So said Admiral Beatty at Jutland in 1916 when one of the battlecruisers
under his command blew up. For the cause of the problem, however,
one must go back ten years. In 1906, the world was amazed by the
appearance of HMS Dreadnought, the first all big gun ship. The
Dreadnought was larger, faster and more heavily armed than contemporary
battleships whom she could stand off and sink without coming under
fire herself. The arrival of HMS Dreadnought intensified the arms
race between Britain and Germany and led to the construction of
two fleets of these huge leviathans. Arising from the original
Dreadnought design was a new breed of armoured cruiser, eventually
to be styled battlecruiser. Although of a sadly flawed design,
battlecruisers have always held a fascination for many people.
In general appearance, they resembled the dreadnoughts. However,
while armed with heavy guns, their armour protection was considerably
reduced to enable the installation of much more powerful engines,
giving much higher speeds than the dreadnoughts. Intended primarily
to engage armoured cruisers and to finish off stragglers in a
main fleet engagement, the temptation to use them as virtual dreadnoughts
proved too great. In two battles, one in each World War, four
battlecruisers, engaging the enemy, suffered from their lack of
protection and blew up, resulting in the deaths of thousands of
men.
HMS Lion, with her sisters, HMS Queen Mary and HMS Princess Royal,
were completed in 1912-3 and, at 700 feet long and 29,700 tons,
were the largest warships thus far laid down. A fourth ship, HMS
Tiger, was considerably modified in design. They were the first
"super-dreadnought" type battlecruisers, each mounting
eight 13.5" guns, and were affectionately known as the Big
Cats. At Jutland, flying Admiral Beatty's flag, the Lion was heavily
engaged with the High Seas Fleet and was lucky to survive; her
sister, the Queen Mary, blew up with the loss of most of her crew.
After the War, she fell victim to the wave of disarmament and
was sold for scrap in the 1920s.
Over several years, JSC has built an interesting series of WW1
warships in 1:250 scale. While many of these are from the German
High Seas Fleet, they have now brought out their first offering
from the Grand Fleet - HMS Lion.
The computer-designed, waterline kit is published in book form,
filling 18 A4 sheets of card, together with other parts, including
two Sopwith Pups and two Sopwith 1½-Strutters, printed
on thinner paper. The parts are printed in full colour so that
there is no need to paint. A full set of English instructions
is provided and there are several diagrams.
Construction begins with the hull. JSC have been experimenting
with different types of hull construction, instead of the usual
"egg-box" method. In the case of the Lion, the sections
of the base plate must be pinned to a prepared wooden plank and
the keel and hull frames then attached. This worked quite well.
I did encounter a diagrammatic error, but closer inspection of
the parts clearly showed the right way to proceed.
Once the hull skeleton has been completed, the sides can be plated
and the decking laid on top. The model then begins to look like
a ship. When laying the decking, I was a little worried to see
the deck overlapping the ship sides. However, study of photographs
of the original showed that a ledge had been provided under which
to tuck the anti-torpedo netting when not in use.
The secondary armament must now be built - in all, sixteen 4"
gun turrets. A nice touch here was the provision of four extra
gun emplacements as spare parts. This was repeated for some of
the other later parts. Because of size limitations, instead of
card, the gun barrels were to be made from suitable material (wire,
plastic rod etc.) using a template provided. This applied to some
other parts such as masts. The secondary armament is modelled
with even printed detail on the breech block, although, to be
honest, I found these guns rather awkward to construct. I think
there may have been too much detail which made it difficult to
produce a good rotating turret. There again, it might have been
all thumbs on my part!
Next come the turret barbettes, deckhouses and superstructure.
This is quite a lengthy job as there are innumerable hatches and
ventilators to be placed on deck. Usefully, each barbette is clearly
marked A, B, Q or X. The superstructure has also been designed
with great care to show the different levels with connecting ladders.
Funnels do add character to a ship and so it is important on a
model for them to look right. On this kit, the funnels are provided
with mesh cowls which are quite tricky to apply but the result
is well worth the effort.
The construction of the main turrets is quite straightforward.
Each gun is provided with card trunnion and cradle to enable it
to elevate and depress. You can also apply linen flash shields
to each gun. I used an old hanky, from which I cut small squares.
In the middle of each square, I cut a hole and pushed through
the gun barrel which itself had already been fixed into the turret.
I then glued the shield on the barrel to where I wanted it to
cover and, when dry, tucked the shield into the open turret before
closing the turret roof. By trial and error, I found that, for
a reasonable effect, you needed a piece of hanky about 1"
square. Although this looked rather big, the cloth tucked into
the turret quite neatly, leaving plenty of material outside for
the right effect. The main turrets have been designed with plugs
underneath to slot into the barbettes to allow them to turn.
The kit is provided with numerous ship's boats, each of which
is now built up and placed in position on the deck. Some of these,
such as the Admiral's launch, are quite elaborate, comprising
over a dozen pieces.
After this, various small but numerous items, such as searchlights,
cable reels and bollards, are put together and positioned on the
model. Masts and davits can be made from wire or plastic rod,
as mentioned above, and you may use the diagrams provided for
rigging the model.
The last job is to build the aircraft, each with a wingspan of
about 1½". As well as the aircraft parts, the kit
also provides special card jigs to enable the aircraft to be built
with the correct wing angles.
I will leave the last words to the model instructions.
"Now place the ship in proper position, go back two or three
steps and look at it. It's nice, isn't it?"
Christopher Cooke.
(N.B. This review was wriitten in 1997 when the kit was first published. The kit has been reprinted; laser-cut parts and metal gun barrels for the kit are also now available separately).