Ship building in 1/150 scale. Part 2 - Auxiliaries.

 See here for Part 1.

---

From Wikipedia's page on auxiliary ships; An auxiliary ship is a naval ship designed to operate in support of combatant ships and other naval operations. Auxiliaries are not primary combatants, although they may have some limited combat capacity, usually of a self-defence nature.

Auxiliaries are extremely important for navies of all sizes, as without them, the primary fleet vessels cannot be effective. Thus, nearly every navy maintains an extensive fleet of auxiliaries. However, the composition and size of these auxiliary fleets varies depending on the nature of each navy and its primary mission. Smaller coastal navies tend to have smaller auxiliary vessels focusing primarily on littoral and training support roles. Larger blue-water navies tend to have large auxiliary fleets comprising longer-range fleet support vessels designed to provide support far beyond territorial waters.

Roles; Replenishment, Transport, Repair, Harbor, Support, Research, Hospital.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm planning a large scale air and sea battle, and to that end, I have decided to make a large transport ship and the big picture at the top of the page, which is from an old Danish film, looks exactly what I have in mind. That ship was originally built by B&W in 1927. She was named SS Aslaug (in the film she is named SS Martha) and she was 75m long and 11.79m wide. Others have modelled her before me, so there are some nice pictures available to show her lay out.

---

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Currently, I have a few small auxiliary ships, in various stages of construction. In the left picture is the Neo-Prussian, 160 ton screw-steamer, support and replenishment ship Manteuffel and behind her is the San Miranda River Patrol boat San Miranda which was built for the Venezuela '39 campaign, game 4: Operation Madrigal. Manteuffel is being built for the big 'fleet battle' I have been planning for the past year now - a game so large in scale that we will probably have to play it outside.

In the picture on the right is a generic river barge - also built for the same game as the San Miranda - and behind that is a half built, Orinoco tramp-steamer which started out as a ferry, also for the Operation Madrigal game. As with all my ship models, these are built using 1.6 and 2.2mm book binders card and due to my lack of storage space, they aren't meant to last for more than a few games before they can be 'mulched'.