It was suggested that I start a build page so here it is. Please be patient as my availability of spare time is somewhat limited. I'm hardly a master modeler (not even close) and I'm coming off of a roughly 35 year hiatus of building, other than a stint of model railroading for about 5 years. For some unknown reason I thought it would be a wise idea to jump into this kit with only a 1/35 Polish TKS tankette as a warm up. It proved to be about as challenging as the U-boat kit. So tiny!
A little history on U-371 and why I picked it as my focus. I always like doing something unique (hence the tankette) and I didn't just want to build another U-559. I had watched a couple builds online and they looked great but I wanted something different so, I started researching U-boats and came across Uboat.net. Not having any idea what patrol area I wanted, I picked U-371 simply because I liked the number. After that scientific approach, I began researching the boat. I love researching a project and while finding information on a somewhat unknown boat was a challenge, I found its story intriguing. It had a fairly long career as U-boats go, consisting of 18 patrols, most of them in the Med. Most were under the command of Waldemar Mehl. He and most of his crew left U-371 after the 17th patrol. It was sunk on the next patrol.
The boat was an early war Type VIIC and had been retrofitted with a Turm IV tower after its 14th patrol. Refitted with twin 20mm on the upper platform and initially a quad 20mm on the lower (there is conflicting info in the interrogation report as to whether it had the quad 20 or single 37mm at the time of the sinking). I am choosing to model the boat during its 15th patrol.
There are only two photos of U-371 that can positively be connected to that particular boat. The insignia of Waldemar Mehl, a dragonfly riding a torpedo on the front of the original Turm and a screenshot from a forum thread on Uboat.net of the insignia on the side of the Turm IV which also had armor boxes added. This was exciting to find as I would have not known there were armor boxes and adding that to the model only increases its uniqueness. Unfortunately, I've never been able to find the video that this picture was pulled from. The post is about 10 years old and the YouTube link is dead.
So, hopefully I don't embarrass myself too much with my build skills. My hearts in the right place anyway.