Guess what, more paint

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Niek Nijsen

And again a layer of paint has been applied. After looking at many photos, I found out that Revell made a mistake in their paint schematics. So that required me to raise the lower paint layer by almost a centimetre. But while looking at the photos, I found out that the waterline was almost perfectly aligned with my original paint layer. This allowed me to start the weathering process way before I intended to. Because salt water is pretty harsh on the paint, it resulted in a faded colour of the boat below the water line. By adding a little black paint to the "Dunkelgrau 51", I managed to get a slight colour difference between the layers. This created a perfect wash effect. Have a look at the photos for the result.

Next step is to add the decals, which took me a long time to make up my mind about. Since the real boat didn't have the laughing sawfish during the patrol (see the photo at the top of this blog) I wasn't sure whether I would make the "movie version" or the "real version". I decided it would be a combination. The boat will be fitted like the real one, but having the sawfish as its emblem, not the snorting bull.

A short explanation to the problem above; Just before the 7th patrol, BDU ordered all boats to remove personal insignia. Hence the laughing sawfish was removed and replaced with the Flotilla emblem, the snorting bull. Later on, the sawfish was brought back to life when Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock became the commanding officer of the 9th Flotilla and he was now allowed to use it as a non-personal insignia.

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