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Hi all,

I am starting a 1/350 Royal Navy fleet and I am looking your answer to this question:

What is the most historically significant ship in the Royal Navy fleet?  I am open to all eras and any type of vessel. If you have a model and manufacturer in mind I would appreciate knowing your picks.  I am looking at the models below but I am open to any and all models.

 

1/350 Tamiya Prince of Wales Battleship

1/350 Trumpeter HMS Zulu British Tribal Class Destroyer 1941 Kit

1/350 I Love Kits HMS Ark Royal 1939

1/350 Trumpeter HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH

1/350 Trumpeter HMS Zulu British Tribal Class Destroyer 1941 Kit

1/350 Trumpeter HMS HOOD

 

Thanks for the feedback, and, happy modelling!

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Historically significant? If you're talking after the age of sail then:

 

HMS Warspite - Queen Elizabeth Class for both World wars

HMS Sheffield - Town Class, World War II

HMS Dreadnaught - 1906 for technical development

HMS Illustrious - Illustrious Class  - Taranto

HMS Victorious - Illustrious Class - Op Pedastal

 

I don't know if there's a Sheffield in 1/350. Belfast is available She saw a lot of action. I don't think there is a WWI Warspite but there are ones in the WWII configuration.. No Illustrious that I know of.

 

Stuart

 

 

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Thank you all for the input.  I live across the pond so my context is limited in terms of what British ships rise to the level of historically significant.  I am going to do some reading on the ships that were mentioned above so that I can learn about why these vessels were important.  

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Depends on what you mean by historically significant, the Royal Navy goes back a fair ways, so the limiting factor is probably going to be your choice of scale and whether you want to do ships in the age of sail, pre-dreadnoughts etc.

 

In terms of battle honours, there is a link on this page: http://www.royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk/Battle_hons.htm. These transfer so whilst Warspite has a metric ton, its the WW1-2 variant that is the most decorated individual ship.

 

If we're going by famous, Victory, Mary Rose,  Warrior are likely in contention due to their museum status as well as actual careers (esp the former) or technological development (esp the latter). But you could make an argument for the Mora (William the Conqueror's flagship, so not RN but still). If you want just powerful brute force, something like the Rodney might be included, any ship that laid waste to the Bismarck is a good contender and is quite unusual looking (and has some quite nice camo).

 

During the period of 'Pax Britannica', there is a whole roster of significant ships that never really saw much action, but are fundamental to development of modern warships, HMS Devastation (first class of ocean-going capital ship that did not carry sails, and the first whose entire main armament was mounted on top of the hull rather than inside it - wiki) springs to mind. Cool name too. The Nemesis 1839 is another, but I don't think you could really, strictly say RN and good luck finding a model of her, and you may not be content building something so heavily involved in the Opium Wars. If this is what you mean by significant I recommend a trawl through wikipedia and scalemates to find the one(s) you're most interested in. Wiki will detail how the classes lead from one to the other, but be warned you'll be spending more time researching than modelling...

 

Vanguard as the last RN battleship would be another contender and is a looker, Iron Duke as Jellicoe's flagship, the WW1 battlecruisers ofc... and we havent even gotten to non-capital ships. Prince of Wales for the dubious honour of being a modern capital ship sunk whilst underway in open water? Err, Dreadnought as the UK's first SSN, Thomas, Sovereign of the Seas, Henry Grace A'Dieu, Prince, Golden Hind, Revenge, if you want sails...the list goes on and on.

 

So unless you want an armada, you may want to put in some constraints on how big a fleet you want. In terms of single most historical ship, well imo there's only really one contender and she's my profile pic. A grand old lady who despises the knocks of war.

 

David

Ps, my profile pic is ofc THE Warspite.

Edited by Adm Lord De Univers
tired
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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you for the insight, and you make several very good points. I am going to take your advice and put some constraints on the size of my fleet (but an Armada sounds good.). I am admittedly obsessive and I see alot of ships in my future.

Edited by Brian Wilkins
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Although not in your preferred scale, include a Mary Rose and/or HMS Victory [usually about 1/400] just to show the difference in size of one of these early ships to the more modern warships

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I think your idea is brilliant.  I love the notion of lining up the 227' HMS Victory next to  the 613' HMS Belfast (or similar modern RN warship) to show the size difference.

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Gidday Brian, for a comparison how about HMS Victory and HMS Nelson/Rodney? The 104 gun three deck HMS Victory may not have been the most powerful ship of her day (I think there may have been some four deckers) but I think she came close. I've also read that at the time of their completion HMS Nelson/Rodney with nine 16-inch guns were the most powerful in the world.

     Just a thought. Regards, Jeff.

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