Modelik Flower class corvette

cdcoyle

Member
depth charge thrower

I'm quite pleased with how these turned out. It's always interesting to me how some sub-assemblies that look complicated go together easily and turn out nicely. Others, like the sounding gear reel (sorry...no pic), look like they should be simple and turn out not-nearly-so-nice.

The rear strap on the firing gear (small cylinder on the back) should actually be a bracket that extends on either side of the cylinder. These proved a colossal pain to make, so I opted for a simple band around the cylinder. I also opted to not make the charge carriers that I made for the stowed charges. The restraining straps are made from blackened 2 lb monofilament threaded through small holes in the back of the charge and in the thrower baseplate and secured with CA.

Interesting factoid I learned yesterday -- Flower-class corvettes comprised almost half of all allied escort vessels and sank or helped sink 51 submarines (47 German, 4 Italian) for the loss of 26 ships to enemy action (22 torpedoed, 4 mined).
 

cdcoyle

Member
mine sweeping winch

The next step of the construction is supposed to be the hinged gallows, a sort of crane used for lowering gear on either side of the ship. However, these devices are raised and lowered by lines wound on the warping drums of the mine sweeping winch. So it only seemed natural that the winch should be built first. This first shot shows the basic framework of the winch. In real life the winch was mounted on a steel plate set on a teak bed. The model frames are made from four parts each, laminated together to make the proper thickness. I about died of boredom whilst cutting those parts. In addition to the frames I have thus far completed the second motion axle and gears.

Regards,
 

jasco

Member
Gorgeous ship, Chris! Very inspiring. The really nice thing about the little details is that you can always do it over if it's not up to snuff. Screw up the hull......:mad: What kind of knife do you use to cut those tiny internal cuts? My X-acto knife seems to have the wrong kind of angle.
 

cdcoyle

Member
jasco said:
Gorgeous ship, Chris! Very inspiring. The really nice thing about the little details is that you can always do it over if it's not up to snuff. Screw up the hull......:mad: What kind of knife do you use to cut those tiny internal cuts? My X-acto knife seems to have the wrong kind of angle.


Thanks, Jasco.

Believe it or not, I'm using an X-acto knife for those cuts, along with some off-brand #11 blades that look like they are probably stamped in the same factory as X-acto blades (they have the same tip shape -- not like the Excel blades). I often start with a fresh blade when I have to do those multiple tedious cuts.

Regards,
 

beejay

New Member
Hello Chris
You have on the slips a fantastic model but my copy of Peter Elliot's book Allied Escort Ships of WW2, disagrees with your figures regarding WW2 service of this Class.
He states that a total of 35 were lost, including 10 RCN, 3 Free French and 2 R.Norwegian Navy.
With regards to submarines sunk, he states 3 Italian and 39 German ones
Best regards
beejay
 

cdcoyle

Member
Hi, beejay.

Actually your figure of 35 lost agrees with what I read on wikipedia. I stated that 26 were lost to enemy action, but the total lost at sea to all causes is in fact 35. As to the difference in the number of subs sunk, the wikipedia figure includes not only subs sunk by Flowers alone, but also those sunk with the assistance of ships of other classes, such as destroyers. The name of each sub, the date of each sinking, and the ships that did the sinking are listed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_class_corvette#Flowers_sunk_by_U-boats.

Regards,
 

cdcoyle

Member
Well, I was hoping to have this thing finished tonight, but this is as far as I got. Our school district had a snow day today, and I spent most of the day working on this...it's pretty labor-intensive. You can see that it's substantially larger than the forward winch.

Bye for now,
 

beejay

New Member
Hi Chris
Thanks for your reply
Your model is really impressive and just for the record, the causes of loss for the Flower Class were as follows:
Sunk by torpedo : 21
Sunk by mine : 4
Sunk by enemy aircraft : 4
Declared total loss after being torpedoed: 2
Sunk in collision: 4
Very best regards
beejay
 

cdcoyle

Member
Thought I'd post a couple of additional winch pics showing the structure from different angles. The one thing that jumped out at me when I glued the winch to the deck is that the brake handles are positioned at the same height as the top of the superstructure. A sailor would have had to reach over his head to turn them -- don't know how much leverage he would have had (or needed). And the view from back there couldn't have been the greatest, either, so there must have been some sort of signals used for when to brake, or let out cable, etc.

Regards,
 
Wow Chris. That is an incredible piece of craftsmanship.

That is one of the cleanest, complex subassemblies I have ever seen on a card model. That winch is a stand-alone model to itself.

Bravo!
 
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