KenR : 1/700 German Destroyer Z21 (40 points)

This weeks Italian Wars failure sees me do another two ships on my WW2 1/700 Project, I promise I will get some 28mm Spanish done before the end of the Challenge, honestly.

So first up this week is this German Destroyer from Trumpeter Models. This is Z21 which was one of the last named German Destroyers before they switched to a simple numbering system. The ship was named Wilhelm Heidcamp who was a crewman on the SMS Seydlitz during WW1 and he was badly burned opening water valves to flood the rear magazines on the ship after a British shell started a large fire.

Z21 was sunk quite early in WW2 at the Battle of Narvik in 1940, as flagship of the German Destroyers committed to that Operation by the Germans Z21 was caught moored in Narvik Harbour when a group of British Destroyers attacked and the ship was torpedoed and sunk. Her Captain Hans Erdmenger had the foresight to moor the ship to an undamaged freighter in the harbour after the hit and is credited with saving a large part of the crew as this stopped the whole of the ship from rapidly sinking.

I am very impressed with the detail on the Trumpeter models, they carry much better detail than the Tamiya equivalents and come with a small set of photo etch to give some nice detail on parts of the ship.

The colour scheme is a very basic one, Z21 was sunk before the more exciting dazzle style camo was common and was only ever operational in this basic light grey scheme, however I do think that this has given the weathering a better chance to shine and I'm really happy with the effects on this ship.

 Points wise its another 40 for this model, base wise its on the same as my other smaller ships which is 22cm x 6cm. next up for small ships is another German Destroyer the Z25.

I am very glad that you managed to get these photos uploaded Ken, the end results were certainly worth the effort.  If you aren't following The Challenge FaceBook feed this was a major hassle which took until the wee hours of this morning for Ken resolve.  Lovely weathering and sea effects.  I fully agree that the plain Jane grey shows up the weathering well and your water looks suitably grim and numbing as befits the North Sea and Norwegian waters.