By Mario Grima
1/178 USS Rock SSR-274 (Revell)
USS Rock Migraine III Program- Radar Picket 1/178 scale
In the 50's, USN radar picket destroyers intended on advancing front of a task groups to locate hostile warships, were deemed vulnerable to attacking aircraft. Submarines were designated a better alternative to radar picket duties since at the time they were platforms that could work independently from a fleet anytime and anywhere, undetected. Thus the Migraine programs were initiated; radar systems like the type in Edsall class destroyers were squeezed in the hulls of abundant fleet boat submarines. The program escalated from Migraine I to include II and III. The final Migraine III, due to the large size of assorted radar systems, the current fleet boat hulls had to be extended and a larger sail added, built and modified off the existing sails. There were six boats converted to this configuration; USS Rock, Pompon, Rasher, Raton, Ray, and Redfin.
This model of the USS Rock was built using a 1/178 scale Revell Lionfish, and my latest conversion
set for the Migraine III Revell Lionfish kit. This conversion set comes with the Migraine III sail,
the sail comes heavily detailed and can be built into the two different variants,
one with the look out platform and one early type without. Also included among the many accessories
is the SV-2 (Nodding Idiot) radar unit. There is another important piece with the set and is
the part that is needed to extend the hull to meet its longer scale size.
The set requires cutting the Revell hull in half. The set can be found at the following link:
http://ironbottomsound.tripod.com/
In the photos I compared the size increase by showing it next to a Portsmouth Fleet Snorkel ( also converted from a lionfish and is a regular boxed lionfish size)
