by Bob Dedmon
1/700 USS Chester CA-27 (Kitbashed/Corsair Armada)
BUILDING A PRE-WAR NORTHAMPTON CLASS HEAVY CRUISER
For me the Northampton class of heavy cruiser is the most elegant class of American heavy cruiser built. My favorite ship of the class is Chicago (CA-29). About 10 years ago Mike Czibovic of Corsair Armada produced in 1/700 scale, the Northampton (CA-26) followed by the Louisville (CA-28) and Chicago. A year or so ago I decided to build all six ships of this class after Mike released the Houston CA-30 and Niko released the Augusta CA-31. The time periods represented by each kit is as follows: Northampton: as sunk in November 1942, Louisville: October 1944, Chicago: as sunk in January 1943, Houston: as sunk in February 1942 (can also be built as pre-war Chicago) and Augusta: 1945. The only ship not represented in a kit is the U.S.S. Chester CA-27. Since she survived the war there are a great deal of choices of how to represent her. Since she resembled the other ships of the class at different times I elected to build her in a late pre-war configuration. In order to do this I needed to combine pieces of three kits, the Northampton, Chicago, and Houston. I needed the hull of the Northampton for the short forecastle ships of the class Northampton, Chester, and Louisville. I needed numerous parts from the Houston as this kit has parts that are closest to a pre-war configured ship. The only part I needed from the Chicago kit was part 12 the lower platform for the foremast (2 lobe configuration). I had a spare Northampton kit to build the Chester but I decided to back date the kit to represent a different configuration for this ship.
After I posted photos of Northampton on several web sites and mentioned my plans for Chester, Mike Czibovic offered to provide the necessary parts from a Houston kit to achieve my results. I needed all the superstructure pieces of the Houston plus the funnels (the Houston parts required are: 1, 2, 4, 5 (2 each) 7, 8, 2 each spru 11-24, spru 25-33, spru 34-46, 57, 58, 59, 60 X4, 61 X3, and 62 X3). Mike included the forward hull of a damaged Houston for the base of the forward superstructure as it is slightly smaller than the same piece of the Northampton. The parts of the Northampton required are: the hull and parts 30 and 31 and 38-43.
I needed to modify the hull of the Northampton to back date it. I had to remove the smoke generators from the stern, all gun shields molded to the hull, drill quite a few new port holes on the hull, I needed to reshape the aircraft hangar to the pre-war configuration, to do this I first removed the pedestal for the 1.1”/40 MM mounts between the hangar and the lower “gun deck”, then bevel the upper portion of the aircraft hangar from stern edge (7/16”) bringing the bevel even with the inboard edge or the removed posts for the 1.1” guns. The armament for the pre-war Chester was 9 X 8” in three turrets, 4 X 5” 25 caliber mounts, 2 X 3” 50 caliber 6 X .50 caliber machine guns and up to the mid 1930s 6 X 21 inch torpedo tubes. I needed to open the sides of the hull for the torpedo tubes 8 X2 X 3 MM wide X tall X deep regardless of which configuration I chose for the Chester as these openings were never fully plated over. After making the necessary alterations to the hull, construction was fairly straight forward except for the mid ship superstructure. The mid ship superstructure presented a bit of a challenge as the Northampton hull is molded as war modified. I needed to remove the wedge shaped area aft of the aircraft hangar to get parts H25 and H26 from the Houston to fit. I cut the structure and aft center platform from part H7 of the Houston (see photo) in order for part H27 to fit properly. The Northampton kit hull did not have a small fairing on the front edge of the hangar roof the class carried. I cut a small piece of sheet plastic to fit this area and used my Dremel to shape it then extended the hangar roof 1 X 2 MM to fit the fairing. The other Corsair Armada kits include this fairing. The remainder of the resin parts assemble normally. I prefer to use photo etched parts for the railings, ladders, cranes and catapults. Tom’s has a nice class specific set for the Northampton’s but I prefer the Gold Medal Models set for cruisers and destroyers as it has the necessary parts that the Tom’s set has plus railings, ladders, boat parts, and 5” 25 details. Additional parts needed that are under the heading of hide and go seek include the inclined ladder from the lower hangar deck to the upper hangar deck, the 50 caliber MG and the boat booms. For the inclined ladder I modified a ladder from Gold Medal’s ladder set. This particular one was one of the accommodation access ladders that usually hang from the side of the ship. I used Tom’s photo etched MG as they are finer than any resin ones. After I drilled the openings for the torpedo tubes I oversized the holes in order to insert sheet plastic to provide a smooth surface within the openings. I removed the half cap from the funnel as the ships did not have these until later in their career. Once the modifications were completed the remainder of the construction was fairly straight forward. I installed a total of 9 boats and launches, 4 in two stacks abreast the aft superstructure on the quarter deck, two launches and a whale boat on the aft superstructure at the gun deck level. I had to remove the boat chocks on the hangar deck as on the Northampton they are behind the catapult towers and the Chester mounted them forward of the towers. I painted the ship using White Ensign paints US Navy pre-war gray, deck gray and teak.
I used a mixture of aircraft to get the full complement of SOC for the ship. I used Trumpeter, White Ensign and Corsair Armada, and Niko planes. The worst of the four was the Trumpeter as the plastic is thick and brittle. The other three have a balance of positive and negative that it makes it difficult to decide which is best. The Corsair Armada plane is cast with both wings separate and they are cast using the leading edge along the spru for stiffness and structure preventing warping. The fuselage is cast from the tail which creates problems removing it from the spru. The details are fine and well executed. I needed Tom’s Modelworks photo etch to complete this ultimately all the planes. Niko’s plane had the finest detail and included a recess in the cowl for engine representation. The kit I removed the plane from has some photo etch for the plane but some if it is the wrong shape, so that’s why I used Tom’s. My main complaint against Niko was the pre molded/cast struts for the floats. It made it difficult to add the photo-etch. I’m not sure how they did their fuselage as it was a very clean finished piece with no spru. The wings were cast the same way as Corsair Armada for rigidity; all in all Niko’s plane was very nice. White Ensign’s plane is the oldest of the bunch. They cast the fuselage from the nose leaving a nice piece of spru to hold on to for painting. Their shape was generally good however the upper wing was cast from a wing tip and allowed the finished product to warp. Out of all the kits Niko had the best shaped wing tip floats and Trumpeter had the worst.
I used piano wire to manufacture the masts and used invisible thread for the rigging; in some cases this was colored using a magic marker. I traced an outline of the ship on the base and added acrylic jell for the water. I highlighted some wave action and the wake then over sprayed it with clear blue and retouched some of the white, finally I over coated the entire base with clear gloss lacquer. This was an interesting and fun project which I think will assist me with the remaining sisters. I want to express my deep gratitude to Mike Czibovic for his assistance on this project.
Editor's note: the list below are the captions for the pictures in this gallery
