Ron Bell Posted December 5, 2023 Report Posted December 5, 2023 This is the old Revell kit of a Wickes/Clemson class destroyer released as the USS Buchanan and HMS Campbelltown. For a kit of it's age, it's actually pretty good. The 4" guns are pretty nondescript as are the torpedo tubes, but the single greatest flaw is that the decks have simulated wood planking and these ships did not have wooden decks. Due to its age there is a lot of parts clean up/seam and injection pin marks filling involved, especially the searchlight tower. It comes with molded on stanchions to make railings out of thread, but this is difficult to get right and looks too out of scale. Work that I did: deepened all the port holes, drilled out and busied up the guns and torpedo tubes, removed all the molded on stanchions and replaced with PE railing, sanded/filed/scraped all the molded in wood deck planking off. In the end it builds up into a nice display model. There were many Wickes/Clemson class built and they all had minor differences here and there but were basically similar in outline and armament. I marked mine as the USS Reuben James, a Clemson class ship that was the first US ship sunk in the European Theater in WWII and is the subject of the song "The Sinking of the Reuben James" by Woodie Guthrie. 1
Jmarc Posted December 5, 2023 Report Posted December 5, 2023 LLLLLLLLLLLLLLooking great , nice an clean !..... well done SIR and thank you for sharing it with us, it's quite appreciated !
rdelaney Posted December 6, 2023 Report Posted December 6, 2023 Beautiful work on this model! Thanks for sharing the story of the model with us.
Stikpusher Posted December 6, 2023 Report Posted December 6, 2023 Very nice work! Wasn’t the USS Rueben James sunk before actual US declaration of war against Germany in December of 1941?
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