Rare Submarine Half Hull c.1940
ABOUT
This is an original hand painted, submarine half hull. This is a rare piece. Most half hulls tend to be ships. Submarine half hulls are rare. The submarine body is wood with metal fin, railing, propeller and mask. String is stretched along the top to the fin. The body is on felt framed in wood. "U2" is hand painted on the body. This piece has retained its original finish and has the appropriate condition for the age. The back fin is missing and the felt has some minor damage.
- CREATOR Unknown.
- DATE OF MANUFACTURE c.1940
- MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES Wood, Steel, Tin, Felt.
- CONDITION Good. Wear consistent with age and use.
- DIMENSIONS H 16 in. x D 5 in. W 36 in.
HISTORY
U-boat is an anglicized version of the German word U-boot a shortening of unterseeboot literally "undersea boat". While the German term refers to any submarine, the English one (in common with several other languages) refers specifically to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. The primary targets of the U-boat campaigns in both wars were the merchant convoys bringing supplies from Canada and other parts of the British Empire and the United States to the United Kingdom and (during the Second World War) to the Soviet Union and the Allied territories in the Mediterranean.
A half hull model ship (also known as a "half hull" or "half ship") is a wooden ship featuring only one half of a boat's hull without rigging or other fixtures.
Prior to the twentieth century, half hull model ships were constructed by shipwrights as a means of planning a ship's design and ensuring that the ship would be symmetrical. The half hulls were mounted on a board and were exact scale replicas of the actual ship's hull.
