Cruel Seas: Scratch Building The Siebel Ferry (Siebelfähre)

Scratch Built Siebel Ferry, Bow To The Left

This is a scratch-built Siebel Ferry flak lighter made by an expert modeller (not me) in large scale.

The ferry has four flak 88mm cannon and two 40mm autocannon. Boats like these escorted convoys and acted as flak batteries, for example during the German withdrawal from Sicily across the Straits of Messina.

WWII Photo

Here is a photo of a real one with four 88s and two quad 20mm flak guns. We are looking at the back.

Luftwaffe Sea Lion Ferry, Rear View

The story of the Siebel starts with Operation Sea Lion. The Kriegsmarine pointed out that they lacked the lift to move anything like the army's requirement for the first wave across the Channel. So the Luftwaffe asked Aircraft Designer Fritz Siebel if he could make rafts from oil drums to be powered by spare French aero engines. The German Army was to cross the Channel on Boy Scout rafts. Of course they fell apart microseconds after hitting the surf.

Siebel had the idea of taking two pontoon bridge floats and bolting a flat deck over them. Actually this worked quite well but the Wehrmacht showed a marked reluctance to a sea voyage lasting four or five hours of bracing themselves to avoid being sucked into a mincing machine. Aircraft engines and air propellers are also thirstier than a drunk waiting for opening time and there was some doubt whether the craft could carry enough fuel to get itself over England's anti-tank Ditch, never mind with a payload.

Fritz Herbert, an Austrian engineer, arrived at the final design which had propellers and diesel engines.

Each ferry would have carried a single 88 and two 20mm flak with their trolleys and prime movers. With this they were intended to guard the flank of the barge convoys and see off Royal Navy Cruisers and Destroyers..........[Facepalm]

According to Peter Schenk, 'the Army rather disingenuously referred to the Siebel ferries as “destroyer substitutes”'......yeeesss, that would be chocolate soldier.

Any that reached Kent were to unload and then act as ship to shore lighters.

Okay, Sea Lion was a dead duck that never tried to swim but the Siebel became one of the most useful coastal boats in the Kriegmarine's inventory. They were used as ferries, escorts, flak batteries and mine-layers. A Siebel could carry a Tiger Tank.

Basic Requirements

This is a really easy model to scratchbuild in 1:300 as it is all straight lines. I used three strips of balsa wood for the hull.

Completed Hull

A bit of sanding and a few simple additions in balsa and plasticard and I had a basic outline. Note that the conning tower could be placed in the middle for use as a flak battery or at the back to allow as much space as possible for vehicles. So feel free to move things around.

Seeing Double

I usually build two so if I screw up one, I still have the other.

Completed Flak Battery

And here is a completed model. I added four 88s, their trolleys, and two 40mm flak sourced from Heroics & Ross: using their German artillery men for the boat crew.

Second Siebel

Both models survived my primitive modelling skills. The second model has two 88s in the bows and two quod 20mm on towers at the rear, with a couple of prime movers.

The Deck

Flat balsa surfaces painted with normal acrylic can look like, well, painted wood - so I used a thick Tamiya textured 'concrete' paint to take out the wood appearance. It looks as if the horizontal surfaces of the ferry have been painted with anti-slip.

Scale Photo

This piccy shows the Siebels alongside a Warlord Games S-Boot and some scratch built I-Lighters.

These things were BIG and they packed a hell of a punch. They were also difficult to torpedo as they had a shallow draught.

Remains Of A Siebel

As far as I know, the only Siebels left are wrecks but, in their time, they gave good service for a quick bodge job.