Immediately after I built the Legacies diorama the first time, I began thinking about my next one. Somebody had given me the old Matchbox kit of a Flower class Corvette sub hunter. It had been laying around for some time, so I decided to make it the center of another "Superdiorama". I remember the most difficult parts were the ship itself as that kit was absolutely horrible and wrong in just about every way possible. In hindsight, it would have probably been easier to just scratch build the kit. The other was the base itself. My wife bought me a table saw that year for my birthday or it would never have been built. It was 1986.
I cut layers and layers of the dry dock sides to create the "Stair" effect. A pity I never took SBS photographs. Although in 1/72nd scale, the dio is the same size as the other "Superdioramas" BTW, I had that phrase copyrighted. The dimensions are 8 feet wide, (2.4 meters) by 4 feet wide, (1.3 meters).
I ended up only using the rear half of the hull. All else on the ship was scratched or heavily converted kit parts. I had picked up some reference books in a London book stall and decided as long as I had to scratch it anyway, I may as well convert it to the late war "Modified Flower" design. It has a totally different rake and shear than the older model kit and many upgrades.
The entire bridge is from scratch. I used the plans for Charlock 395, then used this the non-existent K-396 designation. The gun platform, the gun and the rocket rails were scratched.
Note the sides of the dry dock pit. That was so much fun.
In the books and magazines this has appeared in, there has never been a shot of inside the "Wet Dock". There are two more vessels, a torpedo boat and a rescue launch.
For the buildings, I scratched the wet dock canopy, the building underneath and the big crane. The smaller cranes were conversions from model RR cranes. See below. The one on the left is a completed and painted conversion. The right had yet to be detailed or painted at the time.
Some of the remaining buildings were extensive conversions of Kibri kits, IMO, the best buildings of all the German products.
Here are varied shots from various locations throughout the diorama. The color in this pic is terrible!
It isn't armor, but hope you like it!
Bob
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