Dunkirk East Pier by Mike McCabe
 
The evacuation of British and allied troops from Dunkirk under Operation Dynamo is best known perhaps for the part played by the civilian manned small craft, the ‘Little Ships’, but in fact by far the greatest proportion were taken off on Royal Navy manned ships and especially destroyers.  These were able to quickly get in and out and take many hundreds at a time, their high speed allowing a fast turnaround.
 
However as the operation progressed German bombing and artillery fire made much of the harbour unusable, a situation made worse by the fires that raged from damaged oil refineries close to it which produced dense clouds of choking smoke.  On the east side of the harbour a breakwater had been constructed which was narrow and intended only to protect the harbour, although high out of the water and with no easy access, it was quickly found that it could be used as an embarkation point, even if a precarious one at times, and many thousands were taken off from there during the course of the operation.
 
My idea was inspired by a number of photographs showing this action with ships tied up next to the pier and loading soldiers, it was no doubt a chaotic scene with the constant threat of aerial attack.
 
The Model
 
One of the most important ships involved in Dynamo in terms of numbers carried was HMS Codrington, in eight round trips she carried almost 4,500 personnel back to Britain, but as a destroyer leader and a more or less one off design there was of course no kit available, so some research would be needed to be able to use the Tamiya E class destroyer kit as a basis.  Another more recent Tamiya release I had been itching to build is their V/W class destroyer badged as HMS Vampire, some quick research showed two options here, Vanquisher and Vivacious of which there were photos of both at the East Pier.  I opted for the latter as those of Vanquisher were a little less clear in terms of layout and armament, so I plumped for Vivacious despite her rather more flowery name.
 
I was very fortunate to receive the help of the eminent naval historian Alan Raven whilst researching Codrington, who was kind enough to send me a large scale copy  of the as fitted plans to work from, I am extremely grateful for his help.  The process of modifying Codrington from the E class did however immediately become obviously a bigger job than I had thought, so big a job in fact that I won’t detail it all here, I will instead make this the subject of a future article for our sister group, the IPMS Small Warships SIG and will post a link here once completed.  Suffice to say work was required to lengthen the hull in two different places, remodel the bridge add in a new gun position, build the engineers workshop aft of the funnel and change other small details, it turned the superstructure of the ship other than funnels and aft deckhouse into effectively a scratchbuilding exercise, although the excellent White Ensign etched fret was used to detail much of the remainder.  One thing that was apparent though was that the plans had little in terms of deck detail as much of this would have been added during service.  Unfortunately few photos of Codrington exist other than pre-war, which also created a problem in terms of colour scheme.  I hatched a cunning plan to deal with the deck detail, more of which later, but anecdotal evidence suggests she was wearing a dazzle type camouflage scheme at the time of Dunkirk.  A number of ships of the H class wore a distinctive scheme of light, dark and mid grey  at the time, it seemed a reasonable stretch to have my model wearing a modified version of that, I must therefore say the scheme is conjecture, but I think a reasonable one, in any case my motto is always ‘prove me wrong’!
 
Vivacious was built pretty much from the box with the White Ensign fret, a little extra detail was added on the superstructures and deck supports, but I really do like the kit Tamiya have produced, it is superbly engineered and just seems to capture the fine delicate lines of these ships which are in any case probably my favourite class of RN warships.  I really would recommend this kit and I shall be building more, the possibilities of this and indeed the E class for anyone interested in RN destroyers really are huge.
 
I built Vivacious showing her just coming to tie up to the pier, all hands manning weapons in flash gear and at action stations.  On the opposite side Codrington is just leaving, and here is my cunning plan to hide the lack of information, full of troops.  Passing both ships is one of the little Dutch coasters known as ‘skoots’ by the RN crews.  This little model is from our Fine Waterline range, the kit is left as a basic one just providing the hull and bridge shape as these ships were so variable.  I added the deck bulwarks from plastic card doing the same around the bridge area, added a winch and small boat from Battlefleet models and ladders and bridge windows from pe with boat davits from fine brass rod. 
 
The pier was left until last as I was rather fearing doing it with all those supports, however I had not long before bought a chopper but never really put it to serious use, so now would be the time.  Using evergreen plastic squared section rod, I measured the desired height and set the chopper to that, about five minutes later I had all the supports cut.  So then I set it to the 60 degree angle adjustment, measured out the length and five minutes later had all the cross pieces cut.  Then using stringers for the length of the pier I glued each vertical pillar in place the desired distance apart, let it dry and then attached the angle pieces.  Once this was done I used evergreen planking to add the decking, finishing off with some chunky pe railing that was too heavy for ships but would simulate wooden barriers well.  All this took about two hours, I could not quite believe it went so fast but this was pretty much entirely down to how quickly and accurately plastic can be cut with a chopper, I would highly recommend it if you have the need for something similar or do much scratch building, I bought mine here - http://www.ema-models.co.uk/products/04523-the-chopper-ii.html no connection!
 
Of course the most obvious requirement for any Dunkirk diorama is going to be figures, lots of them.  In this case I used the Eduard ones as they are better value even if they need a little work.  Firstly I thickened them up with white pva glue so they are less flat, then to try and replicate helmets I added a blob of glue to the heads of each figure.  This works ok, but given the number involved anything more would have been soul destroying.  Adding these to Codrington was not an easy task, firstly there was the question of rig first or add figures first, if rig first I would probably knock off most of the standing rigging in the process, if figures first I wouldn’t have space for the rigging, so the compromise was work out where the lines would go, add figures everywhere but those places, add the rigging then fill in around them, which was tedious but worked.  I find using figures a little like rigging, there is only so much I can do in a sitting, so I tended to do perhaps 100 at a time to gradually build up the scene.  When I stopped and had added what I felt was enough I had got through nearly three frets of figures so I think there are about 900 figures in the scene, if you want to know exactly, you can count them for yourselves.
 
The model was assembled with the pier at an angle to allow space for the coaster and the ships attached to the base in situ, water is the usual watercolour paper and acrylic paint, rigging stretched sprue and all painting with humbrol enamels.
 
For the photographs I made a quick background to try and show the smoke from the oil refineries, photos are with a Nikon D70 and 150mm macro lens at highest possible aperture to get the best possible depth of field, shot in daylight with two lamps with daylight bulbs used to fill in any shadow.
 
I think the completed model captures the scene quite well, it is difficult for any model to quite get the essence of confusion, panic, fear, stoicism and bravery that Dunkirk epitomises to me, but hopefully it is some way there.
 
Mike McCabe
28th May 2010, 70th anniversary of Operation Dynamo