Battlecruiser HMS Hood | May 1941 | Battle of the Denmark Strait

The tragic tale of the last and largest of the Royal Navy's battlecruisers has been told countless times, which only speaks to the resonance that the story of HMS Hood has had even decades after her fated encounter. This picture might be the last high quality photograph of Hood to be ever taken before her sinking, and it's this configuration that i aim to replicate. 

There was never any doubt in my mind, Flyhawk's 700 scale model had to be the one i was going to build. The kit was developed alongside the HMS Hood Association, and it's the best and most accurate model of the ship to date.  

First order of business was locating drilling holes where the ship will stand on custom display pegs i'll make later down the line. The deluxe version of the kit includes a plastic stand for which holes are already marked on the hull, but since i want mine to be farther apart, i chose to fill those in. Shown here are lines i used to help me locate the new holes. 

A prominent mould line is present on the lower hull which runs along it's entire length. 

That being said, this was not hard to remove at all, careful scraping and sanding solves the issue. 

I had preemptively superglued the included metal weight to the underside of the main deck for fear that the weight would interfere with the stand holes i had drilled, but this turned out to be not needed since said holes sit far enough apart for this to not be an issue. 

The propeller shafts and rudder have been glued into place, the rearmost shafts needed some minor filling on the base of the supports, which was not much of a problem. The rudder needed some light sanding to ensure a clean fit. 

The upper and lower hulls are now joined and kept attached with masking tape, which will be left overnight to ensure a strong bond. Unfortunately, i can already tell there will need to be some fairly major filling and sanding along the whole joint seam. 

The joint between the upper and lower hull is worst at the bow, but much more tame along the entire hull. Admittedly i could have paid a lot more attention in the glueing process, but alass this is the result, time for puttying and sanding. 

That's more like it. 

A small PE fin is affixed to the bow, the starboard side is also ready for primer. 

The hull is now filled and sanded smooth, nice. 

Rear quarterdeck glued in place. 

Bulkheads for the enclosed focsel deck glued in place, the fit is great. 

Main deck glued in place. 

Enclosed focsel deck roof asembled, painted an weathered. It looks quite bad but it's going to be nearly invisible. 

PE details glued in place on the stern turret barbettes. 

This window was excruciatingly tiny. 

More PE. 

Propellers painted with light weathering. 

I noticed that the support columns were missing for two of the aft 4 inch secondary guns, so i added them with 2mm styrene rod cut to length.  

The basecoat for the wooden deck is sprayed with Tamiya XF57 Buff, slightly lightened with white. 

This is the weathered deck for now. 

I plan to add a couple more effects after the rest of the hull is painted and other deck parts are installed. 

Flyhawk's dedicated laser cut masks are a huge time saver. 

Corticene was painted Tamiya XF-79, semtex with XF-63 lightly lightened with XF-2. I love pre-cut masks. 

After many trials and tribulations, the boot topping stripe and anti fowling gray lower hull are painted on. The gray is Tamiya XF 24 

The deck in unmasked and the result looks great. 

With a satin coat applied, and after the boat deck is glued on, the hull is ready for weathering.