CMK 1/72
German Mines and Equipment

Background

The naval mine is a self-contained, explosive-device placed in water to destroy ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, they are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach or contact with and enemy ship. Naval mines can be used offensively, to hamper enemy ships or lock them into a harbor; or defensively, to protect friendly ships and create “safe” zones.

Mines can be laid in many ways: by purpose-built minelayers, refitted ships, submarines, or airplanes – and even by dropping them into a harbor by hand. They can be inexpensive: some variants can cost around a thousand U.S. dollars or so, although more sophisticated mines can cost millions of U.S. dollars, be equipped with several kinds of sensors, and deliver a warhead by rocket or torpedo.

The Kit

The kit comes in a clear blister pack The parts are all in a light tan resin. The blister is attached to a card that has a hole in the top to hang it on a peg, in a hobby shop, for display. There is a printed sheet inside the blister that has a photograph of the 4 mines in the set made up. This is the only thing, in the way of instructions, included with the mines. The photo is in black and white and the mines look like they have been finished with a dark color, perhaps gray?? On some of them a white three -digit number appears. There are no decals in the set, so these numbers obviously were hand painted. 271 is on one of them, 210 on another and just 13 on a third of the four. Whatever the first digit was, before the 13 is hidden around the curve of the mine. I suppose any three-digit number would be okay??

Each mine consists of the round sphere attached to a square base box. The contact horns and a weld seam are nicely done on these spheres. The base has a rope handle molded into one side of it and two horizontal and two vertical raised bars molded into another side. The box art shows a couple of grab handles on the side with the rope handle, but you don’t get any in the kit.

There are square wheeled dollies that attach to the bottom of the square base boxes and cable reels that go on the side of the base box that has the raised bars. Detail is very well done on these and I found no bubbles.

I bought this kit from Hannants in the UK. It is going to go aboard the stern racks on my Revell of Germany 1/72nd S-boat. Those empty racks in that kit just begged for these.
Recommended to modelers that want to dolly up their S-boats too.