red Dog

the first set of figures was painted. There are about 50 guys to assemble and paint and to make the process more manageable I decided to work compartment by compartment. The first 10 guys are for the two forward compartment: torpedo room and officer room. Most of these are included in the box but I sourced some Tamiya 1/48 figues (which are quite smaller and of a lesser quality than the trumpeter figures if you ask me) to complement the crew in some poses. As I do usually, carnation is done with oil, clothes with humbrol. You can spot the Tamiya figures intented to show the path the 88mm shells follow from the loading compartment under the radio room to the deck gun. The crew passed the shells through the conning tower. So the human chain will be featured in this build. The supply officer is wondering how to deal with all the supplies stored everywhere, the torpedo room will be no exception. I also decided to place one single fish on the floor. Two might be stored there at the beginning of the war cruise and although the fresh vegetables loaded tell us the boat is at the early stage of its war cruise, I had room for one only. Supplies are still WIP, takes an awful load of time to paint and detail these.

Another issue is the way the tubes open. I recently learned that both tube doors and hull doors are opened with the same wheel from the torpedo room. So they open together: the tube doors rotates to the side while the hull doors retract inside the hull, both opens simultaneously Therefore it is impossible to see the tube front doors above the hull doors. they should be hidden behind the hull doors once opened So these vey nice PE parts will be quite hidden behind the hull doors and one might wonder why RCsubs bothered to create them It's a shame because these are very nice details to add. Many modelers before me added them on top of the HULL doors which is mechanically impossible. More on this later as I work on the hull

AHOY problem ahead It seems the torpedo tubes are too short. The rear tube is about 1.25cm too short and while this is well known I think the forward 4 tubes are too short as well. It is not visible because the torpedo doors are too long and thanks to that the end of the forward tubes meet the outer doors. But if you study the PE correction set, the outer doors are shorter When I consider updating the outer doors, I need to lengthen the forward torpedo tubes by 12mm at least Coincidently, that is also the distance the rear tube need to be lengthened. Fixing this is easy by making 2 parts with the 3d printer: First a single cylinder to address the rear tube and then use that one 4 times to create the forward tubes extension. I linked them together to provide more strength to the assembly Quick and easy test print: All I need to do is to cut the original tubes at the desired distance and mate the 3D print to match exactly the PE doors, but I will leave that for later. I just realized I forgot to cut the opening end at an inward angle as they should be... Well that's why test pieces are , aren't they?

yeah, big PE parts for the deck though, so the big challenge will be to cut openings in the plastic deck, the PE will be easy...

Very nice

In the meantime, I received goodies from Czech Republic to up the boat to satisfactory level (kind of a poisoneous gift if you ask me That's a lot of PEs... and a lot of cuts needed in styrene and plexiglass, not looking forward to that. And a bit of resin extra kit for extra correction and late modification for the boat. Of quite visible importance, the correction for the forward torpedo doors which are too long on the kit And a lot to read: The red devil boat depicts the 14th war cruises of U-552 and a very good read although life on board is lacking. The crew book was sourced to overcome that issue and hopefully get more inside pictures. The Im focus series is great as well, they are up on issue 21 and I have a lot of issues to catch up. It is very refreshing and very interesting to learn a lot about something I had no idea about.

I went to the market last weekend, and painted fruits and vegetables Still WIP, a melting pot of Black dog and free 3D goodies. Not barely enough and I still need to raid the butcher and canned food compartment In the meantime, I worked a bit more on detailing the torpedo tubes Most of it is artistic licence as the parts are overly simplified and detailing realistically would take days if not weeks. I basically added handles, wheels and a bit of cables Weathering still needed on the new cables All elements except the roof are in place. still debating to put two extra fishes on the floor and I let tube 1 open for now as I may put a eel in there as well. I'll decide all this later on.

And resupply U-boats, providing fuel, munitions and food supply to the other attack boats. The story is quite interesting. I stalled a bit on the forward torpedo room because of the empty foreground. Trumpeter wants you to simply place two air tanks there but that leaves a lot of empty spaces and play against the cramped area I want to try to depict with this build. These tanks are not correctly located and are partly under the bunks. But if I build bunks on top of them they will be too high so I decided to cut the floor, create a 3D piece to mirror the opposite side and display the lower bunks. The tanks are relocated and attached from above. If I add a floor for them I'll hide too much of the torpedo storage room under the floor of the room. That's not perfect but the best compromise I could come up with. I intend to show a lot of supplies throughout the boat and try to render the mess it must have been in there with 40-50 stinking males confined in there. I went to cult-3D and downloaded as much stuff as possible and scaled them to 48th scale. Plates, coffeepots, cooking pots, rice bags, potatoes bags, tin cans, fruit cases, salads, carrots, 88mm shells & cardboard casings, etc . All these will compliment nicely what I could gather from black dog supplies. I just haven't found ham and sausages yet but I want them to hang from the floor and I am thinking about hanging hammocks full of supplies from the roof of the torpedo room. Here's very early impression of what I am leaning to: I am also debating to put 2 more torpedoes on the floor as it was often done, must made the crew life really difficult

makes perfect sense, thank you very much. Learning bit by bits thanks

Ok, Well I guess my questions might have been a little too generic The first experiment I did was to create some bed bunks and closets for the U-552 project. That's pretty basic and worked well. Then I printed some STL grabbed on cult3D (thanks Fancherello who creates outstanding free models for us) That's a good exercice for example to work the slicer and play with supports. Now here's a real question. For the U-552 project, I need to make 88mm gun rounds tube. Easy enough to design in 3D But what about printing them? These can be printed vertically and more often than not do not require much support from the slider software That said, I often see these 3D parts being protected by side poles or side walls like pictured below What is the purpose of these side poles and are they created in the 3D models or the slicer software? My guess is they are part of the 3D model. But since I don't see much support from these poles to the 3D parts, what purpose do they serve?

Funny you mention this... the thought of converting to a late double windergarden platform crossed my mind. Downside to that is that most of these late war U-boat lost the 88mm forward gun from 1943 onward, at least those operating in the Atlantic. And imho the 88mm (105mm on Type IX) are quite a U-boat feature. Maybe that's why most of the models are for early war U-boat. But I agree with you, they look much more interesting.

No idea short of guessing someone made a terrible mistake confusing left and right That said, that acrylic side is not great for a look through. It's quite thick and you get a lot of diffraction. I plan on solving the issue by cutting it. So I'll cut the acrylic side on the hull and cut the plain side on the conning tower. and paint the rest. Initially I wanted to have this beast surfaced but in a transparent resin box to simulate the ocean. This seems to be overkill and present too many challenges (experience with large volume of deep ocean water resin, costs and a high risk of not seeing anything inside after all. I would love to have a resin box that I could add or remove the sub from. But that's something I can hopefully give some thoughts at the last stage of this project.

Good tip, many thanks. Didn't know anything about that

Wood grain is something new for me. So new that I actually forgot how I painted the first pieces and I had to search again when I wanted to paint the next run of walls Yet it is quite simple... So I'm documenting this in case my old brain has a blank again First a base coat of XF-57 then brush paint oil Burnt sienna and leave for 10-15 minutes then remove paint with a flat brush following the wood vein direction. remove paint from the brush, do it again Play with the effect until desired result but always dry clean the brush before the next pass. Then leave to cure for a week. When impatient, wait a day or two, then airbrush a thin coat of varnish so at least you can take them with your fingers. But it will remain delicate until fully cured and that may take a week.

Yep U-552 is the logical choice for now, but I usually hate doing whatever everybody else is doing, so that might change when I work on the exterior at late stage of the build