A Break from the Atlantic

The genesis of this diorama was an interest in Royal Navy escort vessels dating back to the time many years ago when I met Mr Nunn who had been coxswain on the corvette HMS Sunflower and let me copy some of his personal photos, and seeing HMS Pelican from the bus on the way to school as she was being broken up on the River Ribble at Preston.
 
The sheer variety of vessels was fascinating, and the more I researched these ships the more I realised how important Londonderry had been in the Battle of the Atlantic. I had also become fascinated by escort sloops and wanted to portray a group of them. I e-mailed the harbour museum at Londonderry and they were able to sell me a copy of their booklet entitled Atlantic Memorial which had a number of evocative photos of ships berthed as many as four or five deep along the River Foyle close to the city centre. Seeing the German Gamblers Liverpool docks diorama was the final push to get started.
 
I chose 1942 as being at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic just before the River class frigates started to make a big impression on the numbers of ships available.
 
The ships are representative of the types using the base at that  period and all belonged to escort groups which operated from Londonderry during 1942, although they would not all have necessarily been in harbour at the same time. The camouflage schemes and appearance of the ships were as they appeared at some stage in 1942.
 
Buildings were found in the background of some of the photos in the book, sometimes just as incomplete glimpses, and were used as the basis for the diorama buildings. All the buildings were constructed from styrene sheet and wherever possible the windows cut out and the glazing bars were made from sections of photo-etch ships railings. The fire escape on the brick factory came from the same source. Where the windows did not lend themselves to this technique, for example on the terraced houses, the windows were painted with a very dark grey and the glazing bars scratched through with a needle to the bare white styrene.
 
The lorries and section of quay behind the RFA coaster came from White Ensign, but all other items including a couple of vans, a mobile crane, railway rolling stock, and jetties. The baseboard is plywood with a section of MDF for the shore. The water is watercolour paper treated with cyano-acrylate glue, painted with oils and then coated with Klear and acrylic gel medium where needed.
 
The trees were made from fuse wire stuck together in a bundle and the ends then splayed out to represent the branches. The trunks were then covered with PVA white glue and “foliage” added from material from a model railway shop.
 
The ships are:
 Corvettes       
K80     HMS Bluebell – White Ensign kit built out of the box
K47     HMS Polyanthus – White Ensign kit of HMS Bluebell with a modified bridge and the mast relocated ahead of the bridge.
K120   HMS Borage – White Ensign kit of HMS Buttercup with mast relocated ahead of the bridge
K132   HMS Vetch – HP kit of HMS Alisma with bridge modified and raised gun platform.
Destroyers      
H78     HMS Fame – modified to escort specification from Tamiya E class kit with Hedgehog from Niko and 4.7” gunshields from the White Ensign E class photo etch
I94       HMS Whitehall –modified to Long  Range Escort from Tamiya HMAS Vampire kit with A and Y guns, fore funnel and torpedo tubes removed and a  Niko Hedgehog added. Other photo etch from the White Ensign V & W class fret
Sloops            
U36     HMS Leith – Finewaterline Grimsby class kit with 4.7” guns from the Tamiya E class kit and White Ensign shields. The crew are re-painting the starboard side, hence the cleaner appearance than the other ships. There is a photo in the Atlantic Memorial booklet of a Grimsby class sloop (wrongly captioned as HMIS Godivari) partly painted which could be either Leith, Deptford or Wellington and my idea was to show the job being completed.
U50     HMS Rochester – scratch built using Niko 4” guns
U75     HMS Egret – scratch built using Niko twin 4” mounts. I had intended to depict Pelican as a nod to my boyhood memories, but was seduced by some excellent pictures of her sister ship.
Auxiliaries    
W30    HMT Jaunty – Loose Cannon Stormking kit
HMS Barcross –scratch built Bar class Boom Defence Vessel
RFA Robert Dundas –scratch built store carrier. Both Robert Dundas and Robert Middleton were still in service in 1971 and I took a picture of Middleton at Portsmouth in that year which helped greatly. She is unloading at the quay side and has her fenders out as Jaunty is backing up to berth alongside
61 ft MFV – scratch built. Coming alongside Borage
 
I hope the model evokes the all too brief periods of calm for the crews who often had fond memories of Londonderry.
 
Don McKeand