Submarines are visually boring

I've been interested in submarines since I was a kid; it's the fault of Microprose's Silent Service (I'd post graphics from the game, but it doesn't have any.) 

This is a 1/700 Los Angeles class I built a long time ago. Like many modern subs, it is a tube with a sail. It is, mind you, an incredibly successful class of submarine, the American Military-Industrial complex at its finest.  Like the USN Gato-class subs or the Fletcher class destroyers, it was built in vast numbers (62) with the later 23 being the improved 688i, which is still in service now; not bad for a basic design from the 1970s. Still, though:

Toob.

 So when I bought some small submarines a while ago, I decided to paint them like sea creatures

 Painted normally: Delta III

The Delta 3 is a Soviet ballistic missile submarine (SSBN or 'boomer' depending on who you are) that is fairly distinctive. Its humpback shape conceals the missiles with the canned sunshine inside. The Delta series (1-4) was long lived, pushing on in Russian service after the Soviet collapse, as it was (compared to the immense Typhoon class) economical to operate, and I suspect more importantly could get spares from the retired I-II series of Deltas. No surprise, anti-corrosion paint that blends with northern ocean is pretty much it for aesthetics. One remains in service: the Russians are so hard up for nuclear attack submarines that the last Delta III has been pressed into the role. 

 

Yoshiro class - Mackerel

The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force is one of the world's larger navies. The Japanese were pretty good at submarines during World War 2, so it only makes sense that they'd continue post war, making non-nuclear attack submarines, or SSKs. (The United States Navy post WW2 made up a nomenclature so that a ship or submarine has a capital letter code that describes its basic functions. SSBN reads [submarine - ballistic missile - nuclear], while the Yushio class is a SSK [submarine - hunter-killer]. Because a greater love hath no man, I looked at Wikipedia's Hull Classification Symbol System article and can tell you SS assumes a submarine like from the second World War, able to attack surface ships but not hunt other submarines, which is what the hunter-killer designation is for.

 

The Yushio class was a diesel electric sub built from the mid 1970s to 1989, with the last one being retired in 2008. I painted it like a mackerel. 

 

I also painted a British Royal Air Force Nimrod like a double breasted cormorant. 

 

Speaking of the UK, this is a SSN Trafalgar class, IE a nuclear attack submarine. Next to the Yushio, it's about the same size - the main difference being that its operational radius is much larger as it can stay submerged and go all the time, unlike the conventional sub, which needs to snorkel regularly to recharge its batteries. I painted it like the The northern dwarf white whale is odd and not especially charismatic; meanwhile the southern dwarf white whale looks like this:

Finally, there is the Oscar class. The Soviets were into submarines post WW2 in the same way they were into ugly concrete buildings. One of their many projects was building SSGNs, which are nuclear powered cruise missile submarines, meant mainly for attacking US carrier groups. By 1980, they had started to launch the Oscar class, which was designed to do the job of a SSN, while carrying enough of this new anti-ship missile the USSR had developed to possibly sink an entire carrier group by themselves. The SS-N-19 Shipwreck I've talked about before, but it is why the sub is so wide. The Pressure hull is surrounded on both sides with the hatches where the 24 missiles are stowed. 

I attempted to paint it like a Blue Whale:

The shade of blue is too light; only after did I see a photo of a blue whale spyhopping:  

More of a navy blue-black. Some shots for scale: 

Oh, I forgot to post this guy: a little childhood dream accomplished. It's a 1/700 kit of the Kaga, one of the four Japanese carriers sank during Midway. It's a Hasegawa kit, and it features the normal parts for the kit, and a much more extensive set of better-looking parts added at some point. 

The Aircraft are mostly correct for Midway. The front aircraft is a Judy, a Yokosuka D4Y Suisei if you prefer, which one or two were at Midway as recon aircraft. Then you have the Kates in Green, the Zeros in khaki (apparently this was their standard color for about half of WW2) and grey for the Val dive bombers. The formation they are in is apparently how the Japanese would stage them. 

The buttresses are visually very distinctive. Underneath the rear is a crane and a boat deck.

The yellow line around the edge is a net for catching things which blow off the deck, which seems like it'd happen a lot. The radio masts would be vertical most times, but canted outward during flight operations. 

Another unique feature is the ship's stack on the left facing downward and away. The rectangular slot below it sprayed aersolized seawater into the stack gas to absorb some of that waste heat - important if the wind was wafting those oxides of carbon against the ship's side. Cooler gas was less penetrating, and less irritating. 

So hindsight is 20/20, but it turns out her AA suite was not great. 

Because of her battleship roots, she still had two sets of 120mm cannons near the water line. 

Aircraft for scale photobomb!

I read as a kid the Time Life Series of flight books on the Pacific War several times. I always found the Kaga and the Akagi (which has a similar design) fascinating, but up until now hadn't had a change to build a model of them. 

The reason for their odd design was that both started as battlecruisers, but the Washington Naval Treaty meant they were forbidden, with both being converted to aircraft carriers. The result is a ship that on her lowest deck above the waterline is a battlecruiser, but above that is the relatively boxy and light mass of a carrier. 

 Speaking of warships: This is the HMS Prince of Wales, 1/700, Tamiya kit. The Prince of Wales had a short but action packed career. She was the second King George the Fifth class built for the Royal Navy in World War 2, and even before she was commissioned would sortie with the Hood intercept the Bismark (it didn't go well.) She then was the ship that Winston Churchill sailed to Newfoundland on to sign the Atlantic Charter. She was, in short, in constant action until being sunk in the battle of Malaya about a year after she sailed against the Bismark. 

While this is sort of what her Pacific camouflage was like, I abandoned trying to precisely reproduce it, and just ended up doing it by freehand. We're well into the models I built during the pandemic, so: this is the Herschel 129, with the famous big gun kit. Italeri, 1/72:

An anti tank gun adapted from the 75mm of the Panzer 4, it took awhile to develop the self-loading mechanism. The aircraft didn't see huge production numbers, around 800 if I recall correctly, and only about 30 ended up with this field mod. Gun was super effective vs. Armor.