Lately I’ve been building all of the Desert Storm Carriers for my shelf and noticed a large difference in the America’s island and Kitty Hawk’s island. It’s the Italeri Kit in 1/720 of course . While holding the island in my hand to move it I noticed the difference between the box art and the ship’s actual island. Looks like the Kitty Hawk’s on the box, but photo’s prove America’s is different. I worked on the JFK and have now realized it’s different from America, Constellation and Kitty Hawk as well. It has, as I remeber , a slanted looking exhaust stack. I remeber an old Senior Chief I worked saying a couple of the boats still had Terrier missile control still in place, is this what I’m seeing ? Were JFK and Kitty’s cut off and Connie’s and Big A’s left ?
Kitty Hawk, Constellation and America all were originally equipped with Terrier but it was eventually removed from all.
All of them had modifications made over time, so the best thing to do would be to find reference photos from the actual time period that you are modeling. I’ve learned not to trust box art.
As you noted, JFK had a unique island design with a slanted stack. It was originally intended to be a nuke, but was converted after it was laid down. Although similar to the Kitty Hawks it was actually a one-ship class.
Mark