ShipCraft 35 - British Anti-Aircraft Cruisers : C Class, Dido Class and Mercantile Conversions

The ‘ShipCraft’ series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeller through a brief history of the subject, highlighting differences between ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring colour profiles and highly detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modelling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the subjects, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic gallery of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references – books, monographs, large-scale plans and relevant websites.

This volume completes Les Brown’s coverage of British cruisers of the Second World War, concentrating on ships with a primarily anti-aircraft role. It begins with the innovative inter-war conversions of old ‘C’ class ships and moves on to the Dido class – not originally designed as AA ships but armed with a new 5.25in dual-purpose gun that made them effective air-defence ships. Also included are the small number of merchant ships converted to cruiser-standard AA ships.

With its unparalleled level of visual information – paint schemes, models, line drawings and photographs – this book is simply the best reference for any modelmaker setting out to build one of these famous cruisers.