Diorama:
S-13 Reports for New Duties
S-13 in Norway 1942, attached to the 5th Minesweeper Flotilla, it bears the Unit's Tiger Insignia. (From Hummelchen Die Deutschen Schnellboote Im Zweiten Weltkrieg).
S-13 Arrives in Norway to assume it's new duties as a minesweeper attached to the 5th minesweeper flotilla.
The centerpiece of this Diorama is Airfix's 1/72th Scale German E Boat. Their original designation assigned to this boat by the German navy was "S" boats, but it was accidentally changed by the Royal Navy to "E boats" to identify this "enemy boats."
The seven S-boats of the 1933 class were the oldest active S-boats in the German Navy at the outbreak of the war. Like all other German fast attack boats, they were mostly build from wood, reinforced with a metal structure. With only two torpedo tubes without any reloads and only a 2 cm gun as main defense, this class S boat was only of limited offensive use when WWII broke out. Because of this, those boats were moved form active S-boat duty to other roles beginning in late 1940, some of them were converted to fast submarine hunters, others like S-13 were converted to minesweepers, and the others will spent the rest of the war as patrol boats in the VP (Vorposten) flotillas.
S-13 will survive the war just to
be delivered to the Royal Navy in May 1945, when it was sold and scrapped.
The model on this diorama was built out-of-the box, a subtle weathering was applied using a wash of artists acrylic burnt umber and dark gray mixed with isopropyl alcohol. The kubelwaggen comes from Minicraft's 1/72th scale WWII utility vehicles set. The rest of the scenery, comes from Woodland Scenics sub-terrain and landscaping materials. The sea was created with acrylic resin, painted with Tamiya's Flat white to simulate waves. The HQ building and the main dock were made from Plastruct and Evergreen styrene stock. Total construction time for this diorama was 28 hours.