Le Terrible in 1:350.
Le Terrible was one of six destroyers of the Fantastique class.
They lived up to their names, in the sense that they all had very impressive speeds and impressive armament.
Le Terrible was launched in 1933 and in 1935 she set the speed record for destroyers with an impressive 45 knots, a record she kept until 2010, when it was broken by the american LCS ships.
At the beginning of WW2 she was part of the "Force de Raid" that captured the german cargo ship Santa Fe.
As part of the Vichy Fleet she took part in the Battle of Mers el Kebir in July 1940 where she sortied in an attempt to torpedo the attacking british ships. She was recalled and then escorted the Strasbourg, the only large french ship that was able to escape from the harbour during the battle. Both ships made it to Toulon.
In September 1940 she took part in the battle of Dakar.
After the allied landing in North Africa she joined the Free French Forces, was sent to Boston for a refit and reclassified as a light cruiser. She then took part in the landings in Italy.
In 1944 she and her sisters Le Fantastique and Le Malin (The Wicked) formed a light cruiser division that successfully raided axis shipping in the Adriatic.
In August that year she took part in the landings in southern France.
After WW2 she served in Indochina and then as a training ship until she was scrapped in 1962
The kit is from Combrig and was my first resin kit. It is basically a good kit.
The build started with the usual struggle of fitting the upper and lower hull parts together. Being large resin parts, they were a bit warped and thus needed quite a bit of filling and sanding before the joint was reasonably well concealed. When sanding the joint, air bubbles in the resin came to the surface. I filled them with Mr Surfacer.
The PE parts fit very well but are made of some unusual brass alloy that was a bit hard to cut and to fold.
Apart from that, the build went fairly well, although the instructions are pretty sketchy.
It is unclear what time period of the ships career the model depicts. I tried to depict her in a post war state, which meant scratchbuilding the spreaders on the rear funnel. I also stiffened the yardarm on the mainmast with thin piano wire and replaced the barrels of the 20 mm guns with 0,2 mm guitar string.
Top notch work!
The Lundberg shipyard cranks out yet another super build. 🙂
Stunning build Ulf that's one beautiful ship.
Beautiful modeling Ulf. This ship is really well armed. Very nice.
California Steve
Lovely build of a fine ship Ulf.
Stunning as ever.
Another fantastic article Ulf! And a stunning build for that matter! Do you have many more still to post?
Only one. From June on I will post much less frequently, though I plan to write some tutorials about ship modelling, especially rigging.
Another Ulf masterpiece.
Fine build, Ulf. I'm not familiar with Combrig, but might well have a look. If the planned tutorials are a blog, let us know the address. I'm sure there will be interest.
Ulf,
I'm out of adjectives so I will just again, say that I never tire of looking at your magnificiant ships. I did one resin ship and it was not the easiest to build. Great job on this.
stunning work Ulf, awesome...