Took a little road trip to Baton Rouge last weekend, and spent about 4 hours crawling all over the USS Kidd. All of this was in aid of my planned build of a model of the USS Johnston, using the Tamiya kit. The Kidd is the only Fletcher-class destroyer currently displayed in her WWII configuration (actually, August 1945, following some mods to the as-built configuration.) There are a few incongruities, but not many. Notably, the forward torpedo mount was replaced with two sets of twin 40mm AA guns, and the whaleboats are not the same model as the original I took a s%&tload of high-res detail photos - 71, totalling over 70 Mbyte. I’ll be happy to provide them to others. Obviously, no one is set up to accept 70 meg worth of e-mailed photos, but if you’d like me to post them somewhere, I’d be happy to do so. E-mail me with suggestions.
If you can burn those pictures on a CD, I would be interested in getting a copy.
As far as building the Johnston out of the Tamiya kit, I would suggest that you look at the Trumpeter kit too. The Johnston was a square-bridge, as is the Trump kit. The Tam is a round-bridge. The Tam lacks the waist gun tubs which are present on the Trump kit. The Trump kit has some issues with regard to the weapons and the raised walkways on the decks. But the shapes of the hull & superstructure are there. Use the Trump kit and replace the weapons with L’Arsenal items will get you a long way farther down the road.
Appreciate your comments. You’re completely right, but I have the problem covered - I bought the mod kit from Tom’s Modelworks (??) with the correct bridge and armament mods.
As for the photos, I need to label them properly, and I’ll consider making a CD available.