Graf Spee: help needed!

I did a Graf Spee from that kit a few years back. I agree completely that it's the best version of the ship on the market. Those Italeri 1/700 World War II warships in general are rarely-recognized gems of the industry.

Gold Medal Models offers an excellent set of photo-etched parts for WWII German warships. It's on 1/700 scale, but I can testify that all the relevant pieces work fine on the Italeri kit. There is, for instance, a funnel cap, and struts for an Arado seaplane. (For that you'll need to raid another kit; the Italeri one comes with a Heinkel biplane.) The 2cm anti-aircraft guns are so small you can barely see them on the finished model.

The GMM set does not include one part that I wish it did: the plaque with the word CORONEL on the front of the superstructure. Seems like that would be well within the capability of photo-etching. I tried making it from individual letters (there are plenty of them on the sheet, for part identification purposes), but I gave up. Anybody who can figure out a way to do that neatly and to scale will have my respect.

Good luck. Great kit.

Thanks a lot! I'm off to buy some Graf Spees now!

There's also a Fujimi kit of the GS:

http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=FU42128

Squadron/Signal just released two new books on German ships:

http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=SS4023
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=SS4024

The Fujimi Graf Spee isn't a bad kit by any means. But I strongly recommend the Italeri one. The subtlety of the detail on such places as the after end of the superstructure is really impressive. And the way the hull is molded - with the underwater portion held on by narrow "gates" that get trimmed off - is downright ingenious. I built mine as a waterline model, but I could tell that the underwater hull piece fit perfectly. And take a look at the ship's boats.

The only significant problem with the Italeri kit is its representation of the "sail" mechanism. This was an apparatus for recovering the ship's seaplane. It consisted of a large piece of canvas rolled up to a boom-like gadget, which swung out over the port side. It was mounted on the boat deck. Italeri provides a part that only vaguely resembles the real thing. (Fujimi, if I remember right, ignored it completely.)

For a model of the Graf Spee at the Battle of the River Plate, this is irrelevant. The thing was so clumsy that the crew gave up on it and threw it overboard sometime shortly after the war started. I wanted my model to represent the ship as she appeared in 1938, during the Spanish Civil War. Cooking up a reasonable representation of the "sail boom" took about half an hour's work with plastic sheet and wire.

In that earlier period she was a particularly handsome ship. In addition to the heraldic devices beloved of the Nazis during that period (a huge gold eagle on the stern and the von Spee family crest on either side of the bow), she had red, white, and black stripes painted on her main battery turrets. I also found, in several photos, pretty clear hints that each of those turrets had its own coat of arms painted on each side. (I couldn't find any pictures that were clear enough to show what they looked like, though.) I've always found it ironic that two of the most despicable regimes of the twentieth century, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, produced some of the century's best looking warships.

The best book I found was a paperback called The Pocket Battleship Graf Spee, by Siegfried Breyer. It contains lots of pictures, most of them reproduced large enough to be a big help (and, incidentally, to confirm that Italeri's researchers did their homework - with the one exception of that "sail" gadget). I haven't seen the new Squadron book yet, but I imagine it's excellent.

I'll look out for those two titles. I already have one on the Deutschland-class ships that is pretty impressive. Thanks a lot.

The text jtilley is referring to is:

http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=SH0183

That's it all right. Fine book for modeling purposes.

Thanks again.

Hi ,

there is a book by roger Chesneun German Pocket battleships it covers the class Panzerschiffe to which the Graf Spee was part of . The publisher is Chatham publishing of england The IBSN 1 86176 209 7

I hope can help you


Niall Mhor

Found some nice piccies of the Fujimi model:

http://www.modellversium.de/galerie/artikel.php?id=333

And for what it looks like before it's constructed, see:

http://modelingmadness.com/reviews/misc/robertodlandpreview.htm

An Osprey publication on German pocket battleships is available (with some superb color plates):

http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=OS2075

A man who served aboard her scratch-built a wooden model between 1950-52:

http://www.bismarck-class.dk/shipmodels/german_models/admiralgrafspeetitsch.html

Most interesting pictures. You can see the "sail" apparatus in photos #2 and #10.

a polish publisher has also put out a very good book on the graf spee. even if you cant speak polish, the pictures are worth the cover price alone.an intersting sidelight if anyone is interested: when the scharnhorst was engaged in the battle of north cape when she was overwhelmed and sunk, the ships bell she was using came from the graf spee. this was a replacement for her own bell which was cracked either from from frost or enemy action. there is a photo of her bell on board the scharnhorst in a book by fritz-otto busch titled the drama of the scharnhorst!

I'm "replying" to this topic in order to get it moved to the first page of the Forum. The subject has come up in a recent post from another member.