Nicknamed
Einbaume, or "dugout canoes" because of their small size, the Type II coastal
U-Boats served the German navy faithfully from the early 1930s through the
end of World War II. As second-rate combat subs and training boats, the humble
Type II U-Boats were moderately successful, but they were always overshadowed
by their larger, more famous bretheren. They have also been largely ignored
by model kit manufacturers.
A while back Mirage Hobby of Poland
released the first of their line of Kriegsmarine subs, the Coastal Types IIa,
IIb, IIc, and IId. Even though they were in the less popular (at least in
the U.S.) scale of 1/400, I was still very pleased because the little Type
IIs had not been available previously in injection molded plastic. They assemble
quickly into attractive little 4 inch long models, and at about US $6 each
they are very affordable.
The
hull shapes are basically accurate, with the conning towers and decals especially
well done. The Types IIa, IIb, and IIc have, like the prototypes, the same
basic hulls with superstructure and weapons differences. I was impressed that
Mirage Hobby didn't succumb to the temptation to reuse the earlier hull on
the Type IId to save tooling costs; it was a noticeably different shape, and
they nailed it pretty well. Nevertheless, the faint plank detailing of the
decks and the rather crude renditions of the drainage openings in the hull
sides were a little disappointing. The drainage vents are only depicted by
indistinct dimples on the hull sides, and they aren't even in line. These
could be fixed of course, but it would have been a major job of 
filling
in and reopening the dozens of oval holes on four different boats. Given the
basic accuracy of the 
models
otherwise I considered taking this on...but in the end I took the easy way
out and just built them more or less straight out of the box. This is just
as well, because Mirage has since released separate photoetch upgrade sets
for the Type IIs which include hull panels with the corrected limber holes.
As it was, the only improvements I made to the kits were photoetch anchors,
some photoetch and wire railing and a little rigging. The flags were those
provided in the kit decal sheets.
These little guys were a kick to build. Yeah, they've got problems, but when was the last time you had this much fun for six bucks?
Copyright © SMML 2004