Horst Mürell PaperLab Russian Minesweeper T-371 Class

PaperLab
Russian Minesweeper T-371 Class
Scale 1:250

Horst Mürell

History
After the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 naval warfare in the baltic sea concentrated mainly on mines. Therefore the Russian Navy ordered a new minesweeper project to be developed. The design was named 253 and showed a simple minesweeper with mainly straight lines for mass-production in small yards in Leningrad, the home port of the Russian baltic fleet. But the city was under siege of the Germans at that time, so although there was enough sheet metal there was no capability to form it into the desired shape. So the project was redesigned by Leningrad engineers, the ship was enlarged and further simplified to allow the use of flat sections only. This can clearly be seen on the model. The new design was named 253L (for Leningrad). In 1944 the design was again enlarged and named 253L-P (Nato-classification T-371). During the war 145 minesweepers of this design were completed, the production ended in 1955 with a total of 250 units, many of them sold or loaned to satellite navies like the Polish navy.

Specifications: length 38 m, breadth 5,7 m, depth 1,5 m, displacement 180 t, speed 11.7 kn, complement 32, armament 2x 45 mm AA, 2x2 12,7 mm MG.

Model
The model comes as pdf files on CD. This has the advantage of printing the sheets on card stock of a thickness you like to work with and to use thin paper for smaller parts. There are two sheets for 380 parts, printed on both sides. Each sheet is divided into smaller blocks, which can be printed out separately. So if you spoil a part, you don´t need to print the whole sheet. The instructions consist of 19 sheets of detailed diagrams, showing all steps of construction clearly. Information about the ship´s history and general building tips are also included. Furthermor the CD contains 13 images of a computer model and 11 photos of a model built by the author. Design, presentation and fit of the model are outstanding.

Click on the pictues for a larger version.

Model	Russian Minesweeper T-371 Class
Designer	Darius Lipinski
Scale	1:250
Difficulty	medium/high (simplified version for some parts)
Parts	380
Instructions	19 pages with diagrams, 11 model photos, 13 computer renderings
Fit	very good
Coloring and Artwork	very good
Print	no problems
Sources	unfortunately none
Comments and Questions	horst.muerell@gmx.de