The Fleet battleship “Borodino”(Russian: Бородино) was the first ship of  a five ship class, named after the 1812 Battle of Borodino, and the second to be completed. The ship's design derived out of one laid down a year earlier in France  as the battleship “Tsesarevich”. It was a slightly lengthened (2,7 m.) version. The design kept intact machinery and boilers plant compiled directly from the French built ship, as well as disposition of 6’ turrets and 40 mm. longitudinal bulkheads.

The normal displacement grew up by 600 tons to accommodate 3” plating of all 75 mm. guns batteries, though the main belt was thinner by 56 mm. Still the ships were initially overloaded by about 700 tons from the normal displacement. This together with large low battery ports gave considerable trouble with stability

Send to the Pacific Ocean to face the Japanese in the battle of Tsushima Striats as part of the Second Pacific Squadron under Admiral Rozhestvensky. The ship stood up 5 hours of the fierce Japanese fire and sank before the night came  because of an ammunition explosion in one of the 6" turrets. Only one out of her 866 crew was survived.

Zvezda has been getting pretty good press as of late. They are not exactly in the Dragon/Tamiya crowd yet, but many of their kits have been reboxed by Italeri and they are more mainstream than short run, that's for sure. This also may be the Eastern Express kit or it has been boxed by them.

This is in a rather large box and upon opening it, one sees a mass of loose sprues. Fortunately, aside from all the little stanchions that will be assembled for the display stand that had broken free, all the parts were intact and undamaged. The general condition of the parts is quite good. Detailing is well done with nicely engraved deck planks. The kit suffers a tiny bit from flash on a few parts and the edges of some of the large parts are a bit rough as a result. Means a bit of sandpaper prior to any gluing. The rest of the detailing is good, though a bit softer than what one would expect from some of the bigger companies. I was pleased to note that there wasn't any major problem with mold shift, something that could play havoc with a kit like this with all those masts and gun barrels.

I found a few sink areas. All were on thick pieces of plastic and all should be rather easy to take care of. No nasty ejector pin marks of any note in visible areas. One thing for sure, this isn't going to be a quick build. There are a lot of small parts and clean-up alone will be a bit time consuming, but well worth it. As with most ships of this era, there were a lot of major parts of the ship open to the weather decks and so it will pay dividends later to be sure of good fit for these areas. There kit is full hull and comes with a display stand. The parts that hold up the ship are molded as bollards, making for a rather unusual design. These are the bits that were loose in the box.

Instructions are well done and provide color information using Model Master paints. There are decals for the display stand, ships name and crest. paper is provided for flags and the instructions also provide a full rigging diagram. These ships were using early radios so the wiring is rather complex for that and for the various hoists the ship carried to put out boats.

If dreadnaught style battleships are your interest or if you just like to do ship models, then this is one that you really should consider. The end result with its yellow stacks, will be something probably quite different from most of your collection!

The internet

August 2007

Thanks to www.dragonmodelsusa.com for providing the review kit. You can find this kit either on the website or at your local hobby shop. If you don't see it, ask for it.

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