¹⁄350

USS Lexington (CV2) 1927-1942

I decided to portray the Lexington as though she is at a couple of hours notice before sailing. Preparations are being made to hoist up the side ladders when the small boats alongside have cast off. So I ran hoist ropes (monofilament) from the derricks down to the ladder platforms.



Above: Forward side ladder and derrick after completion of model.

Stage 35: boat booms

Kit parts: 2
PE parts: 3 (Jacobs ladders port side only)
Scratch parts: 10 (rigging)
Time: 1 hour



The kit provides four for the port and starboard quarters. For the period modelled the forward pair each side had been removed, so only the rearmost pair are required.



Above: Port side boat boom and rigging.

Stage 36: final adjustment

Scratch parts: 2 (bottom sheeting)
Time: 1.25 hours



With the vessel complete and placed on a sheet of flat glass (my preferred medium for displaying finished models on), I discovered a 0.5mm gap between bottom of the hull and the glass in the midships area on both sides. This was cured by taping down a sheet of course-grade wet-and-dry paper to the glass and rubbing down the ends until the bottom was level.

Light contained in the depth of the glass was visible through the various hull apertures and the forward elevator well, giving the impression the vessel was half full of water and sinking. To eradicate this effect I sheeted the underside with black styrene sheet inset to the depth of the beam-wise stretchers. On reflection, I could just as well have used kit supplied waterline plate, but completely overlooked this!

Tip from experience: I should have checked the level of the hull between stages 19 and 20 before too much detail was applied and before painting. If you are going to sheet the underside of the hull don’t do it until you’ve reached this final stage – you will need access to the inside to pull through rigging at flight deck level and in the hull sides.

Stage 37: air group

Kit parts: 339
Scratch parts: 92
Decals: 132
Total parts: 563
Time: 39.25 hours



Trumpeter’s aeroplanes that go with this model really are a peach by any standards. I augmented the rather meagre supply of aircraft that came with the kit with additional packs available separately from Trumpeteer. Each pack contains ten aircraft. I bought one pack of SBDs and one pack of TBDs.

Astonishingly, building the air group took 15 percent of the total time to complete the entire model of the Lexington (including the air group) and 20 percent of the total number of parts. And more kit parts were used up than in the whole of the ship.

The Lexington embarked only the F4F fixed-wing (non-folding) variant, not the folding wing version, so the small number of these I made had the wings fixed. This involved a considerable amount of filling and filing to achieve a smooth surface.

Detailing involved adding drag sruts to the TBD main landing gears and aerial masts for all aircraft from stretched sprue. The tail wheels were discarded and replaced with tiny circles sliced from styrene rod. The SBD main landing gears were reversed so that the struts were on the outside, resembling strut covers. This sounds weird, but try it out and you will see what I mean.

The decals for the national insignia are of very different size between those supplied with the ship and the separate packs. In fact, this is not an issue because the period in question was one of rapid change in terms of size and position of markings. Any flight deck photographs from this time show considerable variety in styles.

There was no point in applying decals on the underside of unfolded wings and this was a cheap way of yielded extras for the additional aircraft. The decals in the extra packs did not include the red circle in the centre of the star, so where I had to use these I simply painted in the red centre.

I found that the red and white rudder stripes just would not adhere strongly enough. Trimming off the decal excess even with sharpest razor blade always tore off the decal. In the end the only solution was to paint all the rudders white and use water-based red ink (thin and very opaque) to paint a total of 400 red tail stripes.

Tip from experience: If you have a friend who is really into making tiny little aeroplanes – and lots of identical ones – then set him up with a few beers and the boxes of parts and let him get on with it while you concentrate on the ship.



Above: All those damned planes. But a carrier without planes is like a battleship without guns, a cruiser without catapult-launched floatplanes, a destroyer without torpedo tubes or an escort without depth-charges. There was no choice.