by Robert Apfelzweig
1/350 USS Massachusetts BB-59 (Trumpeter)
This is my build of Trumpeter's USS Massachusetts, with Gold Medal Modelworks' brass photoetch set and Aber 16-in. and 5-in. brass gun barrels. I used Pollyscale paints for the dark blue (5N for hull and 20-B for the decks) and gray (5-H), and Tamiya for flat black. As provided, the Trumpeter kit represents the ship essentially in her late war (August 1945) appearance, including camouflage scheme. There are 15 quad 40-mm Bofors mounts and 31 single 20 mm Oerlikon mounts. However, according to an apparently authoritative website, http://polyticks.com/bbma/tf34.htm, there were actually 30 Oerlikon mounts at this time -- 22 single and 8 twin (there is a chart here listing the different AA configurations during her wartime career), thouigh their precise positions are not listed. This and a US Navy website also stated that, in 1944, she carried a quad 20 mm mount, something I have never seen. Trumpeter's kit only contains single Oerlikons, and these had to be supplemented with the photoetch set for sites, shields, grips and adjustment wheels. The kit was a fairly straightforward build, and one of the quickest I have done for a 1:350 model (about two months). Rigging was accomplished with stretched sprue, and I had to scratchbuild only a few mast platforms and the funnel steam pipes. I was priveleged to visit this proud ship, moored at (the appropriately named) Battleship Cove in Fall River, MA, in the summer of 2003; I would have taken more photos of the ship then, had I known that I would be buildng a scale model of it 6 years later!
