Patrol Gunboat (ex- USS STEWART)
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Mirage 1:400
by Matt Stein
In my NeverEnding Quest for a really decent quality, "Quickie Build", my latest bit of incompetence was in picking this kit, to follow my similarly-mistaken choice last year, to build Mirage's ORP Mazur:
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- as The Struggle this build was to become (see below), would echo that of Mazur far more than not. Beyond that, the two subjects shared much else in common, as well. Both were 100-year-old escort designs: long, low and thin, festooned with diverse ironwork, open gun-mounts, etc.. Both were launched by one navy, and then saw service with another: in the case of P-102, starting out as the USN 4-piper DD Stewart. Likewise, both were overwhelmed in the opening assaults of WWII: P-102 in the Pacific at Cavite, Philippines, where as USS Stewart, she had to be scuttled (along with the floating drydock in which she was berthed) in the face of the advancing Japanese. The latter who, after taking Cavite summarily salvaged and refitted her as P-102, for IJN service.
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___FULL RES_FULL RES_FULL RES_FULL RES_FULL RES___ that this kit could ever be anything close to a Quickie Build - from the very first attempted removal of parts from their sprues (see below). A bitter discovery that would only broaden, extending to numerous items throughout construction - for (one random) example: I did not expect to have to chop off a heavy bar from the front of the tripod mast (left and center-left), just to depict an accurate (Gold Medal Models' 1:400 4-Piper set) PE ladder there (top, center, center-right and right). Nor to find huge sink-marks (and of course fill them w/CA-putty) in the sides of the Radar Shack (top, center-right and right), before crowning with its Radar Detector, mercifully quite nice OOB. But then to find, for positioning this assembly atop the bridge, absolutely zero locators - neither on the roof plastic, nor anything clear, in the instructions - nothing - and thus to attach it too far forward (discovered too late of course). And likewise for the forward AA Platform: ripped back off and repositioned no less than 4x times - and still not right. Worse yet: molded into the foredeck, a pedestal (center-left) for the forward Main Battery Single-3inch Open-Mount Gun was too far aft, which would have crowded the gun too close under the AA Platform. Apparently in deference to which, the kit supplies one gun noticeably undersized(!) - accordingly downsizing (just as unconvincingly) the Blast Shield at the front of the the AA platform, as well. Thus, the pedestal had to be chiseled off, the Gun moved forward and the Blast Shield replaced with a bit of far more accurate, if still imperfect, PE (top and center), snipped and origami-folded from a flight deck jet-blast deflector from GMM's 540-scale CVs fret. The Main Battery 3inchers themselves were replaced identically both forward (top and right) as well as aft (center-right and right), with customized resin upgrades. (And here I did take some Artistic License, particularly with the trunnions, to make them look more interesting, IMHO, than the real, Dutch 75mm ones appear to have been.) But such added work - and there was plenty more where that came from (see below) - served to draw out an expected two-weekend build to more than two months' worth of weekends. I had of course anticipated some extra effort - for such things as refabricating Bridge Windows (top, center and right) out of white glue in PE (again GMM's 1:400 4-Piper DD) framing, as well as opening a couple watertight doors (top, center-left, center-right and right) with added PE (from Gold Medal Models' 1:350 Liberty Ship fret), but some of the demands of this kit really Take the Cake:
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_FULL RES_FULL RES_FULL RES_______________), was the Battle Of The Boat Cradles/Launchers (top, left, center-left and -right), requiring in their major refabrication (left), in PE and plastic. Over-engineered to begin with (left), nearly every one of their most delicate parts - roughtly 2/3 of all those required - broke clean in two - simply from trying to free them from their sprues! Incredulous, I continued (painful) trail-and-error to finally discover the only way to remove them intact was via painstaking, excruciatingly-light stroking at their attachment points, with a laser-sharp knife tip. However once freed they would still retain burrs, whose attempted removal would invariably bust the tiny part anyway! Perhaps my kit had some bad batch of styrene: I only know I've never seen anything like this, before. Compared to that, replacement of the Ship's Boats themselves - which kit-supplied USN Motor Whaleboats (left) would, for P-102 so I reasoned, have been landed in favor of IJN-types - copied (top, center-left and -right) from several Nichimo 1:500 scale kits (Nagato and Zuikaku, IIRC), was completed in a snap. But another waiting Cluster-Fu** were the Propeller Guards - again with no locators whatsoever on the hull, and with individual, impossibly-tiny struts - which I didn't deal with all that well and I Don't Want to Talk About It! Still more unforgivable - more so even than the above, misplaced forward gun - was the complete absence of any fantail Platform/Sponson Extensions to support the Depth Charge Racks - the latter whose asses must hang significantly overboard - accordingly clearly indicated, with evidence for supporting platform extensions, in historic pics. And again, in apparent Fudge-Knowlegement of this, the kit provides distinctly undersized Depth Charge Racks - themselves rather mediocre-looking, in any scale. Clearly saying to the builder: "OK, we're Screwing the Pooch here, so go ahead and discard these Little Weak Sisters (actually, you should save them for your Lindberg 1:535 DE or Airfix 1:600 4-piper) - because you are going to be rebuilding the entire Depth Charge Racks/Platform setup, anyway!" And Lo, that was precisely what Was Come To Pass (top, center-left, center-right and right): Depth Charge Racks replaced with (again, GMM 1:400 4-piper PE and Plastruct rod ashcans, per Loren's instructions for) USN facsimiles, atop Platform Extensions bashed from snippets of GMM 240-scale pre-dreadnought Boarding Stairway (landings).
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The distinctive, IJN linoleum-covered decks, painted in Testors (FS30219) Dark Tan (top, center and right), remained highly visible over much of their area, and might well have profited from (at least) an attempt to lay down some hair-thin brass-colored lines: painted/masked, or perhaps in strips of some metallic tape - or possibly even PE - to simulate the hold-down strips of the real thing. And here my second error may also have been painting/masking for linoleum on the 01-level/deck house roofs - not because it doesn't look good (as IMHO it still does), but apparently is inaccurate. Per her (late-war) appearance in historical pics, I painted P-102 in two grays: Testors (FS36081) Euro-I Gray on the hull sides, and Testors (1238) Gloss Gray for everything (steel surface) above - per "scale effect" simulating a faded black and a dark slate gray, respectively. The Battle of RattleCan Sound was joined, however, when the Testor's Gloss Gray - the rattlecan, the paint itself or both - malfunctioned, layind the paint down extremely thick, even gummy (esp. center-left and center), with the occasional pinhole-bubble as well (insert Virulent Cussing, here). None of which I dared remove/re-do, given the extreme fragility of these parts (insert forlorn, Resigned Cussing, here). At the finish, however, my CounterAttack with an overspray of Testors Dull Coat - while thickening everything yet further (some of which had to be scraped out of the foremast ladder) - did greatly mute highlights on all the above flaws. And this time I had remembered to install both a Ship's Wheel and Binacle inside the WheelHouse (center): the former augmented (whether accurately or not) with PE again from GMM's 400-scale US 4-Piper fret, while the latter came OOB already very nice (Halle-F-in'-Lueja!). Also among the kit's more (at least) decent details were the Triple-25mm Open-Mount AA Guns (center), as well as Secondary Battery Single (circa 2-inch?) Open-Mount Guns (top and center).
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___FULL RES___FULL RES___FULL RES___): the satisfaction of watching your model box thoroughly cleaned out, its sprues picked bare, approaching The Finish! Seriously though, in reality this is a major benefit of this kit (matched only by some of the newer Dragon/DML kits AFAIK): an Embarrassment of Riches left-over (top), for your parts box. Indeed not only providing just a ton of good- to excellent details (left and right), including USN/RN weapons, rafts, boats, etc., but also major items like funnels (center and right) and complete deckhouses (left, center and right) - sufficient, in fact, to outfit an entire second (and even most of a third) 4-piper DD! Just come up with a Hull and Main Deck, and you're set (hear that, you wood-carvers?). Even the underscale items -the above-mentioned Depth Charge Racks and Single-3inch Open-Mount Gun, plus what-all ever else - can go to improve any number of smaller, 500- perhaps even 600-scale kits. For example, I already used (the larger) one of the 3-inchers as a foundation for mastering a 550-scale RN four-inch, High-Angle Gun - and indeed, prototype castings from that project were what I used to bash this build's Main Battery SIngle-3inchers!
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Now to stand back a couple feet, drink some Scotch, and see if I can't better her appearance that way!
Cheers,
- Matty
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