Special Cruisers Project.
So a new project. Cruisers. My favourite ship type. The tale of the three
British cruisers beating up the big bad Nazi battleship, well I grew up with
that sort of story in written and film formats. One of those cruisers was crewed
by New Zealanders (HMNZS Achilles) so it made us young lads of the time doubly
proud of its success. The war comics of the time (Battle, Commando) had plenty
of Naval actions with cruisers saving the world, again. One of my first plastic
models to make was the Airfix Leander class cruiser (Ajax). Airfix never made
all of the Battle of the River Plate ships. For some reason they resisted
everybody's calls for a model of the Exeter. I had to put up with the Frog brand
1/500 Exeter which never looked right when displayed with the others. Matchbox
went on to make a 1/700 scale version, but again it looked out of place and my
younger brother had that one. Nowadays the Japanese 1/700 and Chinese 1/350
Exeter kits are very detailed, but again it is difficult to get all four ships
in the one scale. I went aboard HMS Royalist (Bellona Class cruiser 5.25") in
1966 just before it was decommissioned. To an 8 year old boy, the Royalist
seemed the size of a battleship! It was only a few years later that I had my
first reading of HMS Ulysses, by Alistair MacLean, one of the best books of its
time and recommended reading for any Naval buff. All of this fuelled my love of
warships and cruisers in particular.
My era is the era of steel from 1900 to 1950. The time of the big gun. The
cruiser type grew from 2,000 ton scouts through to 18,000 ton heavy cruisers
that were bigger than the first battlecruisers. By 1900 the cruiser was in three
classes. 1st class 'fleet' cruisers. 2nd class 'protected' cruisers. 3rd class
cruisers were for use anywhere and everywhere. The cruisers main job for
hundreds of years has been 'trade protection'. Large, long ranged vessels with
enough armament and speed to catch and dispatch the raiders preying on the
merchantmen that were the lifeblood of the worlds commerce. Even today piracy
still abounds on the worlds oceans and seas. Today the trade protection vessels
are the corvettes, frigates and destroyers on the oceans while the long ranged
maritime aircraft cover much larger areas in half the time, but aircraft do not
carry boarding parties.
With the capital ship project I used pretty much one hull with a variety of
country specific superstructure and armaments to make up the different types.
That is not really what I want to do here. I like the idea of small AA cruisers
with 4" guns, right through to large heavy and armoured cruisers with 8"-10"
guns, that will not fit on a 'one size fits all' hull. What I do not want to do
is just clone ships I have already done. Which is going to be difficult as I
have done a lot of cruiser drawings for most countries. Oh well, just have to
carry on and see what I can come up with.
| Country | Class Name | Ship Type |
Guns |
Link |
| Commonwealth | Vengeance | CL | 15x6" |
.PNG) |
| Commonwealth | Blenheim | AC | 4x10" |
.png) |
| Italy / UK | Livorno/Durham | CA | 15-16x8" |
.PNG) |
| UK / Chile /Brazil | HMS Active | CL/A |
10x4" 7x5.5" |
.png) |
| Germany | Dresden_II | CL/A | 6x5.9" |
.PNG) |
| United States | Anchorage | CLA | 8x5"/54 |
.PNG) |
| United States | USS Memphis | ACR/BC/CVL | 8x10" |
.png) |