For information on this kit and a brief history, please read the preview.

As surprising as it may seem to many of you, I went in accordance with the instructions on this one (at least for the start). I do very few ship/boat models so felt it to be wiser to do it this way. There are also a lot of 'extra' parts given with this kit as obviously the molds are made to do a variety of similar sub-types (pun intended).

First thing is the base; a simple construct consisting of a flat base and two small upright bits to hold the sub. These small upright parts have large ejector pin holes that will have to be filled or sanded off. I chose the second method.

Next there are a number of small subassemblies. First are the twin A-A guns. These are incredibly fiddly and were a real pain to get glued as they consist of an upper gun and a very small mount. The instructions are rather vague about just how they fit. The guns also have large ejector pin holes on them. I left them alone for fear of damaging the guns.

We then move on to the bridge structure. This consists of two halves and two small deck sections. Make sure you use the appropriate deck sections for this version. The last small assembly was the larger A-A gun and shield. No problems in this area. It is at this juncture that I decided not to use the very nice photo etched set that Squadron supplied. While it would undoubtedly enhance the model, my track record with etched bits is not good. Rather than make a mess of things, I went with straight from the box on this one.

Now to the rest of the boat. The upper deck section is trapped between the two hull halves. I had to be very careful to properly place this section to keep it from settling too low. It wasn't difficult, but if not dealt with can result in a 'washboard' upper deck. The instructions suggest gluing the hull to the stand at this point. While it would ease construction, it wouldn't ease painting so I skipped that part.

The next sequence is the addition of all the lower hull stuff like props, rudders and dive planes. One has to be very careful when doing these areas as some of the parts are a bit fragile. I found that fit was less than perfect with some of these bits. To be specific: the shaft braces are fiddly to align, the shafts are too big for the area on the hull where they attach, the aft dive planes are a bit too large for their mounting areas and the whole prop/rudder area is quite fiddly to build. I did it in small stages, gluing each pair of parts and letting them fully dry before advancing to the next bits. One thing that really helped is that there are alignment diagrams of this area to assist.  Moving to the front, the anchor was glued on and then the forward dive planes. These were also too long for the attachment points and had to be tweaked to get a fair fit.