This is my build of the Tamiya 1/72 torpedo boat "Perkasa". This kit represents one of four torpedo boats built by Vosper for the Malaysian navy in the 1960s. The basic design is similar to the Brave- and Ferocity-class boats built for the Royal Navy.
The Perkasa-class boats were originally armed with four torpedoes on roll-off racks, a forward 40mm Bofors gun (remotely controlled from the bridge) and an aft twin 20mm Oerlikon gun. The torpedo tubes were later replaced with surface-to-surface missiles. The boats were (are? - not sure if any are still in service) diesel-powered and wooden-hulled.
Tamiya's kit dates back to the 1970s but has an unbelievable level of detail and fineness of moulding considering the kit's age - far superior to the Airfix and Revell 1/72 boats (though at about 4 times the price, it ought to be!) The 40mm gun alone has a couple of dozen parts. It even has a full interior for the enclosed bridge, though this is virtually impossible to see on the completed model.
The one disadvantage is the noticeable amount of flash and mould lines on some of the smaller parts, such as the torpedo racks, which are tricky to remove!
MHM's reissue/copy of the kit is not nearly as finely moulded, though it is a lot cheaper.
I built my kit more or less out of the box, the only additions being a gunsight for the 20mm, metal railing wires, anchor chain, and rigging thread. I also modified one of the crew figures as there are only 3 different poses although 5 figures are included. On a ship this small "clone" crewmen tend to stand out! It was painted with Tamiya and Revell acrylics and very lightly weathered with craft acrylics, with light vertical streaking on the hull and superstructure, grey soot around the exhausts and a small amount of rust on and around the anchor; some of the fittings were also lightly drybrushed to bring out detail. The model represents the boat "as built" so I didn't want to over-weather it!
My model has no hull markings as the "decals" in my kit (an original 1970s issue) were actually stickers, which I couldn't get to adhere to the model (they would probably have looked unconvincing in any case) - I'll try and make some hull numbers from cut-up aircraft serials later.
Reference material on the real boats is surprisingly hard to find (considering how popular it is as a modelling subject - there are also several larger-scale R/C kits of the Perkasa) so I relied mostly on the kit instructions and box art for painting, and did not add any extra detail other than the aforementioned PE gunsight.
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