The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was a warship of the German Kriegsmarine and belonged to the Admiral Hipper class. It was named after the Austrian general Prince Eugene of Savoy.
On 18 May 1941, the Prinz Eugen sailed from Gdingen (Gotenhafen) together with the battleship Bismarck for Unternehmen Rheinübung from the Baltic Sea with the destination Atlantic. There, enemy convoys were to be attacked. However, the convoy was discovered early on by British reconnaissance and shadowed by several ships of the Royal Navy. In the further course of the operation, the well-known sea battle between the two German ships and two heavy British units took place. The battlecruiser Hood was sunk and the battleship Prince of Wales heavily damaged.
With the German surrender, the cruiser, which was the only heavy unit of the German navy to survive the Second World War, came under British command in Copenhagen.
In December 1945, the ship was sold by lot as war booty to the Americans, who added the ship to their inventory on 5 January 1946, retaining the name USS Prinz Eugen (IX-300). 574 German crew members remained on the ship to instruct the US Navy personnel on board in technical matters.
The ship served for a time in Bikini Atoll as a target for atomic bomb tests, but remained without much visible damage. Radiated, with defective Lenz pumps and leaks at the shafts, the cruiser sank in December 1946 in Kwajalein Atoll and has been an unsolved environmental problem there ever since, partly sticking out of the water.
The kit is a complete kit and contains all the parts needed to build the model. There are two boxes bulging with cast metal fittings and 5 sheets of brass etched parts needed for the very intricate components. The detailing is very high. The sheer number of parts (more than 800) promises long building fun. Keel (MDF) and frames (plywood) are precision laser cut parts, for the planking only selected good woods are used. The superstructure consists partly of MDF plates as substructure and photo-etched parts for the many details. The main guns are rotatable. The kit comes with a colour step by step instruction which shows all steps in detail. Detailed photos show complicated steps and provide quick orientation. A simple model stand is included.
Not included are paints, adhesives and tools. Due to the many small details and countless parts, only experienced modellers should dare to build this model !
On Youtube, the manufacturer OCCRE provides small videos showing individual construction sections.
Technical data:
Scale: M 1:200
Length: 1070 mm
Width: 175 mm
Height: 290 mm
