HMS Campbeltown 1/700

How many of you remember the Revell Campbeltown kit from the 1970s? As a kid I loved the dramatic (and, I later discovered, wildly inaccurate) artwork showing the ship charging up, guns blazing, into the enemy dock! I never ended up building that model, but that wonderful painting did put the Campbeltown firmly on my “someday” to do list.

Not long ago Flyhawk of China released a smaller but far more accurate HMS Campbeltown in 1/700 scale. They even have a “Deluxe” version with extra photoetch, turned brass, and even a small spool of Uschi van der Rosten rigging.

How could I resist?
:see_no_evil:

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I started with the hull, which comes in three pieces: deck, upper hull, and optional underwater hull.


The parts are delicately detailed, and the fit is outstanding with no filler needed at all. I left the small step at the waterline between the upper and lower hull to suggest plating.

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I love the story of the HMS Campbeltown — truly one of the greatest raids of WWII! :boom:

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Tim,

Agreed, the hull detail looks great. I heard that Flyhawk did an amazing job on creating this kit so now we will know watching this build under your skillful hands.

One question, isn’t this scale a little large for you…LOL.

Mark :beer:

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Looks great. Would love to build this wedged in the St Nazaire dry dock!
Will be following your build Tim.

Jeremy Clarkson did a fantastic documentary on the raid and is available on YouTube, it’s called the Greatest Raid. He made another good one about his Father in Law who was awarded the VC at Arnhem and another about the Russian convoys.
For all his other faults, Clarkson has a real passion for wartime history and great respect for those who fought.

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Mountbatten Pink? :thinking:
:smiley:

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Thanks Mark,

Yes, for a guy like me who grew up with the old “Water Line Series” 1/700 Japanese ships in the 1970s, the Flyhawk kit is an absolute wonder! The detail and fit are so good that I’ll be building this one mostly out of the box. And yes, it actually feels tiny compared to the 1/200 Hatsuzuki I’ve been working on for so long!
:grin:

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I love the story of the HMS Campbeltown — truly one of the greatest raids of WWII! :boom:

Looks great. Would love to build this wedged in the St Nazaire dry dock!
Will be following your build Tim.

Jeremy Clarkson did a fantastic documentary on the raid and is available on YouTube, it’s called the Greatest Raid. He made another good one about his Father in Law who was awarded the VC at Arnhem and another about the Russian convoys.
For all his other faults, Clarkson has a real passion for wartime history and great respect for those who fought.

Thanks guys!


For those of you who don’t know, the HMS Campbeltown was a US destroyer lend-leased to the British and is best known for the St. Nazaire Raid in 1942, a British commando attack on the Normandie dry dock in German-occupied France. The raid was undertaken to eliminate the only dry dock in the West large enough to accommodate the battleship Tirpitz. The idea was that if the dock at St Nazaire were unavailable, the Germans would be unlikely to risk sending their biggest battleship into the Atlantic.

Accompanied by 18 smaller craft and a force including some 612 sailors and commandos, the Campbeltown fought her way through the German defenses and was intentionally rammed into the Normandie dock gates. Commandos swarmed ashore and sabotaged port facilities and fought the local garrison until they ran out of ammunition and were overwhelmed by the defenders. The specially modified Campbeltown, essentially a massive IED packed with 4½ tons of delayed-action explosives, detonated later the next day against the dock and put it out of service for the rest of the war. Though costly, the raid was a success; the feared Tirpitz never did enter the Atlantic.

Campbeltown was specially converted for the raid with all her antisubmarine equipment, torpedo tubes, and 4 inch guns removed. Also, two of her funnels were cut down and capped off and the other two altered in an attempt to make her resemble a German Möwe class torpedo boat.


Despite referring to the vessel as a “battleship,” this rendering is pretty accurate and shows well the changes Campbeltown underwent before the St. Nazaire raid.

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Nice subject Tim,

The kit looks outstanding for 1/700th, will be along for the ride.

Cheers

Si

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Oh boy - I sense another “holiday” from the Hatsuzuki build …

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Hi Tim,

count me in, too! Looking forward to your build log - but don’t forget your Hatsuzuki!

Cheers
Jan

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I’ll be watching you turn yet another one into a masterpiece!
Cheers,

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Oh boy - I sense another “holiday” from the Hatsuzuki build …


Hi Tim,

count me in, too! Looking forward to your build log - but don’t forget your Hatsuzuki!

Cheers
Jan

Richard and Jan,

After all those 25mm singles (and with 12 more to come) Hatsuzuki has begun to feel like work, so I’m taking a little break with this build to recharge my mojo. When she starts calling out to me again I’ll be back…

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image
I’ll be watching you turn yet another one into a masterpiece!
Cheers

Well, Joe, maybe not a masterpiece (it will be out-of-the-box, after all) but the Flyhawk kit is so good it should be presentable even so!

I get it … my modeling mojo is starting to fade a bit.
A dangerous place to be because you start to get sloppy and careless.
BTW - I built the Revell flush deck four piper more than once years ago and remember it as a nice kit and very detailed for the era . IIRC it had stanchions for the rails that needed to be rigged .


Adler’s Nest brass pedestals size SS (super small?) will support the model.


I opted to use only one of the mounts so as not to overwhelm the little ship. Test fitting it into the hull, I also trimmed away a little of the curved underside to more snugly accommodate the pedestal’s flat top.

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Tim,

I can’t recall how often you claimed that your project at hand “will be out of the box”, but never, not once I can remember you really doing one OOB. I’m just curious to see when you will start first improvements on this one - I’d bet it won’t be long :thinking: :joy:
But I know I will enjoy following your build, as with all your build logs!

Cheers
Jan

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To quote the great sage Spongebob Squarepants in my best squeaky voice - “I’m Ready! I’m Ready! I’m Ready”. Even got a ton of PE for the Revell kit.

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It would be possible to build the Flyhawk USS Ward as HMS Campbeltown prior to the modifications for Operation Chariot by removing the topmost portion of the aft funnel (although as they were built in different yards there will have been minor differences). It also means that for the first time in about forty years there is a candidate for converting “Town” class destroyers to Long Range Escort versions. Back then I tried to perform the conversion on the Airfix 1:600th Campbeltown but it was largely guesswork and the kit ceased to be produced about the same time.

Regards,

M

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Tim,

I can’t recall how often you claimed that your project at hand “will be out of the box”, but never, not once I can remember you really doing one OOB. I’m just curious to see when you will start first improvements on this one - I’d bet it won’t be long :thinking: :joy:
But I know I will enjoy following your build, as with all your build logs!

Cheers
Jan

Ok Jan, you got me! I always start sincerely intending to finish these projects without modification, but then those joyous, irresistible opportunities for improvement always seem to present themselves… :relaxed:
Still, I picked up this Campbeltown as a quick relaxation build, and the Flyhawk kit is pretty complete, so this one really should end up being mostly out of the box. We shall see…

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