Hello everyone,
Today I have for you a unique ship that I myself had never heard of prior to finding a blueprint for it, the Project 162. This ship was designed and built by East Germany as the second of the two "Schwimmender Stützpunkt" classes - the 62 and 162 - and was built to be a floating HQ and barracks for the many missile boats of the Volksmarine. While Project 62 (which I will be drawing next) was pretty much just a building on a pontoon barge, Project 162 was a proper ship with propulsion by two diesel engines.
I have drawn the lead ship of the class,
Vogtland and her sister
Wische (formerly
Harz), to show how the ships looked in the Volksmarine and then the Bundesmarine.
Vogtlandwas launched in 1983, and served until 2002, while
Wische was launched in 1984 and served until 2020.
Interesting things about this class were both their armament, and the weird "ladder" you see on the hull. That is the bumper for mooring missile boats, which was still present even after the reunification of Germany. For armament, the ships had two 25mm 2M-3 turrets and two FASTA-4 (Igla) launchers fore and aft.
Unfortunately, I was not able to draw the hull as there are literally 0 images of the underside of the ship and I have no indication of where the propellers are located. In addition, I apologise if
Wische's crane looks strange - there are literally no references to that either, just far away pictures that do not give much detail to it.