Merchant/Transport Ships Completed

As the next stage in the WWII naval project I wanted to complete a small contingent of merchant and transport ships, to be used in convoy games or campaigns. The Queen Mary is the largest model in the GHQ WWII range, bigger than even their largest battleships, but proved more fiddly than I was expecting as all the lifeboats had to be glued to the ship in pairs. It was painted grey prior to undertaking transport duties across the Atlantic, and accordingly was nicknamed the 'Grey Ghost'. With a top speed of 32 knots it could outrun German U-boats and was an obvious choice to transport up to nearly 16,000 troops at a time:

 

The Circassia was another passenger ship which was requisitioned by the Admiralty for transport duties, albeit much smaller:

Here it is alongside the Queen Mary for comparison:

Next up are four merchant ships in the Clan Macauley and Tower Hill:

The New Zealand ship Otaio and the merchant vessel Gran, so-called because it was crewed by volunteer ladies all over 70 (sorry, couldn't help it):

Of course, no merchant fleet would be complete without the famous Liberty ships, and I have included three in the Ara, Alnitah and Murzim:

These models came with 1/2400th scale Sherman tanks and 2 and 1/2 ton trucks, which I painted separately and glued in place. At least my painting tally this year will include a dozen Sherman tanks and fourteen trucks:

Finally, the USS Capella completes the Allied merchant fleet:

 

A total of ten ships in all, which should be enough for a decent-sized convoy game and give my escort ships something to protect:

Next up the penultimate fleet in this project, the Regia Marina or Royal Italian Navy.

Royal Navy Fleet Completed

The last of the Royal Navy ships were finished a week or so ago, with the completed Royal Navy fleet now taking its place alongside the US Navy, Imperial Japanese Navy and Kriegsmarine. Given that the Royal Navy ships were the first I started it is nice to finally complete them. The last batch includes the Nelson and two Queen Elizabeth class battleships, the Barham and Valiant:

Two more King George V class battleships in the Duke of York and Howe:

and HMS Resolution:

Four more County class heavy cruisers include the Cornwall and Shropshire:

And the two Australian County Class cruisers Australia and Canberra both in their 'Chicago blue' colour schemes which they adopted for operations alongside the US Navy in the Pacific. As mentioned previously the Canberra was sunk and a US Baltimore class cruiser named in its honour later in the war, while the Australia was the first Allied ship to come under kamikaze attack and was subsequently hit by them another six times, suffering the most kamikaze attacks of any ship during the war:

Additional light cruisers completed include HMS Manchester and Belfast:

Three RAN Leander class cruisers in HMAS Perth, Sydney and Hobart:

And another Dido class anti-aircraft light cruiser, HMS Argonaut:

Two Fiji class light cruisers, HMS Fiji and Bermuda, plus HMNZS Dunedin and HMS Dauntless complete the light cruiser additions:

I also added three 'O' class destroyers, Onslow, Offa and Onslaught, to bring the total number of destroyers to fifteen:

As we are planning a few convoy games, I decided to add several corvettes and destroyer escorts to the fleet. The four Flower class corvettes, Clematis, Arbutus, Samphire and Sunflower are tiny models, seen here together and next to a pencil for scale:

The three Hunt class destroyer escorts, Bicester, Exmoor and Grove are also considerably smaller than the usual destroyer models:

Five U-class submarines, Union, Umpire, Ultor, Unruly and Urge will also be useful for campaigns, if we manage to get one off the ground:

I completed three more fleet carriers with the Victorious, Formidable and Hermes shown below:

Along with several escort carriers for the aforementioned convoy games. These include HMS Attacker, Battler, Archer, and two converted grain carriers in the Empire MacAlpine and Empire MacRae. These latter two carriers continued to transport grain, and therefore had both a merchant crew and a Royal Navy crew to service and fly the four Swordfish aircraft they carried:

Finally, here is HMS Archer alongside the Ark Royal, just to give an idea of the difference in size between an escort and fleet carrier:

The entire Royal Navy fleet consists of 79 models in total, most of which fit snugly in one A3 storage box although the carriers and a handful of battleships have had to find a home alongside some of the overflow from the US and Japanese fleets:

Next up will be the completed merchant and transport ships, only a dozen or so, and then the Italian and French fleets to complete the project. 

More WWII Royal Navy Ships

I had read about Sam Mustafa's new set of WWII naval wargame rules and was thinking about purchasing them when I got a call from a gaming friend I hadn't caught up with for a couple of years asking if I had heard of them and whether I'd be interested in a few games. Just the motivation to get stuck into a few more of the GHQ WWII ships languishing in my lead pile. First off, a batch of a couple of dozen Royal Navy ships. The four battleships below are the King George V, Renown, Revenge and the Repulse:

All the models are GHQ's 1/2400th scale. Some of them take a bit of putting together with, in most cases, gun turrets, superstructure and secondary armament all having to be glued into place. Each capital ship therefore takes me around 30 minutes to assemble, and another two to three hours to paint and base. Thankfully the GHQ ships are nicely cast and the parts generally fit together beautifully, and each kit comes with spares so if I press on the tweezers too hard and a gun turret goes flying there is usually a spare part on hand to replace it. 

Here are three Royal Navy aircraft carriers in HMS Illustrious:

The Ark Royal:

and HMS Furious (perhaps to be followed by HMS Angry and HMS Slightly Annoyed):

The flight decks are from Flight Deck Decals and I think give the models a real lift. The aircraft are tiny with around a 4mm wingspan and were fiddly to glue in place on the finished model, after which I completed painting the upper surface having done the underside when they were still on the sprue.

I also completed three more County class cruisers in the London, Norfolk and Dorsetshire:

Plus the two York class heavy cruisers in the York and Exeter:

Where possible I went for camouflage schemes which, although sometimes painful to do, makes for a point of difference from the standard Admiralty Light Grey. The paints I used are from AK Interactive who have specific Royal Navy, Kriegsmarine and US Navy sets which takes the guesswork out of trying to mix the correct shade. The only issue is that I discovered they are really airbrush paints designed for larger models, which means I generally have to go over the same areas three times.

Next up two town class light cruisers in the Southampton and Birmingham:

And two Leander class light cruisers in the New Zealand ship HMNZS Achilles and HMS Ajax, both of which joined the Exeter in hunting the Graf Spee in the Battle of the River Plate:

My great uncle was on the Ajax throughout WWII and I have his medals sitting on a bookshelf in a leather horseshoe box he made while on ship. Interestingly the town of Ajax in Canada was named after the ship and each road there named after a crew member. I'm not sure whether he ever knew there was a (Robert) Mayor Crescent named in his honour. 

Finally, a Dido class light cruiser in the Black Prince:

Three E-class destroyers in the Echo, Eclipse and Escapade:

and three N-Class Destroyers which I have done as the Napier, Nestor and Nizam, primarily because these were transferred to Australia during WWII and I would like to add a few Australian cruisers so we can play a few Pacific encounters:

That's it for the Royal Navy now. All this means I have been distracted from my ECW project again, and I have a batch of Kriegsmarine ships I am currently completing, but in between I have at least made a start on some Parliamentarian foot. 

WWII Royal Navy Ships

To give myself a break from the ongoing Republican Roman project I thought I'd give a few GHQ 1/2400 WWII ships a go, starting with a dozen Royal Navy vessels. I was inspired by a video tutorial posted by Ken at Yarkshire Gamer (http://yarkshiregamer.blogspot.com/) where he demonstrated a technique which involved first attaching the ship to a base, and then building up the base around the model before starting to paint the ship itself.

This approach resonated with me, as I like to paint faces on miniatures first, tighten up the area around the face, and then watch it "come alive" as the rest of it is completed. Anyway, first off where some Tribal class destroyers, which are among my favourite WWII ships purely due to their names. Here are HMS Maori, Cossack and Ashanti:

Along with Zulu, Tartar and Eskimo:

This was my first attempt at painting any GHQ models and, even though these were small models and single-piece castings, I was very impressed with the details. I managed to find photos of all the ships online, so the camouflage schemes were as close as I could discern them to be. This was helped by my purchase of some AK Interactive WWII naval paint sets with ready-made colour palettes, which again were enjoyable to use.

Next up are a couple of heavy cruisers in HMS Suffolk and Cumberland. These involved gluing on the guns, superstructure, cranes and spotter plane which was fiddly, but made much easier as the pieces all fit perfectly and did not require any filing or drilling:

Next up I thought I'd turn my hand to a few battleships, with HMS Warspite (another long-time favourite of mine due to the unique angular superstructure:

Then HMS Hood. I can remember my grandmother telling me that she went on board for an officer's dance a few days before it put out to sea to hunt the Bismarck, of course never to return having suffered a catastrophic explosion the result of which only three of the ship's complement of over one thousand four hundred survived. I wish now I had asked a few more questions, such as who she went with and where on the ship the dance was:

The last two are HMS Rodney, which I have always enjoyed due to the unique design which has always reminded me of a boot. This involved sticking on half a dozen 6" gun turrets with a pair of tweezers while trying to remind myself that this is supposed to be relaxation:

To finish off this first batch I then completed the Prince of Wales, with more 1/2400th secondary turrets to tweezer into place:

I was happy with the results for a first attempt and managed to get completion time down to between three to four hours per ship. I have since prepared a batch of eleven German warships which I am looking forward to getting stuck into, once I have finished the last of the Republican Romans.