by Ron Smith
1/350 USS Houston CA-30 (Yankee Modelworks)
The Ghost of the Java Coast, CA-30 USS Houston
Very old BWN kit now releaed by Yankee Modelworks
This kit is so old it had the four piece hull because originally BWN could not cast large hulls in two parts. For its age and even today it is a nice kit. It has all the resin you’d expect, white metal small parts, a complete PE fret and brass rod for the tripod masts, yards and prop shafts. The instructions however were pretty bad copies that had been used a few too many generations on the copier.
The only major alterations to the kit were cutting off the as cast armor belt and replacing it with .030" thick styrene and replacing the damaged bilge keels with styrene strip faired with polyester putty. The damage is my fault, I’ve moved twice since I got the kit at an estate sale and it got bounced around a bit. One of the aft halyards came loose on the way home from an IPMS meeting and I never did fix it. The long antenna wires are stainless steel and they go through this weird cycle of which direction they bow depending on the weather, right now they defy gravity. The close up of the anchor chains at the bow shows what happens after a year if you don’t fully neutralize and of the brass blackening products. Since I built this model I have started to rinse for 15 minutes and dunk the chain in Sheath or other water displacing polarized oil and hand to dry for a week.
This is one of those ships that engenders debate over her camouflage scheme. She was part of the Asiatic Fleet based at Cavite and they did not have access to the normal USN paints so they mixed their own. This mix was known as Cavite blue, I use a mix of 20:3 5-N:250N and it matches the Snyder & short chip. Where the debate comes in are her tops and decks. I had the pleasure of meeting an elderly fellow who served on the USS Houston and was at Cavite when they repainted her, his recollection is only good for about 2 or 3 weeks because he came down with some tropical malady and was shipped off to Australia to recover. According to his recollection she originally had light grey tops, bright wooden decks and dark grey steel decks when she first painted into Cavite blue. I have since seen one photo of her with bright wood decks in what appears to be this scheme and she did have light grey tops. Unfortunately I built the model before seeing the photo and got the demarcation way too high. Her aft mast should have the searchlight platform and up light grey. The bridge and foremast should be light grey from the bottom of the platform above the flag bags light grey. Other accounts from before her sinking say she painted her tops Cavite blue and darkened her decks as well, I don’t discount them but there have to be any photos found.
