1:700 Monitor Bechelaren Germany 1940

A Czechoslovak monitor that ended under a foreign flag

The subject of this model was built by the yards between 1929 and 1932 for the defense of the Danube border. It was the largest warship Czechoslovakia ever had and, for its time, a modern river monitor with armored turrets and a shallow draft, so that it could cope with the changing level of the great river. A home crew served aboard her until March 1939.

After the Second Republic ceased to exist, Germany took the ship over, renamed her and put her into the Danube flotilla. During the war she went through several changes of armament and took part in the fighting on the lower reaches of the river. Her postwar fate was considerably quieter: the vessel lost her weapons, passed into civilian service and was not broken up until 1978. The model represents her form of the early 1940s, that is, from the time when the ship carried a German name.

Why it is worth building

River vessels turn up in display cases only rarely, and yet they offer an interesting silhouette and the chance of an unconventional scene. The low hull looks splendid between banks suggested in foam board, on brownish Danube water and with a patch of riverside vegetation. Given the home origin of the real ship, this is also one of the few models for which it makes sense to look for period photographs in Czech sources. The color scheme was simpler during the war than on seagoing ships, so the result stands or falls on clean edges and gentle emphasis on the rivets. On a river surface it also pays to suggest a deposit of silt along the waterline, which on the Danube has a different shade from sea growth. The whole then holds together better than the model alone on a bare board.