Ever since I first heard the old Woody Guthrie song in praise of the Reuben James (DD-245) I was interested in building a kit of it. Reading up on her, she was a Clemson class 4 stacker.
How much different was this class from the Wickes class 4 stackers that the HMS Cambellton (ex USS Buchanan)?
Would it be a hard task to convert the existing Revell Cambellton kit to a Clemson?
There is a kit in resin for the clemson class, but the approx. $120 for it is a little more than I plan to spend.
"Have you heard of a ship called the good Reuben James
Manned by hard fighting men both of honor and fame?
She flew the Stars and Stripes of the land of the free
But tonight she’s in her grave at the bottom of the sea."
(Woody served with the Merchant marine during WWII.)
The Clemson was a repeat Wickes with increased fuel capacity for increased range. Externally they would have been very similar. Differences would likely be comstruction/refit yard variations.
The old Revell kit is very good, but it has some problems of its own. These ships had all steel decks. The kit has wooden decks and lacks camber. Fill, sand, or totally replace. The armament is a klunky. The Gold Medal Models PE is almost a requirement to do a first-class update.
Also in polystyrene - check the 1:400 scale kits by Mirage/Airfix. Their USS Ward/USS Noa/HMS Montgomery/HNoMS St Albans kits are very nice. Steel decks are good, shapes are right, lots of very small detail parts. GMM also makes PE for this kit/scale
Ed – thanks for the information. I was looking more at the Mirage/Airfix HMS Montgomery kit. One of the few differences that I did note is a single search light for the Clemson’s near the stern instead of 2 in that position for the Wickes. Using photo’s available it doesn’t seem to be too diffilcult a task.