This will be my first full ship build documented on this forum.

After working on and off on my HMS Warspite with full Pontos kit I decided I wanted to work on something a little simpler before tackling another Capital Ship. I have opted to build Tamiya's USS Fletcher (DD) as well as Trumpeters USS England (DE). Rather than doing 2 build logs I am going to build them both at the same time and document as I go along.

For USS Fletcher I have the full Eduard PE kit as well as some Alliance Models twin bofors.

For the USS England I am going to mostly build OOB but I have purchased a set of railings, l'Arsenal 20mm orlikons and I will use left over PE from the Fletcher and Warspite i.e. portholes, hatches etc.

First pictures are of the hull of USS England. I had no issues with the Fletcher hull so didn't take any pictures.

Had to do a fair amount of putty and sanding to get the hull halves to smoothly match up with each other.



Also the stern had a large gap that needed filling.



I am currently masking and spraying the hulls. Pics of that to follow.

Rory,

Cool! I will be following along as I have both of these ships in my stash.

I must have lucked out with the hull of my England as it went together very easily and the fit was great. Only had to do some minor puttying to remove the seam.

Hulls have been painted. Both are in Measure 21 as that's the standard colour for the England and I am doing Fletcher in her '43 Solomon's configuration. I have lightened the blue slightly so it pops a bit more at this scale. Sorry for the pic quality as I am using my phone to take pics.

USS Fletcher:



USS England:

As with all plans, my plan to only use spare PE etc on the USS England did not survive contact with the enemy. I got an amazing deal on the WEM Buckly Class PE set so that is now on its way.Work on the England has now halted till that arrives.

Work on USS Fletcher on the other hand continues. I did not accomplish as much as I wanted this weekend but work was done. Front superstructure has had the majority of the PE attached. I will leave the Radar off until its time to be painted since it looks fragile.




Vision ports on the bit below the director were a bugger to put on. Some of the smallest PE I have had to deal with.

Still some cleanup and puttying to be done to hide some join lines etc but I am pretty happy about the results.

Looks to be coming along nicely.

Ive just realized I have put the doors on backwards on the lower part of the pilothouse

I shall rectify tonight. So glad I opted to use gator glue and not CA for this project.

Work continues. All main superstructure components on the USS Fletcher are complete though there is some small cleanup left to do. Nothing is glued down as yet. Will paint before doing that.

Next on the agenda are the gun turrets and the bits and bobs attached to the deck.

Really nice PE work. She is going to be a beauty.

Fine work there Rory! Clean work on the shiny stuff!

Rory,

I completely agree with Mark and Todd,
very nice work and you are making good progress!

Cheers,
Jan

More progress to report. Superstructure and deck are painted as well as some of the gubbins located on the deck. None of it is glued down yet. Working on the turrets. Slowly building up the blast bags using white glue so that's taking a while.

WEM PE for the USS England has arrived but without instructions so I am trying to source those so I can get started on her. Till then I will just keep plugging away at the Fletcher.

She is coming along nicely.

Not a picture update but wanted to send a massive shout out and thank you to Richard Harden at White Ensign Models who very kindly and quickly sent me a set of pdf instructions for the Buckley photo etch.(WEM PE3594)

Thank you very much sir!

USS Fletcher is completed! I really enjoyed this build. Went together with no issues at all and I even learned a new technique i.e. using white glue to make blast bags on the guns.

I also semi perfected my method of adding railings which will be helpful for several builds going forward.

Now just to crack on with the USS England though with my parents visiting for a month from the homeland I suspect I wont get a chance to make much progress.

One of these days I will go back and do rigging but that's currently way outside my comfort zone.

looks great!!

Great looking ship. Really nice paint work, looks very clean.

Rory,

Great job!!! Looking forward to seeing your USS England.

Dave

Its been a while since my last update. Had a few months of burn out and then got caught up in some AFV campaigns on Armorama

I have finished up building the deck and superstructure. Still have the weapons and mast to do. Not sure what possessed me to think painting the deck first was a good idea since I ended up having to sand/glue etc on it. Oh well.

I am calling her complete. For such a small ship she gave me my fair share of vexation. Honestly one of my biggest issues was the PE.

I used the WEM set which was absolutely lovely and detailed. However it was also some of the finest and fragile PE I have used so my fat fingers kept bending/breaking/wreaking it. I used a combination of PE and kit parts in a lot of spots i.e the depth charge launchers and the 20mm Orlikons.

I found the PE ones to be way too 2 dimensional so ended up splitting the difference and using plastic parts with PE gun shields. Actually used the spare ones from my Warspite build as the Trumpeter ones were way over scale. The Warspite ones are still too big but they aren't the same thickness as the 3 inch guns

I once again learned the error in trusting the instructions too much. An example is the ships boat. The instructions show the boat hanging outboard of the hull while pics online show it being stored inboard. I had to fix that. There are others but I am going to keep those too myself.

Anyways my little build log has come to an end. It was fun and I really enjoyed building these smaller ships. Next will be something a wee bit bigger




And lastly my little fleet is growing nicely. Next trick is to source a wider display case since my next build doesn't fit in this one.

Looks great, always love seeing completed builds.

I like your Fletcher very much! As for rigging, you can always go back and retrofit her later...

Thank you!

I really enjoyed building her. In fact this is the 2nd time I have built this kit. First time I was a much younger modeler and she didn't end up nearly as nice as this one. I built her along with HMS Prince of Wales and if memory serves both of them ended up sunk in my swimming pool

I do plan on going back. I have some rigging lined up in my ebay watch list as we speak.

Congratulations on a beautiful build Rory!

Excellent work!