ShipCraft 33: British Light Cruisers 2

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 is the second of two volumes covering Royal Navy 6-inch cruisers of the 1930s and later, this one devoted to the ‘second generation’ designs armed with triple mountings. The Southampton class marked a return to large cruisers, but the urgent requirement for numbers led to the smaller ‘Colonies’ from which all the later RN 6-inch cruisers were derivatives. These ships formed the backbone of British cruiser forces during the Second World War.

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.