One nice feature of this kit is that it comes with a nice decal sheet with makings for four boats. The option of U-2513 proved to be of particular interest because if I have a choice I like to build things that had a local connection, and it seems that U-2513 spent some time at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard having work done. Surrendered in Norway at the end of the war, it was sailed to Scotland, and given to the U.S., and then sailed across the Atlantic and arriving in Portsmouth. While in U.S. service, the boat was the 2nd submarine to carry a U.S. President while submerged and was used to develop submarine and ASW tactics for the USN. When its batteries expired and could no longer be charged it was again stored at Portsmouth before being towed down to the Florida keys and sunk by anti ship rockets.
There are not many (ok no) construction photos as the kit is pretty simple and I stuck parts together here and there either before work in the afternoon or in the wee hours of the morning after I got home, so nothing really interesting to see there.
Painting was done with Model Master RAL7016 Anthracitgrau below the waterline, and RAL7000 KMS 51 dark grey (which is not that dark) above the waterline. The RAL7000 was over sprayed with RAL7001 KMS 50 light grey (same hue, just lighter) to break up the dark grey. These were KMS colors commonly used on U-Boats.
The decals were applied; and while clearly printed, of the six decals I applied 4 broke apart before I tried removing them from the backing paper. I managed to piece them back together so all good. The U-2313 wore her number on the sail and the hull, however as I wanted to show her in her wartime condition I used the earliest picture of her I could find, which showed her number on the sail, and smaller in size that the sail decals in the kit. However, I lucked out again as the hull numbers looked to be the correct size so I used those on the sail. At some point after arriving in the U.S. the AA turrets on the top of the sail were removed and the horizontal surfaces were painted a very dark grey, the numbers on the sail were repainted several times, at one point in the style of USN letters of the period with a black drop shadow, and the numbers were also added to the hull. As far as I can determine, the configuration of the model represents the U-2513 as it appeared when she made her first stop in the U.S. at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in the summer of 1945.
So, at this point I am adding a bit of weathering and hopefully will call this one finished rather soon
