1/400 DKM Deutschland

good thing i downloaded or got from other members the plans of the french coldwar ships from the french naval site before it went down. using the plans to do the 4 variations of the surcouf T-47 destroyers into the all guns, flagship, asw & aaw. also do corrections to the suffren destroyer i got off ebay.

I don't have any Heller kits nor have I built any of their ships, so I cant weigh in on anything, but are the issues you raised common to all their ship kits or the two you are using?  I've built a couple of their planes and thought they were decent 1/72 scale kits with the exception of cockpit details. Also be sure to post WIP pics!

Unfortunately, this is common to all of their kits. But, the only one for which I have any issue with the hull is the Lutzow. Hence, I have to use the Graf Spee's hull. There are other features of the Spee kit that I will use as well, such as the funnel and the main gun turrets. But, this project will require a lot of after-market products.

Bill

Heller kits are old, big and without any detail. But they are inexpensive and provide a good basis for detail. I built mine before the wood deck craze. I sourced PE and barrels from inexpensive sources. You know what I mean.  

Good luck with yours. There are some OOB to very nice Lutzow's about the Net for ideas and inspiration.

Felix,

I agree. It's just so irritating that Heller would put so much effort into creating such nice hulls but put so little work in the superstructures. I have enjoyed building these kits, though. I like the scale, and I like the selection of ships. It's just so hard to display them next to the Tauro Italian Zara class cruisers of the same scale because the Italian kits are so much better.

My recollection is that the Heller German ships are, in terms of detail, somewhere in the middle of what the company was capable of doing.  The best Heller WWII warship kits surely were the French battleships - the Richelieu and Jean Bart.  And the worst were the British ones.  (The Hood was a real dud.) 

I hear the modern French ships are also nice.

The Dunkerque and Strasbourg are nice kits as well, but they also suffer from some of Heller's most egregious practices. For example, since John mentioned their Hood kit, the artisans at Heller did a fine job on the Hood's hull. It is beautifully proportioned, the ports are uniformly well drilled, and there is a fineness of detail not seen throughout the rest of the kit. It seems as if the hull and the rest of the kit is designed by different companies. The hull in all of their kits also contain metallic texturing whereas the superstructure parts are quite plain. It's as if the superstructure parts do not belong in the same box as the hull parts.

That said, I have seen beautiful models built from these kits. It can be done. I just wish that the artisans at Heller would be more consistent in their approach to kit design.

Bill