Late Fairmile D

[invisible officer]

They are among the vessels I like most, the last version of Fairmile D boats.

They had been excellent gun platforms, much better than the German S-Boote. With a lot of firepower and sometimes luck.

Like in the September 44 fight between MTB 724 and 728 and 3 S-Boote. One was much damaged by the RN guns and the two others had the bad luck to collide. Three of the rare S-Boote sunk. 60 prisoners were taken, including the CO of 10. Schnellboot Flotille Kapitänleutnant Karl Müller. Well known among Coastal Forces as Charlie Müller.
But luck can be on both sides. He was interviewed as POW and Lt-Cdr Peter Scott gave him a pre print example of his famous Battle of the narrow seas, asking for the German view.

It did not pass the admiralty censoring at that point. And Müller was exchanged against an important person, being back in war as member of the staff of Führer der Schnellboote.

The Dog boat was driven by four Packard engines. With the heavy armament the late war vessels lost speed but still managed near to 30 knots. The wooden frame needed a lot of maintenance because RN operated the MTB / MGB in heavy weather.

A typical D-class crew was 3 officers, coxswain, chief petty officer, engineer, 3 stokers and 23 seamen.

I don’t know if they ever met with the Luftwaffe “birdcage” but my inspect one.

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[invisible officer]

I hope we will get mor Fairmile types. And a HDML.

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[Tom Oxley]

I just assembled the two Fairmile Ds that came in the British fleet pack last night, but there are 4 very small bits on a sprue and 4 little holes that I presume they go in, and I have no idea what those would be. This is the sort of bit that usually gets glued to the tweezers instead of the model, so I want to make sure they are there for some purpose before I try them. I don’t see them in your excellent photos.

[invisible officer]

They are so small that they get lost on the pics. They are there. Small Ventilators.
And yes, they made me use some words of ………

[Tom Oxley]

Thanks! I’m just beginning to get to that point of needing a magnifier for some things like those. I could make out the ventilators in the Warlord pics today but then couldn’t remember if those coincided with the locations of the holes. I can finish the boats up tomorrow then. Everything else has worked out with a bit of online research and some Osprey e-books with decent color plates to look at.

[Bill Smith]

I don’t think there were any instances where a 6pdr on a MkVI manual mount was mounted on the foredeck of a Fairmile type D (despite the Warlord pictures). These were always mounted on the rear deck, initially with a 2pdr, and later a 6pdr on a MkVII powered mount at the front. The model has a correct weapons mix, but not as shown on the Warlord art. Later the rear 6pr MkVI mount was replaced with a second MkVII on some boats, and this can be modelled using the weapons pack.

[Bill McGill]

Did any have a powered mount 6-pdr forward and a manual 6-pdr aft? The only references I have found show both as powered 6-pdrs or the 2-pdr forward.

[Bill Smith]

There is a drawing in Leonard C, Reynolds’ “Dog Boats at War” showing MTB 605 in November 1944 with a powered 6pdr forward and a manual 6pdr aft, but I can’t find any photographs of a boat with this combination. Unfortunately, unlike the Warlord model MTB 605 only has the aft pair of torpedo tubes and a manual twin Oerlikon rather than the powered mount.

The 2pdr forward/manual 6pr aft certainly looks much more common from pictures,and it appears to have been succeeded by the powered 6pdrs fore and aft layout.

[Bill McGill]

So, where can we get a 1/300th 2-pdr from?

[invisible officer]

You may scratch them IO style. Or wait. There are more versions of Fairmile D in the pipeline. Ooops, fight Club rule breaking??? Mea culpa. 😉

One might argue about the very late war choices in Fairmile and MTB made for first releases. But they are “cool”.

Firepower increase with two 6pdr was done on many boats and became standard in the four 18″ tube boats.

Unfortunately the front unit conversions are not ever well documented.

Not to forget the modified D class No 5001-29 with two 6pdr and two 21″ TT.

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