Revell 1/720 USS Alabama (BB-60), Pacific, 1944
The Subject
Alabama was the last of the “fast battleships” completed as the final group of treaty battleships just before WW2. A South Dakota class she completed fitting out and trials in 1942 and joined the British Home Fleet, escorting convoys on the Murmansk run, ready to engage any German capital ships that might have embarked as a commerce raider.
After a year, Alabama then transferred to the Pacific, escorting fast carrier task groups and focused on protecting the 3 carriers in her group. She finished the war with 9 battle stars, and was mothballed in 1947. In 1964 she was sold to the state of Alabama and transferred to Mobile to be a museum ship.
I have a personal connection to Alabama, having visited the museum ship as a young child in the late 60’s when it was relatively new as a museum. I remember the cavernous engineering spaces and massive guns, being able to crawl about in some amazing spaces. Plus that beautiful Kingfisher on the fantail…
The Model
The kit is rather simple for a waterline ship kit with less than 50 parts. I quickly built the model, in a single afternoon with the majority of my time spend cleaning up mold lines as the molds have obviously seen better days. I primed the plastic and then painted the model an overall blue-gray, then masked the sheer line and painted the lower hull a dark blue. The decks received a hand painted dark blue and my the second day I could cement on the major sub assemblies.
I learned quite a bit about ships making this model as a child, because the parts were all labeled by what they were — main deck, 40mm Quad Gun, Aft Main Battery Director Tower, Deck House, Anti-Aircraft Platform, etc. Each part was also numbered, which helped immensely, but it was nice to know what was what. I miss that with modern kit instructions.
While the model dried I cut a sheet of balsa and applied some thinned gesso to seal it. Once it dried, I then sprayed a dark blue onto the balsa sheet. Then I added gesso gel to create an ocean base. I placed the ship in the still wet gesso and shaped the waves, adding a wake at the forward hull break and another wake at the stern. The stern wake also got a “churn” using a toothpick and once the entire bit was fully cured I added some white to the caps of waves and the wake — all using a paint brush.
The final bit was to spray the entire model with a matte varnish, then brush on some Future Floor Wax onto the water to make it appear “wet”. The water base took me a full week of evenings, most of that time taken by curing.
Summary
Yes, this was a great nostalgia build and I learned that I don’t want to use balsa as a base. My sheet warped but by the time I’d dried it fully and placed a few books on it the model helped to hold its shape. There are better solutions for bases.
My kit dates from 1998, however my original kit of the ‘Bama! was acquired at Mobile at the gift shop. I completed that one with a full hull, weighted of course so that she sat properly at her waterline in the tub. All in single afternoon and certainly not painted. The next summer I took that model to my Nana’s place where she had a pond, and that ship sailed around that pond all summer, sinking occasionally because I hadn’t quite sealed the hull. Eventually she sank in too deep water and we could not recover her.
She still rests at Plastic Bottom Sound with a few other models.