1/700 USS Washington, 1942 (Trumpeter)
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by Pavel Lupandin |
1/700 USS Washington, 1942 (Trumpeter)
This is my interpretation of Trumpeter’s fast battleship USS Washington in 1/700 scale, displayed in her North Atlantic fit, sometime between April and July of that year.Bit of History
Washington was a busy ship, probably most famous for her part in sinking Kirishima during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in Nov 1942. North Carolinas, among with South Dakotas were the best looking American battlewagons, in my opinion. The NC Class is distinguished by their graceful flared bow, a balanced superstructure and twin funnel arrangement as on the Iowas, yet without the extremely elongated hull and exaggerated bow of the latter. This was a proper treaty battleship design, and a true contemporary of the Tirpitz, KGVs and Littorios. The fact that she was kept on station to counter potential Tirpitz breakout shows how much of a weapon she was considering the reputation Bismarck class had at the time.
About the Build
Trumper kit calls out for the Measure 22 paint scheme, something that is harder to put on the ship considering what actually comes in the kit (no stern tubs is one of the bigger flaws). So I thought I will paint it Measure 12 and avoid scratch building. I wish it was so simple! Unfortunately as I went on, I found so many issues on the kit that I kept rebuilding and adding things, mainly on the superstructures. As with most of my ships, I am showing the subject in weathered form, perhaps as the battlewagon might have looked before the refit for the Pacific, returning from her convoy duties up North.
The camouflage scheme is MS 12 Graded System with Navy Blue (5-N), Ocean Grey (5-O) and and Haze grey (5-H), later discontinued in favour of MS 22. The decks are Deck Blue (20-B). I could have over done it with the weathering, especially the salt streaks for the less "salty" North Atlantic were an overkill, alas it is too late to change things. A small tip for those building her - Trumpeter splits the hull along her light load, so the boot topping has to be painted on the upper hull, which is not that obvious from the painting diagram. Get it wrong and she looks like a cruiser with low draft and high freeboard, which was definitely not the case.
Errors from my side: I am not 100% on number of 20mm guns - they varied also quite substantially through the shio's career, but were for sure less numerous during the first half of 1942 versus what the kit provides. I have also incorrectly assembled the plane catapults, with railings too high, and Tom's railings were too long for me to handle properly, they are far from perfect. This is my third big battleship build, so I will get better.
To give an idea of all changes, here is what I have done to make BB56 a bit more accurate, build thread here will have more info: http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=167807
- Tom’s modelworks PE set and US Radars PE set (excellent, if a bit fragile)
- Changes to superstructures front and aft
- Increased number of life rafts, using Shelf Oddity items and ditching square ones from the kit
- Masts from brass
- Replaced some of the lifeboats with shelf oddity ones, having lost kit boats to the carpet monster
- All new radars, funnels, directors, 5in turrets, 16in turrets and barrels for them – using 3D printed parts from ModelMonkey’s catalogue
- Blast bags out of putty
- Aber barrels for main and secondary batteries
- Rigging using Modelkasten tungsten wire
- Flags using aluminium foil method
- Airbrushed with custom mixed Tamiya paints
