World War 2 at sea
BB63 USS Missouri (1945)
To get a feel for the scale and set the bar for other units, I decided to start with the most complex and difficult to paint type of unit – a battleship. Reduced to a secondary role in WW2, but still impressive, and often serving as flagships.
I decided on an Iowa-class battleship and of the four, on the USS Missouri as she appeared in her second year of service in 1945.
Now let me be honest: The ship models in Victory at Sea are okay – they are perfectly fine for a game. But I’m a stickler for accuracy and detail, so I will use 1/1800-scale ships I purchase from Shapeways. It’s more expensive, but there are some creators who provide astoundingly accurate and detailed models at that scale.
The model of the USS Missouri in 1945 I purchased is excellent – I added the top antenna portions on the two masts and exchanged the 9 guns of the main battery with thinner ones which look much more accurate. Both the new guns as well as the antenna I made using fiberoptic cable. The round radar I created from plastic card.
I painted the model in the camouflage pattern the Missouri wore in 1945 – it is called Measure 22.
And here’s my finished model – it is approximately 15cm long:
Nice work! Out of curiosity where did you find the historical camouflage patterns? I have been looking for a while but haven’t really found much other than black and white images of the ship.
You can find a lot of detailed images of the Iowa-class ships’ camouflage patterns and of many other ships in the following forum – they also have a gallery for comfortable browsing, iirc:
http://shipbucket.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5410
Also very helpful is the following article going into detail on the various Measure XY camouflage patterns used by the U.S. Navy in WW2:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_ship_camouflage_measures_of_the_United_States_Navy
Thanks!The wikipedia entry and blog was very intriguing and helpful! I got a kick out of the post war change back to grey as they ran out of blue pigment.