For the bridge, the first 5 units had essentially identical bridges upon completion. The signal bridge was 11'8" from the deck to the overhead rather than the 8' on the other decks. This was needed to raise the conning tower up to see over the top of turret II, and the conning tower itself was on a small section of raised deck. Tuscaloosa glassed the bridge in on the original level, so visibility forward was blocked by turret II. Therefore, CA's 34,36,38 extended the smaller deck below the conning tower to raise the glassed in area up to see over the top like the CT. This created a low storage area below this raised deck. CA-32 never glassed in the area, and on CA's 39 & 44, the bridge wings were trimmed back to basically catwalks and so there was nothing to glass in. Previous Message
Any thoughts on using a combination of parts from the Trumpeter San Francisco and the Tuscaloosa kits to build a reasonable version of the Tuscaloosa? I have plenty of "spare" parts/assemblies from spares from all the frets. The one area that needs some suggestions is the bridge. The balance of the other structures works for me as long as I can replicate the bridge. Previous Message
Previous Message
The barbette for turret II was altered, but unfortunately turret I was not moved. The Quincy and Vincennes bridges were slightly different from each other (and definitely different from the other sisters). However, Trumpy incorrectly duplicated the Quincy kit for their Tuscaloosa kit. To actually build a Tuscaloosa, the better starting point is the San Francisco kit, but even then, alterations are needed. Previous Message
These 2 ships are different from the rest of the Class in that the forward turret is moved to the rear a bit and the superfiring turret is raised a bit compared to the other 5 ships. Also on these 2 ships the 01 level deck house ends at the 2nd turret barbet. There isn't any deck house forward of the Barbet.
I haven't seen the Trumpeter kits to know if those changes were incorporated into the kits or not.
Perhaps somebody who has the kit can chime in.
David
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