+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The O and P class was a class of destroyers of the British Royal Navy. Ordered in 1939, they were the first ships in the War Emergency Programme, also known as the 1st and 2nd Emergency Flotilla, respectively. The O and P class were based on the hull and machinery of the preceding J class, but with more sheer forward to counter the poor riding qualities of the Js.
HMS Onager was the 2nd ship of the O ships’ 3rd group. Built by White, she was laid down 14 October 1940 and launched 31 January 1942. Onager initially served in the North Atlantic as convoy escort, operating out of Scapa Flow and wearing a modified Western Approaches paint scheme.
She served only briefly in this role, though, and was assigned to support the Allied landings in North Africa in October 1942. After this, the destroyer was assigned to "Force Q", which was based at Bône and consisted of three cruisers and two other Q-class destroyers.
In January 1943, the destroyer escorted a convoy from England to Cape Town, then made for Victoria, Australia for refit. After work was completed, Onager was assigned to the British Eastern Fleet, primarily as a convoy escort across the Indian Ocean. In April 1944, the destroyer was part of the carrier escort screen during Operation Cockpit, then again in May for Operation Transom: air raids against Japanese forces occupying the Dutch East Indies. After a brief refit in Melbourne, Onager resumed operations with the Eastern Fleet in August. In October, she took part in a series of fleet bombardments of the Japanese-held Nicobar Islands. In mid-December, Onager was reassigned to Australian waters as a convoy escort and anti-submarine patrol vessel. During early 1945, the destroyer was attached to the British Pacific Fleet. Operating from Manus Island, Onager took part in operations in support of the American seizure of Okinawa and attacks on the Japanese home islands.
At the end of World War II, Onager was present at the Allied reoccupation of Singapore, and spent the period until February 1946 operating in the East Indies to help reestablish Dutch control, move troops, and repatriate prisoners-of-war. Between 1946 and 1948, Onager was deployed with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force on three occasions. After that she was paid off in May 1948 and was placed in reserve at Portsmouth but was reactivated again in 1955 to become a Type 16 frigate and modernized at Thornycroft's Woolston, Southampton shipyard, until 1957.
The Type 16 frigates were a class of British anti-submarine frigates of the Royal Navy. They were based on the hulls of World War II-era destroyers that had been rendered obsolete by rapid advances in technology. At the start of the Cold War, the Royal Navy was in urgent need of fast escort ships to counter the large number of Whiskey-class submarines being built by the Soviet Union, which were faster than the Royal Navy's existing sloops and frigates. Britain had large numbers of War Emergency Programme destroyers, which while relatively new, were poorly equipped for modern fleet purposes, with poor anti-aircraft armament and fire control. It was therefore decided to convert the Emergency Programme destroyers to interim escorts to meet the Royal Navy's requirements until new-build ships (which eventually became the Type 12 and Type 14 frigates) could be designed and built. The initial design was the Type 15 frigate or Rapid class, which was a major rebuild of the ships, with an extended forecastle and new superstructure giving improved accommodation and complete replacement of the ships' armament and sensors. At one time, it was planned to convert 57 destroyers to the Type 15 standard, but the cost of such a large programme proved prohibitive, with only 23 ships becoming Type 15 frigates. Instead, a simpler and cheaper conversion, the Type 16 was ordered.
Onager’s modernization included an enlarged bridge, a completely new solid main mast, and the wooden decks were covered with anti-slip coating. More modern fire control equipment was fitted, including a Type 293Q target indication Radar, a Type 974 navigation Radar and a Type 170 attack sonar. The armament was thoroughly modified: her ‘Y’ position turret was deleted in favor of two Squid anti-submarine mortars. The other WWII gun turrets were replaced with more modern, standardized stations, including a Mk. 6 twin mounting with 4.5-inch (113 mm) guns in the ‘A’ positions and two quick-firing multi-purpose 2.5 in (57 mm) guns, based on the WWII QF 6 pounder 10 cwt twin gun but with an automatic feeder system, in twin mountings in ‘B’ and ‘X’ position.
The light manual Oerlikon 20 mm AA guns were replaced by single Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft guns, with a motorized twin Bofors 40 mm mount replacing the quadruple pom-pom station, standardizing the ship’s armament. The quadruple 21 in torpedo launcher was also omitted and replaced by two much smaller triple 324 mm (12.75) STWS-1 tubes for Mk 46 and Stingray ASW torpedoes, one at each side of the deck, the gained space was used to enlarge the ship’s storage room.
In this new configuration Onager was recommissioned on 16 June 1957, received the new NATO-conformal frigate pennant ‘F180’, wearing a non-standard overall Duck Egg Blue livery which the ship should retain throughout its career. Onager was assigned to the 8th Destroyer Squadron in Singapore immediately sent back into the Far East theatre of operations where she took part in Operation Grapple from March to April 1958, the British nuclear weapon tests at Malden Island and Kiritimati. After this intermezzo Onager returned to the Mediterranean Sea and was based in Gibraltar. On 21 May 1959, Onager collided with the Liberian tanker Burgan, about 35 nmi (40 mi; 65 km) south-west of Malta. Onager’s bows were badly damaged, while one of Burgan's crew suffered head injuries and had to be airlifted to hospital. Onager was being towed by the tug RFA Reward to Portsmouth for repairs and refit, before being fitted with a new bow at Devonport. She finally underwent the planned refit at Portsmouth from August 1959 to April 1961.
During Onager’s repairs the radar and fire control systems were modernized, a Type 502 attack sonar replaced the Type 170 device, and the single vintage high-angle AA 4.5-inch gun was replaced with another twin Bofors 40 mm mount. A double ‘Seacat’ surface-to-air missile launcher had been considered instead, but budget constraints did not allow this thorough update, leaving the ship with cannon-only defensive armament. However, the pair of Squid launchers were replaced with a single stabilized ‘Limbo’ triple anti-submarine mortar on the aft deck.
In 1964, Onager deployed to the Far East once more, returning to her base in Singapore, and became part of the 24th Escort Group. Activities included taking part in the Beira Patrol, covering the withdrawal of British forces from operations off Aden, and acting as guardship for Hong Kong. It was a long deployment, and she did not return to the UK until 1968. In 1970, Onager became a Gibraltar guard ship, a required deployment at that time due to the tense fears of invasion by General Franco.
After one year of duty in the Mediterranean, Onager was retired and finally decommissioned in 1972 at Chatham Dockyard. From there she was transferred to Portsmouth and eventually scrapped, being one of the last surviving British destroyers of World War 2.
General characteristics:
Displacement: 1,690 tons (1,717 tonnes) standard
2,250 tons (2,286 tonnes) full load
Length: 345 ft (105 m) overall
Beam: 35 ft (10.7 m)
Draught: 9 ft (2.7 m)
Draft: 15.5 ft (4.7 m)
Complement: 176
Propulsion:
2× Admiralty 3-drum water-tube boilers, Parsons geared steam turbines,
delivering 40,000 shp on 2 shafts
Performance:
Top speed: 36.75 kt
Range: 3,850 nmi at 20 kt
Armament:
1× twin 113 mm (4.5 in) guns in a Mk. 6 mounting
2× twin 57 mm (2.5 in) QF 6 pounder 10 cwt guns
2× twin 40 mm (1.6 in) Bofors Mk. 5 AA guns
4× single 40 mm (1.6 in) Bofors Mk. 9 AA guns
2× triple 324 mm (12.75 in) STWS-1 tubes for Mk. 46 and Stingray ASW torpedoes
1× triple Limbo anti-submarine mortar Mk. 10
The kit and its assembly:
Well, I have never built two versions of the same topic before – maybe similar variants of the same topics, but never a model that depicts the same vehicle at different points in time. After I had recently finished my build of the fictional/whiffed British HMS Onager O-Class destroyer in a 1942 Western Approaches livery from a Tamiya kit set (which contains two of these ships), I came across the fact that some WWII destroyers, including O-Class ships, had been modernized in the Fifties and kept in service until the early Seventies. So, with another model in store or a concrete plan for it – what if HMS Onager had been among those ships with a second career as light Type 15 or 16 frigates?
The kit received different modifications to reflect its modernizations, the model’s core (hull and superstructures) remained basically the same. The most obvious change is a new lattice main mast, which provides a much more modern look (IIRC left over from a modern aircraft carrier kit), and the armament was changed and re-arranged. The A-turret became smaller (from a Matchbox HMS Tiger), the B- and X-turrets were replaced with modern, rounded multi-purpose twin-gun units. The Bofors AA guns came from an extra sprue with modern Royal Navy equipment from the aforementioned aircraft carrier kit, and from this I also procured different lifeboats, new galleys to hoist them, inflatable life raft capsules that replaced most lifeboats, and some other bits, e .g. the Limbo mortar on the quarterdeck.
Thanks to the free deck area where the former torpedo launcher was placed I enlarged the AA superstructure with a scratched cabin, and triple STWS tubes were placed close to the bulwark.
The bridge was also modified, the original small “greenhouse” was replaced with a bigger cabin that also received a navigational radar on a short mast on its roof, to change the ship’s profile even more.
Painting and markings:
While it’s a very simple livery I decided to paint the ship in a uniform livery, in overall RN Duck Egg Blue, a tone that was not standard in the Fifties but applied to a few ships (I am aware of HMS Newcastle and HMS Cavalier, both WWII veterans, too), and it looks IMHO more interesting than the generally used 507c, Foreign Stations Light Grey. Finding a good match for that tone was not easy, though. RN Duck egg Blue is close to WA Blue, but more greenish, so that the tone appears somewhat warmer. Like for the WA tones, research was quite complicated because there is hardly any reliable color reference like contemporary photos available, and interpretations from model paint manufacturers differ considerably, too. Thankfully there are good photos of HMS Cavalier, which is still around in its original livery, preserved as a museum ship at Chatham Historic Dockyard. I used this as reference and the ship’s tone comes close to RLM65/FS 35414, just a lighter and more greenish, and dull. I took Humbrol 65 as basis, which comes quite close, added some 5 (White) to fade it out and added a little 23 (RAF Duck Egg Blue, close to Sky) to make the tone appear a little duller than the pure blue grey.
The top of the main mast was painted white, a common measure to make it less conspicuous when the rest of the ship is still hidden behind the horizon, and a section above the funnel’s opening was painted dirty black – a measure to hide soot on the normally very clean ships. Using HMS Cavalier as benchmark again, the barrels of all guns were painted black.
A black waterline was added, made from decal stripes, what made tedious masking obsolete. The deck surfaces were mostly painted in Deck Green (Humbrol 88; like HMS Cavalier but found that out after I had already painted the decks). Some horizontal areas like the bow and the roof sections of some superstructures in Dark Sea Grey (Humbrol 164). Another tribute to modern times is the lifeboats, which received a dark blue hull and bright white superstructures. Together with the small inflatable life rafts (also white) they really stand out and underline the ship’s peacetime use.
Due to the model’s small size only a very thin black ink washing was applied to emphasize edges and surface details, no rust or other dirt was added for a rather clean and well-maintained look. Portholes and windows on hull and superstructures were painted with gloss black paint, using a toothpick as a stamp-brush. The fictional pennant ‘F180’ was created from single black 2 mm letters/digits, placed on the flanks and on the stern.
Before final assembly the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish. Rigging and some antennae on the new main mast were done with heated and stretched grey plastic sprue material.
A nice result, the updated Onager looks better and more plausible than expected – and it’s interesting to compare her with her 1942 self in the Western Approaches scheme and with the original (yet fictional) armament and O-Class configuration. The Duck Egg Blue livery suits her well, and I think that it was a wise move to rather use this obscure (yet authentic) tone instead of the much more common post-war 507c light grey scheme.
