been used as a chewing stick... unfortunately is was the rear on, so on the next pictures, you'll see the scratched replacement...

 

I added some blutack to outline the black camo and started allready applying the white before it came to mind to take some pics:

 

 

and then more blutack and on to the next color in the same way:

 

 

and now on to the final color and hoping the unpacking will bring few errors to the light...

[Silenoz]

Thx for the likes.

 

and on with more blutack:

 

 

and the final color:

 

 

and the unpacking:

 

 

oops ;-)

 

 

 

[beefy66]

Great colour scheme and a great tip for masking difficult patterns will have to try that one out  👍

 

beefy

[Silenoz]

hey Beefy66, glad to hear you want to try this out. Maybe a little how to, or how I work to apply it. 

 

First I'll start with rolling the blutack in my hands just to warm it up a bit. The tackiness of the product gets better

then I'll turn some small "sausages", make them to length (approx.) and place them crudely in place.

You can "sculpt" these as you like by hand, spatula, stick and so on just to refine the form. One thing I noticed is that the hardest part is staying within the borders, it has some kind of trompe d'oeuil effect while applying.

 

When airbrushing, try to avoid blowing paint towards the sausages (so you don't build up paint underneath), but vertically above (hard edge) or over the sausage (soft edge, also dependent on the diameter of the sausage)

 

 

[Silenoz]

Finished pics in ready for inspection, thx for following.