HMS Curacoa

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HMS Curacoa - Light Cruiser

HMS Curacoa was a C-class light cruiser built for the Royal Navy during the First World War. She was one of the five ships of the Ceres sub-class and spent much of her career as a flagship. The ship was assigned to the Harwich Force during the war, but saw little action as she was completed less than a year before the war ended. Briefly assigned to the Atlantic Fleet in early 1919, Curacoa was deployed to the Baltic in May to support anti-Bolshevik forces during the British campaign in the Baltic during the Russian Civil War. Shortly thereafter The ship struck a naval mine and had to return home for repairs. After spending the rest of 1919 and 1920 in reserve, she later rejoined the Atlantic Fleet and remained there until 1928, aside from a temporary transfer to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1922–23 to support British interests in Turkey during the Chanak Crisis. Curacoa was then transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1929.

In 1933 she became a training ship until she began a conversion into an anti-aircraft cruiser six years later. The ship played a minor role in the Norwegian Campaign of early 1940 before she was damaged by German aircraft. After repairs were completed later that year, she escorted convoys in and around the British Isles for two years. In late 1942, she was accidentally rammed and sunk by the large ocean liner RMS Queen Mary with the loss of much of her crew.

The model is built to 1/96 scale and depicts the ship as she appeared in 1939/40 following her conversion to Anti-aircraft cruiser .

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