Lee's 1:300 kit of HMS Aurora is a bit of an oddity, an odd scale and an odd subject for a Chinese model company. The selection of subject is probably due to the Aurora being sold to the Nationalist Chinese Navy in 1948, soon after which the crew switched sides to the Communist cause in a far-eastern re-run of 'Battleship Potemkim'.

While some of the moulding is quite sharp, like the very fine gun barrels of the main and secondary armament, most of the details are either featureless (like the boats) or unrecognisable - close range armament and some of the radar. The hull scales quite accurately in length and beam against Raven and Robert's British Cruisers figures, and the profile is okay, but everything else is a bit suspect. Like most renditions of British cruisers the bow knuckle is way too soft. Oh, and the portholes are too big and there is no armour belt. The superstructure needs a lot of work too. You get the message, this is what a Real Estate agent would describe as a 'renovators dream'.

This may all sound a bit harsh, but if you remember that the kit was intended for motorisation and are prepared to do a bit of rebuilding and detailing and not take the whole thing too seriously a quite nice model arises from the box. Photoetch (in this case from White Ensign in 1:350, which is underscale but who cares?) really helps things along.

For the technically minded 'out of the box' the kit depicts Aurora after her 1945 Malta refit, and the odd radar probably represents a mix of RN and US-sourced sets intended for Nationalist Chinese service. If you want to build Aurora in her last RN appearance then replace anything that looks like a surface search set with late-war RN 'Cheese' aerials.

Aurora was my reintroduction to ship modelling after many years on the dark side building winged things (I needed light relief after building the Monogram B-29) and I had so much fun I have just continued on.

 

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