COBI ORP Błyskawica Set 4865

COBI's ORP Błyskawica is a 1:300 model of the Polish destroyer, with printed hull and deck markings rather than stickers, a nameplate and a display stand.

The real Błyskawica

Błyskawica — Polish for lightning — was not built in Poland. She and her sister ship Grom were ordered from J. Samuel White of Cowes on the Isle of Wight and commissioned into the Polish Navy in 1937. At 114 metres and 39 knots they were the fastest destroyers in the world when they launched.

Days before the German invasion in 1939 she slipped out of the Baltic for Britain and spent the rest of the war under Royal Navy command, escorting Atlantic convoys and serving in the North Sea, the Mediterranean, at Dunkirk and off Normandy. Her most remarkable night came on 4 May 1942, when a Luftwaffe raid struck Cowes — the town that had built her. Her captain had her guns readied in advance and she fought off the attack from her moorings, defending the shipyard that launched her. She is the only vessel to hold the Gold Cross of the Virtuti Militari, Poland's highest military decoration.

She served until 1976 and lies today as a museum ship in Gdynia, the oldest preserved destroyer still afloat anywhere in the world.

Specifications

Scale: 1:300 · Age: 9+