1/350 USS Missouri BB-63 (Tamiya)
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by Robert Apfelzweig |
1/350 USS Missouri BB-63 (Tamiya)
The old (1985) Tamiya kit of the USS Missouri represents the ship as she appeared during the last two years of World War II. For this build, a commissioned work, I was provided with the kit but asked to model the ship as she appeared during the Korean War, in 1951 (the individual who asked me to build the ship wants to present it to his father, who served with the ship over 60 years ago, as a birthday present).
After consulting a number of online sources and finding several good
quality photographs of the Missouri from the Korean War era, I settled
on the following modifications to the kit:
1. Removal of both catapults, and the kit's liferafts that were
stored beneath them (the Missouri utilized helicopters for search and rescue
during the Korean War).
2. Scratch-building a new and larger tripod mainmast
3. Removal of the 20 mm Oerlikon AA galleries located on the
main deck on either side of the second 16-in. gun turret, and the galleries
immediately behind the midships motor launches, along with their attendant
splinter shields and platforms.
4. Scratch-building SPS-6 and SPS-8 radars for, respectively,
the foremast and mainmast.
5. Replacement of the radars for the Mark 37 gun directors with
dish antennas.
6. Replacement of the 32 remaining single 20mm Oerlikons with
scratch-built twin mounts, using stretched black sprue for gun barrels.
7. Replacement of the kit's paired 40 mm Bofors guns with resin
versions from ISW.
8. Replacement of the kit's plastic floater baskets with photoetch
ones from WEM.
9. Lowering of the searchlight platform on the rear funnel.
Other, minor modifications including adding appropriate portholes, ladders and watertight doors to the superstructure, where Tamiya had left merely blank bulkheads. The location of these was provided by the much more detailed superstructure parts and assembly instructions of Trumpeter's new 1:200 scale Missouri with the Pontos photoetch set, which will be my next build.
As a commissioned work, my budget was limited by what my customer could
pay, so the photoetch detail parts were largely spare railings (3- and
2-bar), Lionroar ladders, and miscellaneous spares for the radars, 20 mm
and 40 mm guns; whip antennas were made from stretched grey sprue and the
rigging was made from stretched black sprue. The ship was painted
overall in ModelMasters 5-H haze grey, Tamiya deck tan for the wood decks,
ModelMasters 20-B dark grey for the steel forecastle deck and turret tops,
and Testors sprayed flat red for the lower hull.
