The "covered wagon" sail was quickly deemed ineffecient for submarine warfare and soon, shipyards were tearing the sails down. The result was the "high sail" which the kit gives you. Notice the difference in the kit provided sail on the bottom and my modifications.
also note the original trunk for ready use ammo and other stuff. These trunks are waterproof and Revell has molded the trunks straight to the sail with you the builder, adding the hatches. The smarter move would have been to flash the mounting holes over and allow you to put the trunks as per your references; since all boats had different placement. Oh well... So as you can imagine, the kit's assertion that it can be built as one of four boats is wrong. This is how Flasher's sail looked. Flasher sadly, is one of the boats, they claim the kit can be built as.
The boat's forward trunks are wrong for Flasher so I chopped off the original location (notice it under the far left railing post) and filled it in. I then moved it and it's hatch to the front. I added the two tiny salvage connections underneath the far left hatch. Some spare PE provided the hand-wheels on the connections.
I also scratchbuilt the ready use ammo box on top of the gun position, off to the left of the white ring. The same spare hand-wheels have been added to the Starboard side trunk hatches instead of the incorrect lever pattern that Revell molded. The hole in the middle of the sail is my "marker" where Flasher's footstep will go. I need to enlarge that opening, make it oval and then add a ladder rung.
In addition to getting the sail wrong for Flasher, they also got this whole supporting structure wrong. I've repositioned the radio stub by making a new one and then I added the white cable run and junction box leading up to it. I'll then wire it when I finish the maintenance platform. The safety ring was scratch built for the crew to hang on to and the platform at the bottom will need some wires, junction boxes and some connectors. The mast near the searchlight had incorrect braces, so I'll have to scratch those as well.
The kit gives you one honking huge water-tight storage trunk for the bridge which they tell you mount in the open. Flasher had *2* trunks, mounted vertical underneath the scope shears. Scratchbuilding to the rescue. On the deck, you can see two white "lines" where I filled in the mounting holes for the incorrect trunk. The white stuff in front is where I cut down the forward bridge. I also tricked out the torpedo "gun sight" using PE scraps.
Instead of a boatload of worthless interior-crap that will never be seen like tank baffles, etc, Revell should have given you an extra 20mm and 40mm gun. As a result you can only build one boat right out of the box without buying aftermarket. The twin 20mm on the right is aftermarket from Nautilus models. PE scraps provided the do-dads on the gun sight and 40mm gun. The gun sight's "tower" is scratchbuilt to replace the incorrect "pole" that Revell gives you.
Here's everything dry-fitted. The gap in the railing will be filled in with railing but a small platform sticks out from each side. So that will be scratchbuilt later. At the end of the periscope shears I'll also need to scratchbuild a radar mast.
Here's the front. You can see some of the detail on the gun sight. Behind the gun sight, under the scope shears, you can make out two circular openings. The whole supporting wall has these circular openings. For Flasher, only the front two exist. The remaining ones are square. So more modification. The hole under the front of the gun deck is where I tore out the old trunk and relocated it to the front.
The twin 20mm is just sitting there. At war's end, Flasher will mount two single 40mm guns on her sail, a forward 5 inch gun and the twin 20mm will sit aft. The white boxes littered throughout the sail are boxes for the sound-powered phones. Right now, there's about 100 scratchbuilt parts or modifications. At this point in the build, I am 10% finished. I recommend the Nautilus Model's aftermarket stuff.
Cheers,
Don
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