USS Oregon BB-3
by Paul Helfrich

1/225 USS Oregon BB-3 (Glencoe)

I love the appearance of the ships of the pre-dreadnought "Great White Fleet" era. The ship's designs are interesting in and of themselves, and the white, buff, and black paint schemes are a great change of pace from the predominantly gray schemes of later eras. One of my most successful builds to date has been the USS Olympia in the old 1/240 scale kit issued by Revell and others. Given how pleased I was with that model, I knew eventually I would tackle the Glencoe USS Oregon.

I was inspired to finally take the plunge with the Oregon by the excellent build of the same kit by Les Foran featured on this site last year. Like Les, I chose to model the Oregon as she appeared in a photograph taken at San Francisco in March 1898, with the unusual combination of white turrets and buff guns (at various other times, the turret/gun color combinations included white/black, buff/black, all gray, and even buff/white).

Glencoe's model has some inaccuracies. The waterline is too low; in real life, the fully-loaded ship rode much lower in the water, appearing almost more like a monitor than a modern battleship. But I wonder if Glencoe's placement of the water line wasn't inspired by the Oregon's 1925-1942 life as a museum ship - museum ships, free from the load of fuel, ammunition, stores, and crew, always ride higher in the water than they do in service. Another inaccuracy is there is a third deck on the model that didn't actually exist on the ship - but it would be quite an effort involving major surgery to correct that one. There are some molded railings that I could have removed, but opted not to, given the thickness of the plastic and the amount of sawing and sanding that would have been required to get them off.

I added the excellent Tom's Modelworks detail set to the model. It went on very easily and was one of my best experiences to date with PE - of course, it's considerably easier to handle in 1/225 than some of the 1/700 PE I've attempted!