USS Oklahoma BB-37
by Paul Helfrich

1/720 USS Oklahoma BB-37 (Revell Conversion)

Commissioned in 1916, the Oklahoma was a Nevada-class battleship armed with 10 14 inch guns. She was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and was in the outboard rank of battleships (along with the Arizona and the West Virginia) that took the most damage. She took five torpedoes and rolled over, stopped only by her masts touching bottom.

If you saw the recent movie "Pearl Harbor," you know that the capsizing of the Oklahoma was the one really good special effect in the whole film. There was a lot of not-so-great stuff (modern frigates pretending to be ships at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and so forth) but the scenes showing the Oklahoma rolling over were pretty impressive.

I converted the Revell 1/720 Arizona to resemble the Oklahoma by putting a shelf in the stern, lowering the bridge deck, altering the mast tops, making the stack taller, and of course, by changing B and X turrets to doubles rather than triples. It is by no means an entirely accurate conversion, but it captures the most obvious differences between the two ships. She's painted in pre-war overall light gray.