1:72 German Midget Submarine Type Molch

A one-man submarine from the last year of the war

The Molch midget submarine came about in 1944, when the Kriegsmarine was looking for a cheap weapon against Allied landing operations. The crew consisted of a single man, the craft measured just under eleven meters and weighed about eleven tons. The fundamental difference from large submarines lay in the propulsion. The Molch had no combustion engine at all, it ran purely on batteries, and its range was therefore counted only in tens of nautical miles.

The armament consisted of a pair of torpedoes slung externally under the hull. Aiming was done with a periscope just below the surface and the attack was made from close range, because slow travel underwater did not allow anyone to be pursued. The first battlefield, in September 1944, was the Ligurian coast of Italy, and the deployment there ended in heavy losses. The craft was difficult to handle and the crewman spent many hours in it without a chance to stretch. Even so, close to four hundred examples were built and more appeared later off the Dutch coast.

The Molch was not alone in this. The Kriegsmarine was at the time building a whole family of small craft, to which the one-man Biber and Hecht belonged and finally the two-man Seehund, which of them all proved the most usable.

The model in 1:72

A small subject means a sensible size of result and a short build, which makes a good project for a single weekend. The hull is made up of two shells, so the main work waits on the seam along the side. Sand it down only once the glue has fully dried and check it against the light, so that it does not stand out after painting. Fit the torpedoes to their mountings only once the whole is painted, otherwise it is hard to get a brush between them and the hull.