Georgios Averof by Haze Gray - Greek cruiser - 3D printed

[Haze Gray]

The Georgios Averof  is one of the ships that took me a long time to find enough data to actually model and even then, this will be a tough go of it. 

It's also going to be the largest 3D printed ship I've ever done - at 1/72 scale it's about 6ft long compared to the USS NewYork which is 5.3 ft long. 

 

Here's some details from wikipedia: 

Georgios Averof is a modified Pisa-class armored cruiser built in Italy for the Royal Hellenic Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. The ship served as the Greek flagship during most of the first half of the century. Although popularly known as a battleship in Greek, she is in fact an armored cruiser and is the only ship of this type still in existence.

 

The ship was initially ordered by the Italian Regia Marina, but budgetary constraints led Italy to offer it for sale to international customers. With the bequest of the wealthy benefactor George Averoff as down payment, Greece acquired the ship in 1909. Launched in 1910, Averof arrived in Greece in September 1911. The most modern warship in the Aegean at the time, she served as the flagship of admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis in the First Balkan War, and played a major role in the establishment of Greek predominance over the Ottoman Navy and the incorporation of many Aegean islands to Greece.

 

The ship continued to serve in World War I, the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, and the interwar period, receiving a modernization in France in 1925 to 1927. Following the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, Averof participated in the exodus of the Greek fleet to Egypt. Hopelessly obsolete and prone to mechanical breakdowns, she nevertheless spent the next three years as a convoy escort and guard ship in the Indian Ocean and at the Suez Canal. In October 1944, she carried the Greek government in exile back to liberated Athens, after the withdrawal of the German army.

 

In 1952, she was decommissioned, before being moved to Poros, where she was berthed from 1956 to 1983. From 1984 until today, she has been reinstated on active duty as a museum ship in the Naval Tradition Park in Faliro, Athens. After maintenance in late 2017, she achieved seaworthiness state once again, allowing the ship to sail (towed) accompanied by Greek frigate Kountouriotis (F-462) to Thessaloniki Greece where she received more than 130,000 visitors over her 53-day stay.

Edited Monday at 01:10 PM by ccoyle
corrected log title