Brush painting comes closer to the weathered, crew- maintained look of the old boats near the end of a patrol. The kit came with thread for the guardrails, but I replaced that with fine steel wire. This removed the plating from the upper section, leaving the girders supporting the lookout platform exposed, and lowering the front of the bridge about three feet, so that the officers were no longer standing on a platform. Later in the war, the bridges would be cut down further, creating what was called a “covered wagon” cutdown. The model has a partial cutdown bridge, similar to Wahoo. Side view of the conning tower fairwater (the actual conning tower is inside the lower section, and exposed bears a striking resemblance to an old steel gas station storage tank. The door allowed access to the forward gun mount. The black assembly at the top was called a venturi shield, as was designed to deflect spray and direct wind away from the watchstanders.
The front of the conning tower fairwater, with the compass and target bearing transmitter installed. The unpainted spots are where various fittings will be added later in the building process. The hull completely assembled and painted. Later in the war, the Germans started building U- boat is sections at inland factories, and only did the final assembly in the more vulnerable dockyards. American subs were always built as units on the ways at Electric Boat, or in some cases in dry docks at Mare Island (which meant two or three were launched simultaneously by flooding the dock). A model of a Ford class carrier would be about 15.3 feet long, and an Iowa model a little over twelve feet long.Ĭloser shot of the bow section after assembly. This is why there are no 1:72 scale battleships or aircraft carriers. The whole thing is just shy of 52- inches long. The partially assembled model is sitting on the box it came in. These were most useful in harbor, as both the screws and the stern planes were wider than the hull, making them vulnerable to damage if anything got too close. One of the propeller guards glued into place. (Yes, I know it was a Balao in the movie, but the tube layout was the same.) Something the writers of Down Periscope apparently forgot when they wrote the surface chase near the end of the movie. Unlike modern submarines, they also had four torpedo tubes in the stern, so they could shoot while making a hasty exit. The black anti- fouling coating is correct for the period. Vertical surfaces were painted gray, which blended in with the sea horizon.
The top of the planes is painted black, like all horizontal surfaces on a fleet boat. The bow section assembled, with the bow planes installed. With the bow planes lowered you can see into the interior. The box was nearly three feet long as it was.īlacking out the interior of the bow section. I suppose making a two- piece hull wasn’t considered practical. The fit was good, but adding the c- clamps and binding insured there’d be as little seam filling and sanding as possible. I think it took two or three weeks to build. This was a big model, slightly over four feet long when completed. The other special order was Revell’s new 1:72 scale model of a Gato class fleet submarine. There was a fashion for “visible” models at the time, so besides the engine, I also built a Visible P- 51 Mustang, a Visible Man, a Visible Woman, and a Visible Head. I think I might have been in my early teens back then. One was a visible V8, a version of one I’d built back when they first came out. Honestly, he devoted more shelf space to HO scale buildings than to models. In the plastic model category he stocked mostly cars and planes, and a few of the more popular small scale ship models. They specialized in model trains, but the owner was naturally happy to order just about any model you might want, if he didn’t have it on the shelf.
Back in 2006, when I was still living in an apartment in Riverdale, Georgia, I’d pass a little hobby shop every time I walked down to the market.
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