USS Maryland BB-46, December 1941
by Dan Kaplan
DKMD01

1/700 USS Maryland BB-46 (Pit-Road/Trumpeter)

A member of the Colorado Class battleships, with a main armament of eight 16” guns, she and her two sisters became the US Navy’s ultimate standard battleship once the terms of the Washington Naval Disarmament Treaties went into effect in the early 1920s. A such, she was a key component of the US Battle Line up to the start of the Second World War. With the move of the Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor in 1940, she was present for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Fortuitously, she incurred only slight damage that was quickly repaired. She was active for the rest of the war. Initially, she was part of the remaining battlefleet acting as a counterweight to potential Japanese advances against the US West Coast, then as an escort to critical re-supply convoys, and finally as a mainstay of the gunfire support force that supported US amphibious invasions over the last two years of the war. She was mothballed after the war, and scrapped in 1959.

 Since I was a boy, I’ve been fascinated by the US standard battleships, particularly the “Big Five”, and specifically of Maryland at Pearl Harbor. The release of these ships in 1/700 kit form almost ten years ago re-sparked my interest, and I finally got around to building three of them in the past year: USS West Virginia, California, and Maryland, all in their late 1941 fits.  I had originally planned to just build one for practice prior to Maryland, but things changed. I cover all that in my build thread for all three, here.

 I found the Maryland kit to be a fairly straightforward build (practice does make perfect) with the exception of her hull bulges. Much has been written elsewhere regarding the inaccuracy of their cross-section; I filed down the bulges from the top, using a cross-section illustration of Maryland’s hull bulge in Friedman’s US Battleship book as a guide. The rest of the kit was upgraded as listed below. I used custom mixes of Tamiya acrylic paint to match 5-D and 5--L so as to render her in Measure 1 camouflage.  The same is true for her wood planked deck, which was subsequently washed (lightly) with burnt umber.

 Courtesy of Martin Quinn, I utilized a different background and lighting set-up than usual to photograph her. In many ways this set-up was easier, but I do think the lighting here tended to washout some of her coloration in these photos. Her 5-D paint actually appears darker and a hint bluer in person. The decking is too light in several photos. Of course, using a camera phone for the photography may not have been the best option.

 One shot sets my three builds and Martin’s incomplete Arizona in a partial mock Battleship Row. It’s hard to resist such a set-up when you have the models in hand.

 My sincere thanks to all the board members who contributed information and encouragement during the build. 

 

Work list and references

 Pit-Road/Trumpeter 1/700 USS Maryland 1941 kit with some corrections,

 Aftermarket Injected, 3D Printed Accessory, Misc. Parts

 Photo Etch

 Partial list of corrections

Scratchbuilt

 Paint

References



Dan Kaplan
Gallery updated 12/7/2021

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