ICM 1/72 Uboat Type XXVIIB Seehund (early)

The Seehund (German: "seal"), also known as Type XXVII, was a successful series of German midget submarines created during World War II. Designed in 1944, and operated by two man crews, the submarines were used by theKriegsmarine during the closing months of the war, sinking 8 merchant vessels and damaging an additional 3, with 35 losses mostly attributed to bad weather.

From the Allied point of view the Seehund's small size made it almost impossible for Asdic to get a return from her hull, while her very quiet slow speed running made her almost immune to detection by hydrophone. As Admiral Sir Charles Little, Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth put it, "Fortunately for us these damn things arrived too late in the war to do any damage".

Seehunds operated mainly around the German coast and in the English Channel, and could attack on the surface in turbulent weather, but had to be almost stationary for submerged attacks. From January to April 1945 Seehunds performed 142 sorties, during which they sank 8 ships for a total of 17,301 tons and damaged 3 for a total of 18,384 tons; 35 Seehunds were lost in action.

The last Seehund sorties took place on 28 April and 2 May 1945, when two special missions were performed to resupply the cutoff German base at Dunkirk with rations, the boats carrying special food containers (nicknamed "butter torpedoes") instead of torpedoes, and on the return voyage using the containers to carry mail from the Dunkirk garrison.

The French navy received four units as war damage, and commissioned them as S 621, S 622,S 623 and S624. They were used until August 1953. S 622 is preserved and on display at Brest naval museum.

ICM's U-boat kit comes on a single sprue of grey plastic. The molding on the kit is very nicely done and as one might expect, there aren't any engraved features on this, with the hull reinforcing straps molded proud of the surface as they should be. My sprues broke away on one of the hull halves, taking a mooring loop with it.

The kit itself is simplicity itself. There are basically two hull halves, some sections for the conning tower and the rear mounted dive planes. Two torpedoes make up the offensive load. No deck guns as these were two man submarines, so relied on their small size to keep from being spotted. I'm sure that most of the hull was underwater during even surface operations. The kit does include a stand. There areseveral parts that are not used on this kit so I have to assume those are for another variant.

Instructions are well done with markings for two subs. One is the box art sub in what is listed and gunship grey with white spots. The other is overall Ghost Grey. A small decal sheet accompanies the kit and provides a flag and two sets of conning tower numbers.

I have built a previous ICM small submarine and found it to be a fairly straight-forward build. This one looks to be just the same way.

http://en.wikipedia.org

November 2009

My thanks to www.dragonmodelsusa.com for the preview kit. Get yours at your local shop or on-line retailer

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