HMS London, 1941
Skytrex 1/700 - White metal

By : Russ Smith

This is a short review to expand on the one that I did on the list.

HULL: The hull is beautifully cast in white metal. A wealth of detail is cast into the hull, the bridge, funnels, lifeboats, anchors, even the eight barrel pom-poms and searchlight platforms & lights are pre-poured in place. The hull strates are very well done and the hatches at the stern look quite nice and to scale. The hull scales out a little large length-wise about 1/8. The width suffers from similar over-scaling. The hull also does not taper as rapidly as WEM's Sussex or Waveline's Dorchester. While this may seem a big deal it does not really show up unless you are looking for it. This hull is perfectly flat and the deck planking is as good as many of the resin models three or four years ago. The molded on x-bracing looks very good for just that, molded on. In many cases it possibly won't show up as molded on because of the large areas of dark camouflage paint on the hull when finished. There are undercuts in the hull where the torpedo tubes are, and radar on the directors too.

BRIDGE: The bridge is molded on the hull and is very detailed. There are voice tubes and a binnacle. The molded on HA directors look good. So too do the eight barrelled pom-poms There is no need for cleanup of any of these areas, as they are clean and very crisply poured.

MASTS: The masts, like most white metal ones, look a little thick and could be replaced with brass ones, but are still acceptable as they are. For once I'm going to leave them and see how they hold up to rigging.

GUNS: The barrels on the 8" are heavy. Similar to what you would see on a B-Resina Suffolk. These I'm going to replace with brass tapered in my Dremel. The 4" twin guns are fine; they will clean up with a minimal amount of work and the barrels straighten easily. They have nice detail on the breech end. The eight barrel pom-poms have fair detail and should paint up to look good.

DETAILS: The molded details are very good. Although the boats are molded on, they look like something you would get with an Deliphas or Regina Marina quality model. The funnels themselves are OK but the grates are the worst feature. They are very simplistic and should be filed off and substituted with photoetch or brass rod . The capstans too, look too simplistic and I think I'll replace them with the ones WEM makes in their Pro series. The molded on anchors are not in as good a condition as the ones on my Berwick, so I am going to replace these too with photoetch.