Revell

1/96 PT-212 Torpedo Boat

Kit Number: 85-0464

Reviewed by  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

MSRP: $14.95 Review kit provided by Revell ( www.revell.com ) The Boat The PT stands for Patrol / Torpedo. The idea was to have a light, fast boat which could move about in enemy waters and have the armament to do a lot of damage or the speed to escape if necessary. PT boats turned out to be very useful in the South Pacific, where shore and depth charts were pretty much nonexistent, and the Japanese Navy ran supplies along the coasts in barges and light vessels. US PT boats came in 3 "flavors". There was the 80-foot boat built by Electric Boat Company, known as the 80 foot ELCO. ELCO also built a 77-foot boat. There was the 78-foot boat built by Higgins called the Higgins 78. The third was built by Huckins, also a 78-foot design, called the Huckins 78. Fortunately Huckins only built a relatively few boats, or this could get really confusing.

PT boats were not commissioned individually, but were commissioned by squadrons which had 12 to 16 boats. Squadrons generally had all the same type boat, to keep supply and training issues as simple as possible. PT-212 was in MTBRON 15, which was commissioned in January 1943, with PTs 201 through 218 and sent to the Mediterranean. MTBRON 15 was active in Africa, Sicily, Capri and Italy. They were equipped with 78-foot Higgins boats. The RON was decommissioned in October of 1944. To place this in historical perspective, this period in the Mediterranean included the invasions of Sicily, Italy, South of France, and Anzio. PT-212's moment of fame came on October 22, 1943 when they sank (with the assistance of 2 other PTs) the German minelaying ship Juminda (ex Elmano Gasperi) in the strait between Corsica and Italy. The Kit This is not the first time I've built this kit. I frankly don't remember the exact date I built my first PT-212, but it was some time in the late 1950s. You get a full hull, 3 figures (2 gunners with weapons and the helmsman), rudders, propellers, and prop shafts, plus a deck full of detail parts. The molds are definitely not up to 21st century standards, but then this is definitely a mid-20th Century kit. The kit had a "soft" quality to many of the parts, where details were present, but not as crisp as we expect today. Most of the detail parts had to be prepped by removing the mold part lines. There was flash on many of the fine parts, particularly the prop blades, but none of the flash was so heavy that you couldn't tell where the part ended and the flash began. Usually a quick scrape with a #11 blade was enough to prepare the part. Only one part had a sink mark, but of course that was dead in the middle of the searchlight lens, where there's no chance of anyone overlooking it. The connections between the sprues and the parts was not as fine as a modern kit, but most of them were well-thought out so that it was not difficult to remove parts or to clean up the joining point. Assembly Assembly was remarkably simple. I didn't have to follow the instructions, except to check for parts location. Everything fit. I had to rework a couple of holes in the deck to get a couple of the ventilators to fit, and the pins for the supports for the prop shafts were much smaller than the holes in the hull bottom. Otherwise, the mold has survived the last 50+ years in fine shape. It is obviously a good design. A quick thought on how far we've come since this kit was first released. Most of the products I used in construction were science fiction in 1955. CA glue, Mr. Surfacer ®, acrylic paints, Tenax ®, FS match colors, low tack masking tape (more on this one later), and Future ® come to mind. So I fixed the oversize holes in the hull bottom by gluing the parts in place and filling the oversize holes with Mr. Surfacer 500. One of the rear stanchions also had this problem, with the same fix. The deck and hull had to be carefully matched, as the pins on the deck and the matching holes in the hull didn't quite line up. A couple of swipes with a file and judicious use of Tenax and Tamiya Extra Thin Cement made it good. Painting and Decals I started with the red stripe on the hull. I went out and bought anti-fouling red in Testors acrylic. This is the part that didn't quite work out like I planned. When I was painting on the grey for the hull bottom I ripped the red paint right off. I washed the hull with water and detergent and tried again. This time the red stuck much better. Except for the hull red, blue and khaki on the figures, and the metallic paints, I did this boat in various shades of gray, from PanzerGrau to 36622. I also used NATO Dark Grey, Ocean Grey, Gunship Gray, (notice that the English spell it Grey and US spells it Gray?), Neutral Gray, Underside Gray, Ghost Gray, and Gull Gray. The decals were fine, but considering that PT-212 served in the Med, I didn't put the victory markings for 3 Japanese on the boat. That really would have been some "long range shooting"! Overall

OK, it's an old kit. It's box scale. But it's simple and eminently buildable. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg. It's a step above snap tite kits, and there aren't any really "fiddly" bits. You probably would want to buy this kit for the preteen who is interested in ship modeling, but isn't ready for resin hulls, tiny parts, and acres of PE. Highly recommended for the beginner. Thanks to Revell and IPMS/USA for a trip down memory lane.

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