CollaborationsI´m no big expert in RN/RAN ships so I turned again to Brett Morrow who already greatly contributed to my HMAS Canberra build back then. Brett is a top expert with a vast knowledge about the Royal Australian Navy and also owner of a great collection of photographs and other documents. I was very happy when he agreed to participate in my project and his contribution was indeed crucial.
Although we found no worthy plans of Australia in her wartime fit available, wartime photos were really abundant – we collected well over 200 of them after her 1938-39 refit. Some show excellent, rarely seen detail of life on a capital ship and others well document her overall fit, but there are still serious gaps if it comes to individual details in 1942.
Most importantly there are two awesome side view shots showing her port and starboard sides in August 1942:
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19420800 HMAS Australia Guadalcanal no exact date NHSC013.jpg [ 159.63 KiB | Viewed 1841 times ]
The somewhat blurred starboard side view is complemented by slightly later view of the same side taken after her late 1942 refit and installation of an SG radar in 1943:
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We agreed to use a plan based on NAA plans and NHSA early fit drawings so that we have a place to record all the necessary modifications – and this turned out to be really a good decision, although these modifications turned out much more extensive than anticipated, not much was left from the original plan in the end. We soon established a working routine with Brett: we collected photos of a specific part of the ship, I drew what I saw into the shared plan and Brett then sent his comments and suggestions for corrections that I then implemented. It worked really well, despite the time difference between Czechia and New South Wales, Australia.
Since I´ve also already had an excellent collaboration with Simon Percival (Micro Master) on the Canberra, I hesitated not for a minute to turn to him again for all the general RN accessories. Simon designs in large scales so the quality of his production is breathtaking. It turned out that he had not yet available some of those parts that were needed, but he planned to design many of those anyway and I was in no hurry, so I got my best hopes here.
Unfortunately, Simon had no capacity to do Australia´s superstructures in 3D, so I decided to sort this out by designing another complete PE set like I did in case of e.g. Astoria. I found PE a very good choice to build convincing open bridge structures in 1/700, and much easier for me as I could do a lot in 2D but I´ve not been much good in 3D design.
So much for the introductory background info, let´s start with more practical issues in my next posts
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FAQ
The only reason why to use the Kombrig hull in case of Canberra these days would be that missing torpedo belt.
Overall, compared to the recent 1/700 kits produced by e.g. Flyhawk or Fujimi - but also to 15 years old Hasegawa Aoba and Furutaka classes! – it´s below standard these days. The good news though was that the hull and deck were clearly the best of the kit, nicely and crisply molded. It´s really a pity Aoshima didn´t do a better job, and the 1/700 Kent by Trumpeter (that did not exist at that time) would have been a better starting point in many respects.
or small cylindrical parts that are easier to cut off plastic rods than do from PE. That was in fact behind me starting with designing PE cause I disliked me not being able to become a good scratchbuilder, especially when it came to repeating parts.