1/72 Revell S-100 (PT boat GB)

Alrighty!! I'll be watchin' this build and, I'm sure Greg will as well. A little late but, at least you're able to make the G/B

Look at those beautiful lines!  The S-100 doesn't need anything in addition to make it lovely...looking forward to seeing this one come together.

                     Greg

If you look closely at the photo you'll notice that I forgot to install the forecastle gun tub before gluing the deck in place
I eventually managed to prise the deck off and glue the tub in place without any significant damage to the parts, but this ought to teach me to actually read the instructions before I glue the parts together...
Anyway, I've now started work on the bridge interior and various sub-assemblies like the guns, life rafts, torpedo tubes etc.

A few questions:

- Are the kit instructions accurate with regards to the colours used to paint the deck, bridge interior, etc. or are there any errors/inaccuracies? The bridge interior is specified as "stone grey" which is actually a pale brownish-grey/cream colour (the Revell paint of the same name is, anyway), is this correct?

- What are the "fuming sulphuric acid cans" located on the deck, and mentioned on the kit box, for? For generating smoke when thrown into the water? (the only purpose I can think of). Seems like a rather dangerous thing to store on the deck of a small, fast-moving vessel!

- Were the aft mine rails installed as standard on all boats, or only those used for minelaying duties?

- Were torpedoes normally unpainted metal? The instructions specify a dark steel/aluminium colour with a copper/bronze nose and dark grey fins.

EDIT: Another question (sorry): - The three structures either side of the amidships gun position, with rows of "portholes" on the top - I assume these are skylights/air vents for the engine room? Should the "portholes" be glazed or not?

So far so good sir ..............

 

I like the S-100s myself.  They were sleek looking.  But - my favorite MTBs were the early 80 foot Elco boats late in the war, with all that armament added by their crews.  But, the S-100s comes in a close second.

And, Hippy Eddie, yeah, you're right.  I corresponded with (back in the mid-1980s - 1984 as a matter of fact) the then four surviving crewmembers of PT-109 on the night (early morning) that she was rammed and sank.  They all responded to my letter and two said that she was gray in color and the other two said that she was green.  And, all four were adament in their convictions.  So, ...

Garth

 

 

Thanks for the confirmation on that Garth The debate still goes on yet, photographic evidence shows it was gray up until  the 109 hit Panama then it was green once it hit the South Pacific.
I tend to agree about the early 80' Elcos later in the war. Man, the inginuity of the crews on the armament configurations

Hi there EPinniger,

Try and get hold of either:

Schnellboot in action, written by T.Garth Connelly and David L.Krakow (Squadron/Signal publication Warships Number 18, ISBN: 0-89747-457-0). I ordered my copy from G.L.Green ltd., Naval and Maritime Bookseller, orders@glgreen.com.

S-boote, German E-boats in action 1939 - 1945, written by Jean-Philippe Dalies-Labourdette, ISBN: 2-913903-49-5.

Both books give numerous detail photo's of these high speed vessels and contain beautiful colour drawings of several different types and versions.

cheers,

Julian

Glad you've ordered my book Julian.  How did you like it?  Did it serve your purposes at least?  I'm interested in hearing feed-back, to make future books better.

Cheers,

Garth

 

 

It most certainly served my purposes. Excellent value for money and enjoyable to read.

I would have liked more colour plates and photo's for detailing the paint job(though there probably aren't many colour photo's available of these ships). The B/W photo's make adding details a lot of fun. I would consider this a must for anyone building Revell's Schnellboot.

Cheers,

Julian

 

Thanks for the book advice. However, being on a fairly limited budget, I usually don't buy reference books on a single subject unless they are for a scratchbuild project or for a kit which requires a lot of scratchbuilding (e.g 1/72 Flower-class corvette, Lindberg 1/125 Fletcher).
I know a Schnellboot expert could find many things to add and correct on this kit, but it seems detailed enough for me, and I resolved to build this one more or less OOB. I do so much scratchbuilding and detailing that it's a refreshing change to build a kit that can produce a reasonably detailed, accurate model without any addition or modification!

On the other hand, I also have the Airfix kit of an earlier Schnellboot type and that kit definitely does require some work, even if you ignore the inaccurate hull shape (which I probably will) so maybe picking up one of these books isn't such a bad idea...

Anyway, the S-100 build is progressing very well and I'll post some more photos in a couple of days. The bridge is virtually complete, along with the torpedo tubes, and I'm currently working on the AA guns and various other small sub-assemblies.

Well,

Supposedly Julian, Mr. Krakow is working on Volume II of SCHNELLBOOT IN ACTION, so maybe you guys will luck out and get what you want in the way of color stuff.  I am not involved with this volume - so I don't know what's going into it.

Currently, I'm working on a sparate IN ACTION book myself, my autobiography and a novel as well as several articles and what-have-you as well as doing my real job ...

Garth

 

 

 

Hey Garth, thanks for the update I'll be lookin' for the books  I thought being on the boards was your real job

No Garth, ths is my Home If it were a job then I ought to be paid for it right?!

Perhaps ..................

A few more photos:
 
Bridge and torpedo tube detail. I painted and weathered this area first as it's difficult to reach once the armoured cover for the bridge is installed. Apologies for the poor quality of the photos, they're rather dark and the weathering doesn't show up much.



AA guns - single 20mm, twin 20mm and single 37mm. PE brass gunsights will be added once the guns are installed on the boat (the shields also need to be added)


Overall view.


Since I took this photo I've added the armoured bridge cover. Next stage is to add the various small fittings and parts (of which there are many) to the hull!

That's looking superb. And you're making good progress.

Al

your S100 already looks good.

I have built it already 2 times, too and corrected the mistakes of Revell.

The torpedo seal opens to the wrong side, the air compressor tank is made solid on the ground.

There is here my report of the first S100:

http://modellbauer.foren-city.de/topic,175,-projekt-revell-schnellboot-s-100-in-1-72.html

My models are here I have already these built.

http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery/users/Markus-Fabke/user-index.html

And of my Hompage.

cu

Markus

Ps. sorry for my bad english

Hull nearly complete - apart from the railings and a few other parts, it needs a bit of retouching and plenty of detail painting + weathering.


Torpedoes and AA guns, now with etched brass gunsights added.


Hopefully the model will be complete in the next update!

Now that's comin' along nicely Man, look at dem guns & the PE prop on the torps!!
Kugos to ya my friend. Lookin' foreward to seeing this completed.

The torpedo props are actually the kit parts, painted a dull bronze/brass colour, not PE! Etched parts would certainly have improved their appearance (along with many other areas of the model!) but I tend to stay away from aftermarket parts due to budget reasons (I'd rather spend the money on another kit, and scratchbuild or kitbash the extra detail - although the disadvantage of this approach is that you need reference material to scratchbuild the detail parts, which is often hard to find)
The only PE parts on the model (in fact, more or less the only thing that isn't box-stock) are the gun sights, these are from a "generic" set of gunsights in various sizes and scales which I bought a while ago. I'm also intending to buy the Revell Kriegsmarine figures set to provide some crew figures. As I also have the Airfix S-7 and the Revell 1/72 U-boat (the latter a second-hand built model in need of restoration) the surplus figures won't be wasted.

Anyway, I'm very impressed with the Revell kit, although it does have some minor inaccuracies (such as the shape of the props and the deck storage boxes) the overall level of detail is excellent (this is the first ship/boat model I've built where I haven't needed to scratchbuild or heavily modify anything!) and it really shows the potential of this scale. It'd be great to see more kits of small naval vessels in this scale - minesweepers, sub chasers and gunboats, for example. I don't know what their sales potential would be, though, compared to submarines (which seem to be the only large-scale subject really popular with manufacturers)

The Airfix S-7 "E-Boat" won't be such a straightforward build, I'll have to find some good reference material for this one even if I don't attempt to fix the inaccurate hull shape!

Just found that prinzeugen.com's Schnellboot section has some downloadable plans of the S-7 class, and some photos of a very detailed 1/50 museum model of S-7 (though they're fairly small): http://www.prinzeugen.com/Model.htm. Anyone building the Airfix kit would definitely be recommended to check these out!

After looking at the various archive photos and plans of the S-100 class on this site, it seems that I was totally wrong in stating that the Revell kit doesn't really need any extra details! There are tons of things which could be added or improved, such as the ammunition storage racks around the forward 20mm gun position, the valves (?) on top of the smoke generators, bridge interior details, hinged sections on the AA gun shields, and much more. It's far too late to add all this to my current build, but it makes me want to buy another S-100 kit to "superdetail"! I've already had thoughts of buying another S-100 to convert into an earlier, unarmoured S-38 class, with the distinctive "splotch" camouflage, so maybe I'll have to get two...

LoL... That's what happens when ya get to thinkin' & do research  I've been researching my PT-109 and I see there's many different things one can add to a PT Boat.  Best thing to do is "pick" a boat & run with it.