¹⁄35

Building the Italeri Elco PT Boat 1:35 Scale

Brief History

The Elco 80 PT Boats were built of wood using laminated spruce, white oak and mahogany and covered with fir plywood. They were considered expendable and 260 were built serving in most parts of WW11. They were powered by 3 Supercharged Packard 12 cylinder engines of 1500hp each giving the boats a top speed of 41 to 43 knots. They carried 3000 gallons of 100 octane aviation fuel with a total weight of up to 61 tons. Crew consisted of 3 officers and 14 enlisted men.

PT 596 was a late version armed with Mark XIII roll off torpedoes, twin 50.cal Browning Machine guns, 2 / 5inch rocket launchers, a 20mm Oerlikon, a 37mm M9 gun and a 40mm Bofors on the rear deck. This particular vessel was part of the US Naval Pacific Fleet RON Samar based in the Philippines in 1945. There she was decommissioned there and probably destroyed.

The Kit. . .

As you can see by the Box Art that this is a large model by any standards. The whole package is impressive and packed with features not normally seen in kits today. There is a 48 page Photographic reference manual giving the history of PT Boats during World War 11 in the US Navy and the role they played. Lots of close up and color shots.

The 30 page assembly instruction manual is clear and well set out and should be easy for all to understand. Also included is a Photo etched Fret as well as Metal gun barrels, small mesh sheet and the 370 parts in light grey plastic all packed in plastic envelopes.

The build. . .

I suggest you read this again when you purchase your kit, as it will make sense once you have the components in front of you. I have not attempted to include any after market products but will use a little ingenuity later on in the build to add a little more dimension to the model.

I have gathered as much information on this build as I could and have added those points that I thought could help the build and give a better result to this project. First up a reviewer had trouble with paint separation when removing tape after painting and I suspect that as this was straight after the model launch that mould release agent from the press was probably the cause so I washed the deck and hull with sugar soap and abrasive cloth and let them dry in the sun. This should solve the problem now and head off any potential disaster.

The deck comes together easily and the photo etch deck skylights frames fit quite well. Mark the openings with a pencil before gluing as all the openings are not used i.e. the rear four are not used. I was fooled.