Hi Mark,

I have good news and bad news about Kormoran.

The bad news is that the Russian drawing you and I used as a base is probably very wrong in the rudder area. It seems that whoever drew the plan used a single screw ship setup for what is in fact a twin-screw ship. I suspected that much early on and could not find a single photo of a multiple screw ship that would have a gap in front of the rudder. This was confirmed today from knowledgeable chaps at the modelwarship.com forum.

The good news is that the proper setup is much easier to model, much like a sailing ship in fact, with a keel extending nearly to the stern but no extension.

That puts a final nail into the coffin of that nagging doubt. Now I can resume the modelling of Kormoran. Still no luck finding proper photographs of a WW1 vintage 15cm gun though. All the ones I have show only the business end of the gun into its casemate. No view of the breech whatsoever, except from a single drawing.

But I guess that a contemporary smaller gun might be similar enough for our purposes.