H.M.S. Campanula K18, Flower Class Corvette, HP-Models 1/700
 
The Flower Class design was based on the whalecatcher Southern Pride. Her hull was combined with basic upperworks, a light armament and a simple steam engine. This simplified design was chosen to include small civil yards, dispersed along the British coast, unfamiliar with building warships, into the building program. Originally the Flowers were solely meant for coastal service, but the outbreak of the second world war revealed a serious lack of escort vessels; so the Flowers were used as convoy escorts on the Atlantic. The first Flower class was commissioned in 1940 and hundreds followed until the end of the war.
Surely it wasn’t easy to serve on these small but important escorts. Most of the officers came from the Royal Navy Reserve or Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. Most of the crew were made up of hostilities-only men who had been recruited for the duration of the war. Most of them hadn’t been at  sea before. Nicholas Montsarrat was an officer aboard H.M.S. Campanula. He wrote the book “The Cruel Sea”, placing a memorial to all the men who served on these fine ships during the Battle of the Atlantic.
HMS Campanula was laid down on 26th October 1939. Commissioned on 6th September 1940 she was one of the early Flowers. H.M.S. Campanula had a long wartime service. She wasn’t credited with sinking a submarine, but she saved a lot of lives when she picked up survivors of several sunken merchantmen! The ship was decommissioned after the war and broken up in 1947 by Clayton & Davie  at Dunstan. The model was built in her 1942 fit, with an extended forecastle and her mast moved behind the bridge.
 
Currently there are two 1/700 scale Flower Class kits on the market, by White Ensign and HP-Models. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. White Ensign´s Flower has a higher level of detail, and the kit contains photo etched parts. The HP offering is more finely cast, but has no photo etch parts. I used the HP-Models kit together with the White Ensign PE set for Flower Class Corvettes, which is available separately. Apart from the kit parts and the PE set, I used some styrene and brass stock to complete the kit.
This was my third build of a Flower Class Corvette, and therefore I was familiar with the building process. Due to a damaged bridge upperworks part, I rebuilt the part from styrene. I use to assemble most of the parts of a kit, including the PE parts, before I paint a model. That makes painting the decks a bit tricky, but then again it is easier to paint the camo scheme. Also the paint coat is uniform and there are no glue residues on the model. If a model can be built in subassemblies, it eases painting the model. In this case the kit was cast only in small parts, so it was better to assemble those prior to painting.
 
The Campanula was painted in her well known WA scheme in white and WA blue. For weathering, brown and gray artist´s oil paints were used.
 
 
Christian Bruer