by Richard Stewart
1/350 HMS Eskimo and USS Hornet 1944 (White Ensign/Trumpeter)
This ship has taken me on and off around eight years to complete! The Carrier is the 1/350 scale Trumpeter USS Essex which I have adapted to be the USS Hornet. The reason I wanted to do the Hornet was she was the last of the early Essex class to modified and so she had the later aircraft which I wanted to depict in this diorama. I started this project with the carrier by building the entire air wing and ships armaments first. The planes all have rudimentary cockpits with some open canopies, the decals are GMM. WEM brass etch was used for the ship and air wing together with their range of colour coat paints. I have used a mix of brush and airbrush painting on different areas of the ships. The destroyer is a WEM resin 1/350 HMS Eskimo and is built straight out of the box. For the sea I used acrylic gloss gel sculpted over a shaded gloss blue base. The diorama is depicting a ship to ship transfer of rescued US pilots.
