1/700 Flower Class Corvette
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by Martin J Quinn |
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| HISTORY | |
| The Flower-class corvette (also referred
to as the Gladiolus class after the lead ship) was a British class
of 294 corvettes used during World War II by the Allied navies particularly
as anti-submarine convoy escorts in the Battle of the Atlantic. Royal Navy
ships of this class were named after flowers.
Most served during World War II with the Royal Navy (RN) and Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). Several ships built largely in Canada were transferred from the RN to the United States Navy (USN) under the lend-lease program, seeing service in both navies. Some corvettes transferred to the USN were crewed by the US Coast Guard. The vessels serving with the US Navy were known as Temptress- and Action-class patrol gunboats. Other Flower-class corvettes served with the Free French Naval Forces, the Royal Netherlands Navy, the Royal Norwegian Navy, the Royal Indian Navy, the Royal Hellenic Navy, the Royal New Zealand Navy, the Royal Yugoslav Navy, and, immediately after the war, the South African Navy. After World War II many surplus Flower-class vessels were used in other navies, or for civilian use. HMCS Sackville is the only member of the class preserved as a museum ship. For further information, check out the Wikipedia page (where this information came from) for her class here. |
| The
Triumph/Ostrich Flower
Flower is packaged in sturdy, flip-top white cardboard box, with art work of a Flower-class corvette on the box top. Inside the box is the hull halves in two bags: one with the hull halves, decals and one resin runner, while four other resin runners are in a second bag. Also included is a small photo-etch fret and instructions. |
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| THE HULL | |||||||||
| The kit provides a separate upper
and lower hull. These are keyed with a hexagon shaped male part on
top portion of the lower hull, and a similarly shaped female opening on
the bottom of the upper hull. The mating sections of the hull halves
may need some light sanding if you are doing a full hull version.
The hull scales out on point in both length and beam for an early Flower.
Overall, both halves are well cast, though each has a very large casting plug which will need to be (carefully) removed. Detail is good, with skylights, bitts, planking on the forecastle, anchor handling equipment and more. The hull plating on the both upper and lower hull might be overstated to some, but will probably look ok under a coat of paint (the real ships did have some prominent plating lines on the hull). |
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| SMALLER PARTS | |||||||||
| There are five resin runners in the
kit. The smallest has two parts for the bridge and the funnel. Detail
is crisp with no defects.
The other four resin runners have the mast (you might want to replace this with brass, though you'll lose the crows nest), boats, the ships main armament, depth charge throwers, rudder, props, rafts, cowl vents and other very very small parts. Everything is well cast. |
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| DECALS | |||||||||
| There is one small decal sheet, with two versions of the White Ensign included. You'll have to source pennant numbers on your own. | |||||||||
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| PHOTO-ETCH | |||||||||
| There is one, small, relief etched, photo-etch fret included with the kit. Included are a planked deck for the bridge, rails, gun platform, gun shield depth charge racks, inclined ladders, yard arms, davits, jackstaff and more. | |||||||||
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| INSTRUCTIONS | |||||||||
| The instructions are six pages across three 8 1/2 x 11 pieces of paper, in black and white. There are no painting instructions or color callouts. You'll have to do some research to find the ship you want to build. | |||||||||
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| CONCLUSIONS | |||||||||
| Triumph/Ostrich have done
a few kits together, and this early Flower is one of them.
I never had the older White Ensign Flower-class kits, so I can't compare
these to those. But, on it's own merits, it is a nice kit with good
details and almost everything you'll need to build an early Flower-class
corvette out of the box. You'll just need to decide which ship and
which paint scheme, and source yourself some pennant numbers. Recommend,
especially for fans of ships that participated in the Battle of the Atlantic.
This is Triumph/Ostrich’s 1/700 Flower-class, kit number 700003. The model is currently on eBay for an average of $25.95, before shipping. Thanks to Russ Varga for lending me the model for the review.
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