by John Bange
1/500 USS Curtis AV-4 (Revell/Kitbash)
This is my USS Curtis AV-4. This is a double kitbash of Revell's Pine Island Seaplane tender. I used parts from two ships to convert to Curtis. Some of the plastic hull is attached to a cedar and basswood hull. The ship has been shortened 2 inches and the superstructure cut to fit. This kit comes with a side piece which has a lot of molded railing. Even with two of both sides, I could not cut the molded stuff off so I used pe only. All rails are removed from rest of ship and replaced with pe from GMM. I added the second stack and mast from the second kit. I altered the 5" 38's supplied with kits but they do not look right and will probably make some out of wood in future. For a Revell kit, this ship came with very good boats but the 5" mounts were very bad. Radars were added from GMM and Tom's supplied the crewmembers by the PBM.
The Curtis was at Pearl on December 7th. and was credited with shooting down a Japanese aircraft as well as putting a round through the conning tower of a midget sub.
The scale is 1/500 or so and certainly I have taken some liberties with accuracy, my apologies to anyone who sailed on her.
