1854 O. B. Gern's submarine brander

In 1854, a military engineer - fortifier of the Engineer Battalion Life Guards, Lieutenant Otomar (Konstantin) Borisovich Gern, was transferred to Revel (present-day Tallinn). In the course of carrying out measures to strengthen the defense of Revel due to the expected attack of the Anglo-French squadron, he constructed an original wooden diversion submarine, capable of secretly laying mines and blowing up enemy ships. In the summer of 1854, a wooden "submarine brander" was built in the Revel port workshops for 1,000 rubles, allocated by the Military Engineering Board. The ship was designed to be simple and easy to mass-produce in conditions of time and material deficit and lack of qualified carpenters. Its displacement was about 10 tons, length reached 6 meters, its width and height were about 2 meters. The ship was propelled by a two-screw Archimedes screw, which was turned by a shaft through a toothed coupling from a flywheel, which was turned by two of the four crew members. The brander submerged simply by letting water into the hold, but the observation tower, ventilation pipe and periscope, attached with tie-rods, remained above the water. Two buoys were installed near the top of the ventilation pipe and periscope, which did not allow the ship to sink deeper, than 2 meters. In order to surface, the crew pumped out the water with a hand pump. The brander was armed with a detachable mine, fixed in the bow of the ship. It was supposed to be attached to the bottom of the attacked ship and, after the brander had withdrawn to a safe distance, it was supposed to be detonated with an electric detonator from a galvanic battery. Tests conducted in the port of Revel on September 5, 1854, showed, that the ship was difficult to control, and the hull was not sufficiently airtight. But the official commission recognized the project as promising and suggested, that the designer create a metal submarine, only much larger. The wooden submarine itself, in order to maintain secrecy, was dismantled after testing.

A rather complex and well-designed submarine model, suitable for modelers of any experience. The model can be assembled in several versions: only the external view (suitable for beginners), with full internal detailing, with a separate mine. All the details of the internal frame are also provided. It is possible to make the model without plating or without one side of the plating. Both the graphic and text instructions are excellent and detailed. There is no stock of colors, but they can be "combined" from the gluing squares on the other sides of the details.