Torpedoboot V105 – 1/400 Mirage Hobby

This is my first "proper" build nearly 10 years ago after longer break from modelling. I chose 1/400 scale V106 torpedo boat kit from the Polish Mirage Hobby range. In addition I used dedicated Mirage PE set 008-40028 plus some scratch.

I wanted to build her in Kaiserliche Marine guise, but such photos from that period are pretty much rare. Having only the shipyard plans and a few detail photos from later years, I decided to build my model as V105 – the first of the series should be quite similar to blueprints. Depicted is her early 1915 state.

She had quite interesting international history. Belonging to four ships' family designed for Dutch Navy (Z1-­Z4) was finally commissioned to the Kaiserliche Marine as V105-­V108. After the Great War, three surviving ships were distributed to different navies. V105 and V106 went to Brazil and V108 to Poland (as ORP Kaszub). As the German A69 torpedo boat originally destined for Poland was in very bad shape, British authorities re-bought V105 from Brazil and supplied her to Poland instead of A69 to become ORP Mazur.

The kit itself is quite basic, but it gains a lot from a dedicated PE set. When the build was advanced in ca. 30% I have found very good set of shipyard plans published in Polish magazine Morza, Statki i Okrety 1/2005. This plus also included in this issue some nice close-up photographs showed plenty of inaccuracies of the kit. I have tried to correct most of them, but a few visible ones remained, eg.: all portholes are way too big, overhanging f'castle deck is too thick and the front of the superstructure supporting the bridge has wrong shape. The decals with ship's numbers supplied with the kit are unusable (overscaled and using wrong font) therefore I have used only the flag from the set. The bow number was matched from spare decals stash. The rigging is also of test build quality - I have to say I learned a lot with this model.

Grey paint came from the WEM range­ – Colour Coat KM07. After painting I have used Van Gogh oils for wash and weathering.

12 additional images. Click to enlarge.