Briefly - the kit was Dragon. Mostly good but too fiddly and plagued with bad instructions. I didn't think a vessel serving in the Baltic would have smelt of fresh paint so I mottled the hull with "black basing" and faded with the superstructure with oils. I also exaggerated the difference between the hull and superstructure colors out of craftsman license. I do wish I would have made the masts from brass. I like EZ Line - it's out of scale but that's okay. But the masts were too weak to stretch the line and it's too thick. Next time for sure.
I guess the German Destroy Z-38 (why the Germans didn't give names to warships almost as powerful as a light cruiser must remain a mystery) could be considered a "lucky ship." She was commissioned in mid-1943 and barely dodged a fatal bullet at the North Cape in December when Scharnhorst met doom. She then spent 1945 in a frantic campaign in the Baltic shelling Russian forces, laying mines and escorting merchantmen carrying tens of thousands of civilians away from East Prussia - with no serious harm. It survived the war and served as a Royal Navy guinea pig until 1949.
However in February 1945 Z-38 became icebound near Konigsberg and had to be freed by a tug. I've done several winter dioramas with armor and I couldn't resist trying to emulate an icebound destroyer. I used the excellent artificial snow and ice washes from Precision Ice and Snow - a Brit company now kaput. The ice was made from epoxy resin which cracked up like ice and given an Krycell Ice and Snow wash. (There's a pic below - one of the hundreds I viewed - that served as a kind of guide). The components of the base worked well enough - the snow is crackerjack - but the overall effect is not to my liking. The tableau is too small - maybe 600 X 150 feet. It might have worked better with a 1/700 ship (Trumpeter makes Z-39). The base was definitely too big for display - and I put my ships and biplanes close to my computer and like to look at them - so I created a basic water base with canvas board with Woodland Scenics Ripple Effects and rayon to emulate a ship moving through water. It's on that base that Z-38 will rest. Looks okay from 10 feet - that's my wheelhouse.
Ice10 by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
ShipCLUP by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Itop by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Irtrear by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Irt by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Ileftft by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
wrtft by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
wrtmidship by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
wlftrear2 by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
wleft by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
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