White Ensign Models HMS Portchester Castle 1944 1:350

Price around: £87.95
Review by Geoff Coughlin (November 2014)

Our thanks to White Ensign Models for supplying the review sample. Get this kit here now at: www.whiteensignmodels.com

A full build will follow

The good news is that this kit is winging its way to ian Ruscoe as we speak and he’ll be building it for SMN over the coming months, so keep an eye on What’s New and Build Now for that.

A little bit of background

HMS Portchester Castle was a Castle-class corvette launched on 21 June 1943 at Swan Hunter shipyard in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She was the only RN ship to be named after Portchester Castle in Hampshire.

On 9 September 1944 Portchester Castle & Helmsdale sank U-484 in the North Atlantic northwest of Ireland. Later, as one of 4 ships in 30th Escort Group under the command of Denys Rayner, Portchester Castle shared in the sinking of U-1200 south of Ireland on 11 November 1944, along with her sister ships Launceston Castle, Pevensey Castle & Kenilworth Castle. She was paid off in 1947.

In 1951 Portchester Castle was employed to represent the fictitious HMS Saltash Castlein the film The Cruel Sea, in which she is shown wearing the pennant number F362, rather than her own K362. In 1955 the ship was also seen in the film The Man Who Never Was.
She was scrapped at Troon on 14 May 1958

The White Ensign Kit

You get a sturdy card box with all the resin and etched metal parts packed securely to avoid any chance of damage as you can see here.

You can see here that the main hull and superstructure is moulded as a two-piece resin mould and this looks pretty good at first inspection. This is excellent because you can choose to build a waterline or full-hull model from the box – no cutting required!

Smaller parts like the ship’s boats, floats and guns come in a separate bag and look well detailed, especially for this small scale.

White metal

You’ll see that there are several white metal parts and the smaller gun looks better in this medium rather than 2-D PE. Propeller and other small details are provided and are well tooled as you can see here.

Photo etch

The package is pretty much complete with the inclusion of PE for the rails and many other small refined parts. Two short lengths of rod are also included to help you with construction and finer detail. Personally I think that PE is a must on any ship model that had deck rails and the like and when you add them, boy does your model step up a gear or two.

Instructions

All in the familiar WEM style – the small drawings and colour profile will help you to locate everything accurately.

Conclusion

I rate this model highly and I know that Ian (who knows far more than I do) rates it highly too, and others in the WEM dockyard.
Highly recommended
Geoff C.

SMN Quick summary Star rating out of 5