Looking for advice on HMS Hood circa 1938

[rs2man]

I'm only a very occasional ship model builder but I've seen photos of HMS Hood entering Grand Harbour in Valetta circa 1938 , when painted light grey overall with the red/white/blue stripes on B turret & I would like to build a model in this scheme but it seems the available kits are either earlier or later .  As far as I can tell , the Italeri 1/720 kit is probably the nearest to the configuration I want .  Can anyone give me a rough idea what modifications would be required to update the Italeri kit to 1938 configuration ? 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

1 hour ago, rs2man said:

I'm only a very occasional ship model builder but I've seen photos of HMS Hood entering Grand Harbour in Valetta circa 1938 , when painted light grey overall with the red/white/blue stripes on B turret & I would like to build a model in this scheme but it seems the available kits are either earlier or later .  As far as I can tell , the Italeri 1/720 kit is probably the nearest to the configuration I want .  Can anyone give me a rough idea what modifications would be required to update the Italeri kit to 1938 configuration ? 

 

1938 is a tricky year. The Italeri 1/720 Hood represents the ship circa 1933 just after the catapult was removed from the quarterdeck. To recreate that photographed configuration in 1938 you'd need to replace the entire bridge area from the level of the top of the armoured conning tower to small platform below the spotting top on the tripod foremast. Likewise her superstructure abaft the mainmast was reconstructed and fitted with a HACS director. The last noticeable change was the addition of 2pdr PomPoms on each beam mid-way between the funnels, which were fitted slightly outboard with curved bulges being added to fair them in.

 

Note if you do this model (and why not?  ) then be careful of following the colourised photos online - usually the 'artist' doing so doesn't understand how to tell orthochromatic from panchromatic B&W film and ignorance of official policy is a  job requirement, so the colourised version of the photograph you describe has the neutrality stripes backwards as is so common, in the French orientation. British warships wore the red stripe forward and blue back, not blue forward and red back.

[rs2man]

2 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

 

1938 is a tricky year. The Italeri 1/720 Hood represents the ship circa 1933 just after the catapult was removed from the quarterdeck. To recreate that photographed configuration in 1938 you'd need to replace the entire bridge area from the level of the top of the armoured conning tower to small platform below the spotting top on the tripod foremast. Likewise her superstructure abaft the mainmast was reconstructed and fitted with a HACS director. The last noticeable change was the addition of 2pdr PomPoms on each beam mid-way between the funnels, which were fitted slightly outboard with curved bulges being added to fair them in.

 

Note if you do this model (and why not?  ) then be careful of following the colourised photos online - usually the 'artist' doing so doesn't understand how to tell orthochromatic from panchromatic B&W film and ignorance of official policy is a  job requirement, so the colourised version of the photograph you describe has the neutrality stripes backwards as is so common, in the French orientation. British warships wore the red stripe forward and blue back, not blue forward and red back.

Hi Jamie

 

Thanks for the info , which is most informative .  I never realised that the ship changed so much between 1933 & 1938 .   I know very little about warship modelling - apart from where to buy the correct paints , of course - so that sounds like a lot of work .  Would it be easier , though much more expensive , to combine the two 1/700 Trumpeter kits ?  Alternatively , I could just paint the Italeri kit in AP507c & pretend I don't know the difference .

[Dave Swindell]

As Jamie says, 1938 is a tricky year, none of the books I have show this configuration, most show 1941, and then 1931 with nothing in between. You've got to go with documented known changes between these dates and photographic evidence to determine the configuration. The major change in configuration between these dates was to the shelterdeck area  during the 1939 refit, so this would have to be remodelled for any backdating of a 1941 kit, and means 1931 (or 33 for the Italeri kit) is probably an easier starting point.

Trumpeter gives you both 1931 and 1941 configurations in 1:700 scale, with a lot of common parts, so if money is no objective you can cross kit parts from both kits to get most if not all the features you need, however some of the later features may also need some backdating!

There were minor changes to equipment fit, notably rangefinders, searchlights and small armaments during this period as well as the changes to the bridge structure and aft conning positon Jamie notes.

Apart from the Italeri and Trumpeter kits, I think in all other scales you're stuck with backdating a 1941 configuration kit.

4 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

The last noticeable change was the addition of 2pdr PomPoms on each beam mid-way between the funnels, which were fitted slightly outboard with curved bulges being added to fair them in.

These were added in the 29/31 refit so should be in the Italeri kit.

4 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

British warships wore the red stripe forward and blue back

Thanks for confirming that Jamie, as you say, often misinterpreted or confused ( I'm often in the latter state!)

[Coors54]

I've got a 1/350th Trumpeter kit earmarked for just that period and my initial (sketchy) research is much as the others have said, difficult and open to photographic interpretation. Given that the ships configuration at the time of sinking is still throwing up new things, a definitive config for 1938 is pretty much a pipe dream.

There are a number of photographs on the Hood Association website of her time in the Med but their format is quite small so enlarging them is not an option, but they give a flavour for how she looked.

Hood seems to have been chopped and changed so much during the 1920/30's due to no major refit that it's going to be difficult for anyone to prove your model is wrong!

And I think she looks at her best in AP507c.

Make sure you do a WIP as I need some leadership!

 

Dave

 

 

[rs2man]

Many thanks to everyone for their assistance

[Noel Smith]

Some time ago Conway Maritime Press published a book about The Hood in their Anatomy of the Ship series. It is a good treatise on the ship and might yield the information needed. It has excellent photos and detail drawings of the ship and may possibly the best book on the subject. It is out of print, so ebay , specialist second hand book sellers of maybe second hand on Amazon may be the best source, or advertising a want on this forum.

Of course there are other good books on The Hood that have been published over the years.