The decision has been made , and its gonna be U-552 early.
There isnt lot of diference between early and late 552 , just water deflectors around the 88mm gun , and some small cosmetic stuff regarding conning tower and exhausts.
First line of attack is sorting out the flood holes , as Revell just riddled the hull with as many holes as they possibly could.
I decided on using the photoetched parts from White ensight for lower parts of the hull , because the areas in the model are totaly off scale and the pattern of holes is from Mars.
Upper part of hull isnt much better . For casual modeler that is not the problem , because it still will look the part , but if you decided to make the model nearly identical to the real thing , you need to start drilling and filling.
First port side.
Front flooding holes look ok , all is needed is filling 2 holes.
The holes neer exhaust need lot more work as some are wrong shape, some are in the wrong place, and some are missing.
All the holes are going to be open in my model.
For that task im using Dremmel tool and sandpaper. To beginn with graze the inside of the hull with Dremmel untill you see the light thru the holes , then switch to sandpaper. Its easy to overdo with power tools , and the last thing i wont is rushing the job.
For the filling im using White Putty from Squadron.
![](http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/3487/image3nh4.th.jpg)
You can see the plastic in this areas is quiet thick , but be careful with power tools...
![](http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/1966/image4qo1.th.jpg)
Front flood holes are in the wrong place and are to big. Some
U-boats had these vents arranged in pairs. The paired
arrangement featured in Blohm & Voss boats such as U 552, U 556 and U 564.
TBC...