I have taken a good hard look at the Italian 600t series submarines built for the Reggia Marina in WWII. As GHQ does not currently offer a submarine for the Italians, and since one is sorely needed due to the great importance of the submarine in the naval war in the Med, I bring you my a n a lysis of my hope (and hopefully yours) submission for a new submarine model (or two):
The Italians needed a small to mid-sized submarine that could be built in large numbers to help influence the war at sea, so they came up with the idea to build a standard design around 600 tons. Of course, standardization in the future land of the Ferrari only goes so far and it turned into a series of five classes of similar submarines. They were as follows (according to my sources):
Argonauta (7)
Sirena (12)
Perla (10)
Adua (17)
Acciaio (13)
...for a total of 59 submarines. Such beautiful names they had too! So how were they similar and how were they different (in terms that matter to this scale of course)?
Major Attributes:
1. All but the Argonautas were 197' 6" long, the Argonautas were just over 4 feet longer - would not really be noticeable at this scale.
2. All but the Argonautas had a beam of 21' 2", the Argonautas were 18' 8", again not too noticeable at this scale.
3. All had similar performance ranging from 14 to 14.7 knots surfaced and 7.5 to 8 knots submerged.
4. Displacement ranged from 650-697 tons surfaced to 800-850 tons submerged.
5. All but three boats (built by the Tosi yard) had 4 tubes forward and 2 tubes aft and carried a dozen 533mm torpedoes, the three Tosi boats omitted the two aft tubes in an attempt to give them larger diesel engines and better speed on the surface.
6. There were three different main deck guns mounted. The Argonautas had a single 102mm/35, the Acciaios had a single 100mm/45 and all the rest had 100mm/47. My guess is it would be hard to tell the difference at this scale.
7. AA guns were either two or four 13.2 mm MG's. The Acciaios also mounted a single 20mm/70 AA gun as well.
8. The BIG DIFFERENCE: the conning tower. The Italians realized that their boats would be better sea boats with a smaller tower. The original was quite large. So the Acciaios were built with the smaller con tower from the start, but it was retrofitted from 1942-1943 into previous classes as follows:
Argonauta (2)
Sirena (6)
Perla (7)
Adua (5)
Acciaio (all)
So that in the end, 26 had the standard large conning tower (most likely because they were sunk before conversion) and 33 ended up with the newer German style small conning tower.
Based on this, GHQ could build the 600t series submarines and sell them in a kit as one with the large conning tower and 100mm gun, one with large conning tower and 102mm gun, two with small tower and 100mm gun, and one with small tower, 100mm gun and 20mm AA gun. The differences between all of them would be very minor.
Now if that is too much, then just build 2 with large con and 3 with small con. I'm flexible!
Chris