HMS Echo from the Tamiya 1:700 E Class destroyer kit by Mike McCabe
 
The last couple of years have proved to be a golden age for those interested in Royal Navy destroyers  of the second world war.  Perhaps the most pleasing aspect has been the rekindled interest from plastic kit manufacturers, namely Tamiya with their E class and Vampire kits and the recently announced Tribal class from Skywave.  Personally the V/W class are a favourite, but it is also exciting to see a good and relatively cheap plastic kit of the interwar destroyers, especially as the conversion potential to make any of the A to I classes is enormous. 
 
Originally issued with their reboxed Hood kit a couple of years ago, Tamiya fortunately saw the business sense of releasing this kit on its own, it would seem to be a popular choice as at the IPMS nationals show last year neither I nor a fellow Small Warshipper was able to find one for sale during the show.  The rationale behind this kit, and the reason it is boxed as an E class destroyer rather than an individually named ship as Vampire is, is the interest in the ‘Battle of Malaya’ in which Prince of Wales and Repulse were lost and an escort of two E class ships was present.  I hope Tamiya’s interest doesn’t end there as they have made a pretty good job of both of these ships.
 
The kit and photoetch.
The kit comes in the well known Tamiya box for smaller warships and submarines with a nice bit of box art, the model itself is in the usual mid grey plastic though there is also a decal sheet for all of the E class ships, a small paper set of ensigns, and rubber type caps for those who want their guns and torpedo tubes to be able to rotate, so not for me then.
 
In the box the kit looks pretty good, from an inspection of all the parts I could see some changes that would be needed, some heavy lines of uncertain purpose on the hull, some overdone walkways on the deck, cast on funnel grills that would need removal.  Other areas looked a little short of detail, the rear superstructure in particular, but in general impressions are very favourable.
 
So all that would be needed is one of those nice, tailored etched frets from White Ensign to complete the package.  When I saw the layout of their E class fret I was delighted to see replacement gun shields as these have always been a problem area for RN destroyers with open shields.  Basically the WEM fret is up to their usual very high standards of photoetch, I only wish their resin casting could match it.  There is almost everything most people would require to complete an E class kit on this fret including for later war variants, there are no doors and hatches which are required but these can be found on other frets. 
 
Construction
Tamiya is legendary amongst aircraft and armour modellers for precision of fit of their most recent kits, so I approached this kit with some interest, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the stories were true.  The hull has a locking section in the bow which fits well and disappeared with just a little filler and sanding, the bridge is superbly engineered and needed nothing more than a touch of Mr Surfacer to hide the hairline joins.  I was very impressed with the fit of parts and quality of engineering, detail though is oddly patchy, very good on the bridge but non-existant on other areas of superstructure, so some reference photos or plans are required there.  Fortunately this is little more than the placement of a couple of doors and hatches and access ladders and the gaps are filled in. 
 
In terms of alterations, I removed the overdone lines along the hull and pared down those on the decking with a micro chisel, cleaned up the hawse pipes and replaced the anchor chain, added various doors and hatches from a couple of White Ensign and Gold Medal Models sets.  Most of the remaining additions were straight from the Wem E class etched set, though I also added shell racks from cut down railing.  I remade the depth charge throwers with plastic rod and added some supports with fine brass rod.  Masts were from BKM available through https://shop.modellmarine.de these are nicely tapered and an improvement over straight brass rod, though I used that for the yards.
 
As for the ship to be modelled, I left it quite late in the day to make a choice but decided on HMS Echo as I had a couple of nice photographs of her, I chose to show her in an early war configuration and overall 507b mid grey as I find the dark grey used on home fleet ships far too dark for ships in this scale and destroyers in particular, it becomes impossible to pick out any detail when the colour is this shade.   Construction was carried out through assembling most of the model other than very fragile etched parts first, then painting using the base colour first, then picking out the deck by hand brushing with dark grey.  Some areas of the ship needed the corticene linoleum flooring to be represented, for this I used White Ensign colourcoats, painting some of the deck areas but also using painted paper strips for the walkways to give a cleaner edge.  For the finishing touches I used awning stanchions from the new Lion Roar set, although I think they probably aren’t tall enough.  Crew are Eduard figures repainted, rigging is stretched sprue with light brown used for the signal flag halyards.  The seabase is a base of watercolour paper with waves of acrylic gel and all painted with acrylic paint.
Finished model
Apart from a few additions and subtractions this is an excellent little kit which the superb white ensign fret complements extremely well to produce a very attractive little model.  I will no doubt build more of these into different classes but I first wanted to produce a model of an E class in its original configuration before the demands of anti-submarine warfare started to change the appearance of many of the ships that survived the early years of the war.  Of course there is also the option of producing a flotilla leader through a little surgery, and of a minelayer variant of the E class.  Later war camouflage schemes would alter the appearance as well, when the ability to construct any of the A to I classes and ‘Brazilian’ H class with just a little work from this kit is taken into account, this is a very important and quality addition to the fleet of RN destroyers currently on the market, highly recommended!