USS Indiana BB 58
by Paul Helfrich

1/720 USS Indiana BB 58 (Revell Germany)

OK, full disclosure: this is the venerable old Revell kit, which is marketed as the Massachusetts but is really closest to the Alabama. I chose to go in yet another direction and make it into a rough representation of the Indiana, BB 58. The kit can serve in a general way for any of those three ships; it would take a little more effort to turn it into the lead ship of the class, the South Dakota, since that ship mounted a reduced number of 5" DP weapons (8 double turrets vs. 10 on the later three ships.)

The Indiana wore four camouflage schemes in her career - a measure 12 or 15 scheme early in the war, followed by the two-tone measure 22. In 1943-44, alone among the South Dakota class, the Indiana adopted a complex measure 32 disruptive scheme. Following a collision with the USS Washington, the Indiana underwent extensive repairs and re-emerged from the yards once again in measure 22. It appears she finished the war in this scheme, as Squadron Signal's "US Battleships in Action Part 2" includes a picture of the Indiana in February 1946 pretty clearly in measure 22. That's the scheme I used - my idea is to show the Indiana after the war, before she went into mothballs.

I did the decks in natural wood; I'm not a big fan of deck blue, as I find it is usually a little too effective as camouflage on a model and can obscure a lot of detail. Some other photos I've seen of the fast battleships after the war suggest that the blue may have been taken off the decks after V-J day and the pre-war natural wood allowed to re-emerge. In any case, that's the look I prefer.

I'm building a Hasegawa 1/700 South Dakota right now, and it's definitely a superior kit to the older Revell offering. But the old kits are fun - this is one I remember building as a kid.