1:300 Coastal Forces Project

Since reading Robert Hitchins "We fought them in gunboats" as a library book back in the 1970s I have had a fascination for Coastal Forces wargaming.  When Skytrex first introduced their 1:600 range I collected quite a few different models, building up a force of 8 S - boat s,  8 MTBs, flak lighters, merchant ships, and even some larger destroyers.  They gave a great game.  My rules of choice were "Attack with Torpedoes" just the right mixture of playability and detail.

With the move to Cyprus I ruthlessly cut out any period which I had represented in two different scales.  I sold the 1:600 and the rules, as well as a few 1:1200, and retained the tiny 1:6000 models which I thought would allow me to game on a smaller table.

The 1:6000 are great at representing the larger ships, the Battle of the River Plate,  the Hunt for the Bismark, all look great... but the coastal forces in this scale are tiny and as such work well on one of my Admiralty charts, but pretty poorly on the tabletop.

After scratch building a 15/20mm scale Nile gunboat for Men Who Would be Kings, and reading "building waterline ship models" I decided to have a go at scratch building some WW2 Coastal forces, just to see if it could be done.   If the first model failed I would abandon the project... I told myself.

The first boat would be an RAF rescue launch, an early war 60 ft version, and since this would be my first model I wnated to make it unarmed.  The next issue was scale.  Turns out that 15mm to 1 ft is more or less 1:300 (or 1:285) scale.  Useful since this would allow me to crew the models with wargaming figures.

At 6cm long the rescue launch would be large enough to not be fiddly to maneuver,  but small enough to allow a reasonable size of table to be used.   Even at this stage I was thinking about writing my own rules to go with the project.

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The plans for vessels like the launch are available online.  Very useful too, and I quickly aquired a thick 1 cm by 3cm by 100 ccm strip of balsa.  This would give me around ten vessels of varying size.  I reduced the plan view of the launch to 6cm on my laptop screen and traced the details I needed.  I could have simply printed this out of course!  The traced image gave me the shape of the deck.  I cut and sanded the resulting shape using the full plans as a guide.

Once I was happy with the shape of the hull I began on the superstructure.  Card and balsa formed and shaped gave me the look of the superstructure,  not perfect but passable.  I used filler to cover the joins, and ran a lighter over the result to get rid of any "hairy balsa" left behind.

The mast was fitted, using shaped bamboo, from a pack of kebab skewers.  The result is, if I dare say so, strong and stable.

The hull of boats like this seems to have been a dark blue.  I gave the upper works a slightly dark grey witj that yellow stripe around the top of the cabin. Edging the white painted numbers and letters in black fibre tip pen, I added more detail, and rigged the mast into place.

The life belts and milliput rescue raft were next, painted orange-red they give the model a colourful look.  Following that all I had to do was give the model a satin varnish coat, and fix on some hand drawn RAF pennants.

What's that?  Quiggles is down in the drink?  It's off to the rescue old boy!