German Battlecruisers of the First World War (ShipCraft)

The 'ShipCraft' series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeler through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sisterships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring color profiles and highly-detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modeling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic survey 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 is devoted to the famous ships of Admiral Hipper’s First Scouting Group. Slower but more robust than their British equivalents, German battlecruisers enjoyed a reputation for absorbing punishment, and although Lutzow was sunk at Jutland, Seydlitz and the rest of the Scouting Group survived heavy damage. This book concentrates on the seven completed ships but coverage extends to the ‘proto-battlecruiser’ Blucher and the ships building or designed by the end of the war.

STEVE BACKER is the editor of steelnavy.com, the best warship modeling site on the web, for which he writes extensively on warship kits and accessories. He is also the author of five previous titles in this ShipCraft series, the most recent being Admiral
Hipper Class Cruisers.

Robert Brown is a Canadian ship modeler and warship enthusiast. His previous contributions to the ShipCraft series were the models sections of No 22 German Battlecruisers and the historical chapters of No 23 Rodney & Nelson.