Revell 1/144 USN Landing Ship Medium (Early)

[MerlinJones]

With my eye on the impending Flower-class Corvette, I thought I'd give this a go.
Initial stages are all to do with building the hull and it's a very well-engineered piece of kittery, building into a solid model.
For starters, it's a goodly size;



Detail is of the usual high standard we've come to expect from Revell;



The opening bow doors are a Working Feature and I'm looking forward to playing with the...er....admiring the nautical engineering, from a variety of angles;



There was a bit of gappage below, but these could have been due to my not paying enough attention to my work;

[pbhawkin]

look forward to seeing how you go with this.

[MerlinJones]

So, before I go any further, the engineering of this kit is sound. Butt joints are reinforced by various ridges and channels.
There are some holes that will need widening, to accept some locating pins, but this won't be a problem.
Another issue I've come across is that the larger pieces flex and, if you let your attention wander during the gluing phase, you'll find gaps appearing, where none were seen before. Fortunately, my AMS is in remission.

Obviously, being a Revell kit, you have to mix all of your paints. This is an R Sake. Again, squashing my pedantry, I went for the bestest Humbrol equivalents, so I have H31 for the inner deck and H105 for the inner side walls.



The large rear anchor, designed to pull the unladen ship off the beach, is lifted by a powerful motor and Revell have gone to some lengths to give me this;



I did think about adding some chain, but realised that this would effectively disappear from view, once I added the upper decking.
There is also the dilemma of what to paint and when, but I'll muddle through. Basically, I know that if I can see it, I'll be able to paint it.



Back to the pointy end;

[MerlinJones]

More with the Working Feature...
Again, some sanding of seams will be required, but the moulding is generally top notch;







Cool, or what?!?

Actually, the pins on those doors are almost in-scale are broke after only two plays. I have some thick copper wire I'll be replacing them with.

Meanwhile, at the blunt end;



It is worth noting that the sprue attachments, whilst there seem to be many of them, are quite fine and cleaning them up is proving a fairly simple exercise.
I got me a ship;

[MerlinJones]

There then follows a series of small stages, involving the addition of various bits and bobs to the superstructure.
I'm going for the late 1944 option, so camouflage is required. This will consist of the aforementioned H31, with H78 and H91. The external sides of the ship will have some more of the H105 splashed about. Details will include some lights, Fire stations and cables/chains. I also suspect I'll indulge in some subtle dry-brushing, later on.

There are a lot of bits, so it's worth ticking off those you fit into place. One piece, (but only one piece), isn't mentioned in despatches and I was left with a pair of holes. However, there was a bollard to sit on these.







There are a couple of occasions where you have to build stuff up from several small bits. This depth charge, on it's rack, consists of three parts and these don't fit together very well.





The island-Bridge structure was particularly problematic and took some work to later remove the seams.

[MerlinJones]

However, there is some nice detail provided for this important area,





The Carpet Monster pinched a snack, so I had to scratch a little;



...And I've now got guns to warn it off!

[Jonathan]

looking good.
that's a wonderful model of a very interesting subject.

[MerlinJones]

Thanks Jonathan.
I like 1/144 as a scale for ships and, following some internet trawling, there's another I have my eye on, before the Flower-class and that nice, expensive, Revell Destroyer. There's a bit more to them than with the 1/144 subs.

[MerlinJones]

I've been slowly tinkering away with this model, with paint here, paint there, a bit of touching up here, some touch-up there...repeat...etc.

[Jonathan]

That's a great looking ship!

Fortunately some of those landing ships had peace time careers and lasted into the 1970s.

that's actually an LSU in the photos, somewhat smaller than the LSM.