Coastlines 1/1250 CL-M491AS Unitas a model of a German Depot Ship from 1940-45
Unitas was a German whale factory ship built in 1937. When war was declared, she was requesitioned by the Kriegsmarine to act as an auxiliary fuel tanker and submarine depot ship, mostly based in the Baltic until the end of WW2 in Europe. The model is a waterline, 1/1250 scale, polyurethane casting, fully assembled and painted by Coastlines Models, CL-M491AS.
Unitas was a very large, modern ship able to store large quantities of fuel oil for ships and submarines and had space and equipment to carry out repairs and accommodate the crews of small ships and submarines abord when based in harbours in occupied territories. Unitas seems to have acted as a depot ship for fast boats and a training squadron of submarines in Poland and Latvia until 1944 when she was damaged by aircraft bombs. She was surrendered in May 1945 at Flensburg and was managed by Britain after repairs and spent the 1946 whaling season in the Southern Ocean.
Details of her wartime service record are rather sketchy but there are photographs or the ship undergoing repairs in Hamburg in 1945/46. After service with the British MOWT, it seems that she was returned to Unilever and was sold in the 1950s to South Africa and in the 1960s to Japan. When the ban on commercial whaling was announced the then "Nisshin Maru II" was converted to a fish factory ship with the stern ramp filled in and an extra deck added above the stern. She was scrapped in the 1970s.