¹⁄500

USS Chicago

Nikos Kosmadakis shares his latest nautical diorama with us! This time he digs into the past a bit with an old one from Monogram to create the USS Chicago in 1/500 scale.

The USS Chicago CA 136/CG-11

The USS Chicago served a long and meritorious carrier with the US Navy. First commissioned at the tail end of the Second World War she served as a Heavy Gun Cruiser CA 136 from 1945 until 1964. She served with Radford's Task Group 38.4, Shafroth's bombardment unit and several other bombardment and escort missions including acting as a temporary seaplane carrier after transferring SC Seahawk floatplanes from the USS Iowa to the cruiser. The crew was actually able to launch a Seahawk from the catapult too.

From 1964 until 1976, the USS Chicago was commissioned as CG-11 serving as a Missile cruiser going on to make five deployments during the Vietnam War. Escorting and participating in Fleet Exercises throughout he 70's, due to refit costs the USS Chicago CG-11 would be decommissioned in 1980 and later sold for scrap.

Nikos's USS Chicago

Nikos tells us the construction required major surgery as the kit pieces were of questionable detail and accuracy and that literally every piece had to be improved in some way. Apart from the kit some generic rails were used and pieces from the spare box as well as serious amounts of copper wire. Nikos says "All in all a build that took my scratch building skills to the next level". He went on to let us know the sea was sculpted from Styrofoam, gloss gel medium and cotton and mentioned "The missile launch is far from perfect but i needed something to take the eye off the various mistakes on the ship."

Model Shipwrights would like to thank Nikos Kosmadakis for providing this photo feature of his USS Chicago!