Manufacturer: 3D print
Scale: 1/700
Additional parts: few parts from spare part box
Model build: May - June 2020
Kriegsmarine Escort Friedrich Trump
3D print
1/700
1/700
Little Bird
The icy wind whipped Captain Potus' face as he stormed through the mess hall, a flurry of indignation. He yanked a crumpled message from his pocket and slapped it on the bulletin board. "Fälschungen!" he bellowed, his voice echoing. "British lies! We proceed at full speed!"
The crew exchanged nervous glances. The message was clear: a minefield lurked in their path. But Captain Potus, ever the gambler, dismissed it as British propaganda. He trusted his "little bird," his mysterious source of intel, more than any official warning.
Lieutenant Schmidt, the ever-cautious first mate, approached Potus hesitantly. "Sir, perhaps some caution—"
"Silence, Schmidt!" Potus boomed. "The little bird never steers us wrong. We will pick up those S-boats on schedule!"
With a final glare, Potus stormed off to the bridge. The crew, used to their Captain's eccentricities, braced themselves for a rough ride. Below deck, the engine room hummed with activity as the "Friedrich Trump" pushed its engines to the limit.
Suddenly, a deafening boom tore through the ship. The lights flickered and died, plunging the mess hall into darkness. Men were thrown off their feet, shouts and curses filling the air. A sickening groan ran through the hull as the ship lurched violently.
"We've hit a mine!" Lieutenant Schmidt yelled, his voice laced with panic.
Chaos erupted. Alarms blared, red emergency lights casting an ominous glow. Men scrambled to their battle stations, the practiced efficiency drilled into them momentarily forgotten in the face of sudden disaster.
On the bridge, Captain Potus clung to the railing, his face a mask of disbelief. The "little bird" had failed him. The once-proud "Friedrich Trump" lay crippled, taking on water rapidly.
As the crew fought to save the ship, a flotilla of S-boats appeared on the horizon, alerted by the explosion. A frantic rescue operation unfolded. One by one, the crew of the "Friedrich Trump" was pulled from the icy water.
But Captain Potus was nowhere to be found. A search yielded nothing but his cap, bobbing forlornly in the churning water. His last sighting placed him by the bulletin board, muttering to himself, a broken look in his eyes.
"Die Vögelein, die Vögelein, warum zwitschern sie nicht?" he'd been heard murmuring. "The little birds, the little birds, why don't they tweet?"
The once-proud Captain, who trusted his whims over reason, had vanished along with his ship, a victim of his own blind faith and a silent minefield. The "Friedrich Trump," a vessel born out of forgotten plans, became a cautionary tale, a monument to the dangers of ignoring warnings and the fickle nature of fortune.
The ship
In the later 1930s, Germany started with its fleet building program, the "Plan-Z". Part of this plan was a group of six colonial gunboats which should be used in over-seas territories. The final design for the "Kolonialkanonenboot" was completed in 1938 and shortly after, the first of the ships was laid down at the Stülcken shipyard in Hamburg.
Despite the outbreak of the war, construction of the " Kolonialkanonenboot I" continued, it seems that it was simply forgotten to stop the construction. Therefore, in early 1940, the ship was completed, and the Kriegsmarine wondered what to do with this ship as there were no colonies.
Named "Friedrich Trump", the ship was put into service in April 1st, 1940 as an escort vessel under command of Kapiän zur See Karl D. Potus. Who was a very unique commander of the German Kriegsmarine and the fate of the "Friedrich Trump" is directly connected with him.
The captain
Kaptiän zur See Potus – who said about himself that the was the best Captain, the Kriegsmarine ever had - wanted to introduce a more direct contact to his crew. Therefore at least every morning he pinned some short text messages on a pin board in the ships mess. Surprisingly, none of those messages was longer than 280 characters. One of his favorite saying while doing this was "Ein Kleiner Vogel hat mir dies gezwitschert" – "A little bird has twittered this to me".
On some days, he posted dozens of those text messages on the pin board running form the command bridge to the mess and back the whole day. Which caused a bit of confusion among his officers.
The sinking
Unfortunately, he did not listen to the advises of his officers quite often, especially his technical personal. On November 11th 1940, the "Friedrich Trump" was on its way through the North Sea to pic up a group of S-Boats coming back from an operation close to the British Coast. Just before 3pm, the ship received a warning that British mines could be in its are of operation. Kaptiän zur See Potus got furious and telling that this message were "Fälschungen" - "Fake News" - as he knew it better. His brother-in-law had some secret connections to Britain and therefore the ship should proceed with full speed of 24kn.
He went to the mess to pin a new message when the ship hit a mine. 12 sailors were killed directly and despite all measures, the ship began to sink.
Luckily, the S-boats that should be picked up by the "Friedrich Trump" were close, so they could pick up the crew. While all crew members could be saved, Kapiän zur See Karl D. Potus was missing. He was last seen standing at the pin board murmuring "Die Vögelein, die Vögelein, warum zwitschern sie nicht?" ("the little birds, the little birds, why don't they tweet?").
The model shows the "Friedrich Trump" on Nov, 11th, 1940 after the mine hit.
I wanted to build a "sinking ship" for quite a while and the 3D printer made it easier. The ship is printed from the 3D model of the cruiser "Hermelin" taken from World of Warships (German tier 1 cruiser). While this ship never existed, it is modeled after the "Kolonialkanonenboot" design, which did exist but was never build.
The model was rotated and cut to the correct position, then printed in 1/700 scale with an Anycubic Photon SLA printer. The water is a modified landscape tile where the hight was much reduced to let it look like waves. This one was printed in PLA with an Anycubic Mega printer.
The model is painted with Revell Aqua Color, additional PE crew was used. The boats and rafts were taken form the spare part box.
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