"1/72 Revell HMCS Snowberry K166 Flower Class Corvette" Topic

This is a build of the Revell Flower Class Corvette. The kit was initially released by Matchbox in 1979 and has been re-released repeatedly since, often with upgrades or bonus parts. The kit was built for a friend who wanted to use it for wargaming, and paid me in beer for building it! Now how could I refuse that? He asked for an out of the box build, but several of the parts were quite crude, so much so that I couldn't let them go and felt obliged to make some improvements.
The finished model is slightly over 34 inches (868 cm) long in 1/72 scale. I didn't correct every detail in the interest of getting the build completed in a timely manner, but the majority of the smaller parts were modified in some way or replaced entirely. This was especially true for the guns, all of which were built up from Evergreen and parts from the spares box.

Additional photographs here, and you can follow the link at the bottom to the construction posts: link

Very lovely work there, well done.

That's great.

Nicely done

Truly amazing.

Beautiful work.

Beautiful model, but I'm baffled how he's going to use it for wargaming…

Are you planning to waterline it?

Oh, that's very nice.

Very impressive.

Tony

Great looking model of a hard working escort – thanks for sharing

Great job!

Damn, that is very sharp.

That is gobsmackingly good Sir!

Excellent!

I built one as a waterline ship, that hull is thick and hard to cut. I don't understand why model companies don't make the hull so it can be built waterline! I used the HR Models American weapons. Yours is way better than mine.

A friend of mine sold me a started kit and I built it as a waterline merchant ship.

Shown here with the Revell U-Boat.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

link

Makes me want to read Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea once again!

Thanks for all the kind words guys, very much appreciated.

There were 294 Flowers built by several yards and operated by just about all the Allied navies, plus Germany captured a few in France and converted them to flak ships. They received re-fits and upgrades throughout the war, and many survivors were converted to other uses after the war. They were all different in details and there were major hull variations as well.

The kit is still available, and can often be found for cheap. As Mike's example shows it can be converted to represent generic types of ships if needed.

@ Bill – my friend said he had developed a set of rules for 1/72 scale ship combat. I suspect the rules were for boarding actions and the Snowberry was "terrain".

@ nnascati – he wanted to leave it full hull, but I minimized the height of the base.

A great looking vessel, but certainly a bit too large in scale to be useful for most antisubmarine warfare games.

Beautifully built model! Clearly fresh from the builder's yards :)