Victorian Ironclads

In between eating lots of chocolate today I've got my Royal Navy ironclads to a 99% finished stage (they just need basing and flags), so here's some photos...

The models are mainly from Houston's Ships 1/1000th range and despite being a little rough, make and paint up into some lovely models. The main purpose of the models is to serve as targets for the French in the game I hope to run at Salute later this month. The idea is that it will be the first public run out of Aquanef, but Plan B (if this doesn't come off) is that the French will attack the British ships with aeronef.

Anyway onto the models. First off is my favourite, HMS Inflexible, a turret ship with a rather strange and unique design of only being armoured in the middle! I love the way that the two side mounted turrets revolve through the centre to face the opposite arc, with a bridge joining the two parts of the superstructure. My major quibble with the model is that this is not straight and cannot be corrected without rebuilding the piece from scratch. That said, it is far less noticeable once you've slapped paint on the model.

Next is HMS Collingwood, a barbette ironclad (ie. open turreted) of the Admiral class, a nice model, not sure whether to get another to do as HMS Anson or go with the HMS Benbow variant.

Simpler models are the Torpedo Boat Destroyers HMS Havock...

...and her sister ship HMS Hornet, differentiated by the funnel mountings, which come two to a pack.

Finally is Brigade Models, HMVS Cerberus in 1/1200th. Whilst the Cerberus served "down under" as part of the Royal Victorian Navy I have yet to decide whether this model is a (fictional) sister ship that remained in Home waters. Whatever, it is noticeable that this is a much finer model than the Houston designs (which I do like) and one can only hope Brigade decide one day to add to it with a few British and French battleships of the 1880-1900 period as apart from Houston there is nothing in this scale for wargamers for the end of the 19th century.

If this has whetted your appetite, Angus Konstam's wargames pages has some excellent photos of British and French ironclads from this period going hammer and tongs at each other. Every time I look at the photos though, I must confess I keep mentally transposing a few aeronef into the pictures! :-)