Cruel Seas British Flower Class Corvette

In extension to the fleets of the Strike Fast! Strike Hard! starter kit I chose a large vessel for both sides. For the British that was the British Flower Class Corvette.

Among the large British ships would have been a Landing Craft Gun or the armed trawler. The landing craft looked more like something for the pacific and the armed trawler was a bit too close to the merchant tanker, and this is a Corvette, a Corvette! So the choice was pretty clear.

The Flower-Class Corvette was a British ship class, that was used with the Allied navies to counter the german submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic. The denomination "flower" class came from the method of the Royal Navy to name ships of this class after flowers. This corvettes weren't just in service of the Royal Navy and those of the Commonwealth like the Royal Canadian or Royal New Zealand Navy, but with many other allied navies like of the United States (as part of the lend-lease program and known as Temptress or Action class patrol gunboats), Netherlands, Norwegians among others.

The original Flower-class Corvettes were armed with a 4-inch gun on the bow, depth charge racks carrying 40 charges on the stern, a minesweeping winch, and a 2-pounder pom-pom gun on a "bandstand" over the engine room. Over time this changed due to shortages and adapting to new and different threats such as exchanging the pom-pom gun for a pair of Lewis guns and bolstering anti-air capabilities for ships which were stationed in the Mediterranean sea.

If you want to extend the idea of captured vehicles / Beutefahrzeuge to the naval vessels, you could do that, as four Flower-class corvettes that were being built in St. Nazaire-Penhoet for the French Navy were seized by the german Kriegsmarine in 1940. Of those three were finished in 1943 and 44, with the fourth never finished. They had the designation "PA" for Patroullienboot Ausland (foreign patrol craft) and were part of the 15. Vorpostenflottille, that was in service from 1940 to 44 in the area of Le Havre, fitting my idea of the English Channel conflict forces.

Warlord Games offers the Flower Class Corvette as a 1:350th scale kit, not in the "regular" 1:300 Cruel Seas scale, but as these are pretty close it shouldn't matter that much and you are encouraged to mix thos. Still, makes barely sense as a Flower Class ship is around 62,5m long, a M-Class is 68m long and they produced that on in the "right" scale of 1:300. The Flower Class would have been 20 cm long (instead of the ~18cm the current model is).

Any how, the boxed set, that comes in a Reinforcements packaging (that looks like an ammo crate), that contains the resin and metal kit and the price is set at 28 GBP. The ship comes without instructions, you will need to take the product pictures from the shop as a guide for the assembly.

As you can see, the ship is packed in bubble wrap, the metal parts are included in a small zip lock bag and the Flower Class Corvette comes with a sheet of flags, a stat card, a wake marker and small sheet for the chits.

The resin is casted in a very proper way, no airbubbles and only a bit of flash along the smaller bits. The amount of detail, with the small items on the ship is amazing. But it seems, compared to the product pictures that a lot of the "lantern" shaped pieces aren't part of the production model (there are not broken off or broken pieces in bag, simply not included).

Resin needs to be prepared before further use. It is highly recommended to give it a luke warm wash in soap water to remove any left-over release agent. In case your ship should not align with the surface, drop it briefly in hot water and align it in cold water to correct any possible warpage. Usually Warlord Games has a small leaflet covering the instructions on handling resin kits and it would be helpful for the players to have those at hand in this case. The corvette had a proper underside and didn't need any work considering sanding or "de-warping".

I began adding the main guns and turrets to the hull. In some cases it was necessary to cut down the pins for the sockets, for the smaller pieces to fit. Make sure to do a dry fit on the pieces before you glue them, in case you need to drill the sockets or sand down the parts that go into the sockets.

Take a bit care with the mast, as these are fragile and might need to be straightened. There is a strip of three crew and two flags that you can add to the ship as you like. The crew is the only part of these kits, that I ever had any incomplete cast, as they are such delicate casts.

To give you the idea of size, even as it is "just" 1:350 compared to the 1:300 scale ships, it doesn't look out of place. But as mentioned above, they could have simply went with the 1:300 scale as it only would have made the ship 2 cm longer, but I assume that the master was only available or made in that scale. The second picture shows the Flower Class Corvette next to a Vosper MTB.

I really like the design of the Flower Class Corvette and you can see the assembled ship from different angles here.

Conclusion
To be honest, at first I was a bit surprised that these ships are 28 GBP. I only knew the torpedo boats and that seemed like a lot for ships a bit bigger. Especially in comparison that a Fairmile is two for 30 GBP. But the corvette and other ships of that price range are incredibly huge. That makes for a good value of these kits, as resin kits are a lot of handwork and run in lower numbers compared to plastic kits.

The size is something to keep in mind. If you really want to focus more on the coastal battles and use a smaller gaming table, these might not be the right choice for you, as they need a lot of space on the table to operate. So going for a double blister of Fairmiles might suite your needs better. Still, such a "flag ship" makes for an interesting piece of your naval collection and might be more of a bigger model for your sideboard, that you put into service for the bigger battles. If you got the starter kit, with the Das-Boot miniature, the Flower Class Corvette is the perfect counter part to go with, as they were used by the Allies to counter submarine attacks, so just for the purpose of background, this makes a fitting addition to your fleet, especially as mentioned before, if you go for larger battles.

As mentioned in the intro, this model could be used for a couple of navies and if you even play cold war scenarios, could be used as a couple of different roles like mercantile freighters, smugglers, tugs, weather ships, and whalers. Warlord Games shows the Flower Class as a camouflaged vessel on their website, in the matching article.

The only remaining Flower Class Corvette intact today is the HMCS Sackville of the Royal Canadian Navy and is now a museum ship located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Cruel Seas is a brand of Warlord Games.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.