Vosper 73ft MBT Type I (Late war) MTB 379 – 395

[invisible officer]

Vosper 73ft MBT Type I (Late war) MTB 379 – 395

In late 42 the RN ordered the 73ft MBT. 17 are built as Type I, 12 more got ordered in 44 to Type II specification. Three got cancelled.
It replaced the 60 and 70ft built before. The first Type I are commissioned in January 1944.

The Type I carried 4x 18” torpedo tubes. Two more than the older MBT that mostly had 2x 21” TT. A twin 20 mm was carried on bow. Two twin .303 MG had been mounted on the aft TT. On the front one 2” rocket flare projectors got mounted.

The mast from the kit does not look like the Type I, so I did one myself. I added the .303 and other details.

Painting is in MTB white (an extremely light grey) and Pale grey (Standard F Scheme). Surfaces got painted in darker grey.

39,9 knots. Crew of 13 men. They had armor plate at the bridge.

The type II boats MTB 523-533+537 (534-35 canc.) got just the aft 18” TT but the saved weight was used for a 6pdr gun. The 20mm changed position to mid of boat. None of these reached the front units before war’s end.

Warlords naming might cause some confusion. On the Vosper box they say it includes Type I and Type II. They should have used early and late instead. Their Type I is the 70ft hull type of boats that had no Type designation, the Warlord II is in fact the 73ft Type I.

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[leopard]

These models are utterly insane

utterly amazing, utterly beautiful, but insane with it

hats off to you

[Dr Dave]

IO, superb models as ever.

I was about to start making mine and the hand rails issue has reared its head. I thought that stancheons and hand rails as well as some rigging was taken down before coming into action to improve weapon arcs and reduce shrapnel hazards.

Any ideas?

[invisible officer]

No, it was not. There was no time to take them down before action.
The small boats had been risky enough , not being very seaworthy. Not being able to operate above Beaufort 4 – 5 . (Same with the bigger German S-Boote) They jump around on the waves and so the safety rails are a must.
German even often had the canvas on them, sometimes used by RN too. Some Vosper even had splinter matresses at the rails. Esp. the ones around the bow 2cm.

The positioning and height was chosen in a way to be out of weapos arc.

[Dr Dave]

Well, it depends how much time there was before coming into action?

Not sure about your thinking on the positions to avoid weapon arcs – bow and stern flag staffs have to be taken down.

Maritime models are often tricky – my favourite is when modellers set their turrets traversed to port or starboard – “in action” – but then leave the rangefinders facing forwards!

[Dr Dave]

It’s also worth realising that a 1 cm cable scales to about 35 microns. The thickest human hair is about 6 times thicker than this.

[invisible officer]

Well, it’s all a qustion of optics. Thin things are often very prominent.
If one uses the thick plastic masts or guns one may use very thick rails.

There are other things in the firig arc, for example antennas. The short Vosper have them in positions that may be in the arc. But no way to take them down.
The S-Boote had “Abweiser” to protect parts of the boat from own fire. No helmsman likes a good 2cm burst in his…..
😉

[Dr Dave]

“…it’s all a qustion of optics. Thin things are often very prominent” – only if in silhouette.

I think I speak for all of humanity when I say that the smaller a thing is the harder it is to resolve.

What you have to remember is that the human eye can typically resolve only 2.7 cycles per milli-radian under 100% contrast, and then only using the fovea under photopic vision conditions.

Keep in mind: small… far away 🙂

[invisible officer]

Well, reflection is one of the reasons why a round rail is often seen better than a bigger rectangular thing in same distance.

For me the rails and antennas are an important part of the look.
May be because they often saved me from a bath in bad weather sailing. 😉

[Hydrox]

Models look amazing. I hope to do a little embellishing when I finally get my hands my own starter set. Though I think not nearly to this level. I still want to be able to play without having to put the white gloves on, as it were.

As for the firing arcs, I never thought about how that would work. Though I imagine the guns would be lofted a little while shooting? Would you ever be close enough to fire on a flat trajectory? If you were, I imagine the only thing that would matter would be making sure the boat could get you back to port after.

Through all this, all I can think of is Sean Cornnery in the Last Crusade: “Sorry, son, they got us.”

[invisible officer]

I did a secon 73ft one. This time I cut away the canvas around the 2cm bandstand and made a wire one.
The pics I found show it in wartime like that, without protection.

Some 71ft had one, normally made from splinter matresses.

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