It’s been a while since I splashed around in the salty side of the hobby.
After my dalliance with HMS Dauntless decided to take a bit of a break from floaty things and stick to wing things for a while.
As always though, the sea calls to me and I end up drifting back sooner or later. (See what I did there )
Those of you who have followed my builds in the past, will also know that since restarting the hobby, they’re usually all linked somehow to the original HMS King George V build followed by DKM Prinz Eugen who are linked via the Bismarck episode. Dauntless shares common ground with KGV via being associated with Newcastle Upon Tyne where HMS KGV was built. HMS Punjabi is no different, and is forever linked to KGV by being sliced in two off the coast of Iceland after a lookout thought he saw a mine in the water and the captain took evasive action, initiating a turn to port, putting her directly in the path of KGV.
And so we get around to Trumpeter’s release of HMS Eskimo back in 2012/2013… When the kit first came out, I of course jumped aboard like many others (another bad pun, I know. Stick around, there’ll be plenty more average attempts at humour)…
As time has worn on, we’re all by now familiar with the many flaws of this kit, so I won’t go over them here. I have, over time collected a fair bit of after market kit in a vain attempt to turn this sow’s ear of a kit into something a little less offensive. Had I to do it over again, I would probably follow @RedDuster Si’s path and go the resin kit from Atlantic.
Such as it is, with such a substantially investment in the kit and AM, it means this is the version I will use to try to somewhat represent HMS Punjabi.
There’s not a lot of info about Punjabi on the net, but Wikipedia has a nice little blurb about her.
Onto the photos…
The kit
The hull, which, ahem, has copped a fair bit of flak for being well out of shape…
Some of the sprues…
The colour callouts by White Ensign Models. By now, we all are familiar with the fact that the anti fouling paint is not red, but grey. I’m sure @Jamie can confirm that…
White Ensign photo etch
and 4 barrelled pom poms and boats and props to correct the obvious errors in the kit
Now, of course since 2013 there’s Micro Master offering newer 3d printed options, but I’ve bought these and my wallet says I must use them…
Master model 4.7" brass barrels, tapered masts and yard arms
And some Northstar gear from before they went under (sorry, another one )
MkXVI 4" guns for X turret that Trumpeter thinks was a 4.7", another set of 4 barrelled pom poms, not sure how that happened,
Quad 0.5" vickers machine guns for the bridge wings (as opposed to Tumpy’s 20mm) and lastly some bridge equipment…
This should get her close to how she was when sunk… If anything else surfaces along the way, I can always go back to Micro Master and source components as required. (Yeah, last bad-un for this post, I promise )
For reference, I have chosen “In the Builder’s Plans, HMS Cossack”
Well, Thanks for looking in. I hope that this build will be entertainment for you, with some bad dad jokes along the way, that hopefully aren’t too cringe worthy…
Russ