Posted by Roger Dawson
on March 13, 2009, 6:43 pm, in reply to "Atals Hood and Bismarck"
84.70.122.71
Well I am impressed! My set arrived this morning but I was out and didn't see them until just now. I'll e-mail John with pictures comparing Bismarck with the Hornby Minic & the old Airfix kit for him to post here. In the meantime you can take my word for it that they are really good and well worth the £14 or so that the rest of the models will cost after the introductory offers fizzle out. There is plenty of detail on the decks but no oversize planking. Jeff has mentioned elsewhere that some masts on his were bent but on mine they were all vertical and only the foremast on Bismarck is rotated slightly around the vertical axis. Some things are representational (lifeboats with vertical sides and moulded to the decks and I am sure that I have seen some of the launches before...) but there are anchors in the deck edges of Bismarck and a transfer of two anchors and an empty hawse hole on the hull of the Hood. The lower hull is metal and the rest of the model appears to be "high impact polystyrene" Unfortunately, the joint line on Bismarck is at the top of the amour belt and on Hood it is at the top of the black boot topping and this would be a problem for those wanting waterline models. However, Hood is in 1941 condition and she was very low in the water then. The painting tends to follow joint lines and that puts deck colour on the barbettes and on vertical surfaces under the mainmast of Hood. Bismarck is in Baltic camouflage but with plain pale grey upperworks & steel decks, the swastikas painted over with dark grey and the turret tops black, so the colour scheme would only be correct for about 30 seconds in Norwegian waters until the cradles went over the sides and the stripes were smudged off the hull.
Glue is visible in places but the hulls capture the look of the ship with flare at the bow and slope of the sides of the hull being particularly satisfying on Hood.
Hood will look great in Cruise Line Models Rosyth Drydock and Bismarck will replace the Eaglewall Gneisenau in my Marchbox Superkings drydock and, like Jeff, I will invest in more.
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