USS Indianapolis
by David Griffith

1/700 USS Indianapolis CA-35 (Tamiya)

This is my rendering of the Tamiya 1/700 kit of the cruiser Indianapolis, as she appeared at the time of her loss in 1945. It features in my book on ship modelling that is being published in spring or summer 2009. The basic kit is very good but I still carried out a lot of improvements. The extensive photo-etch fret from White Ensign was used almost in its entirety, with the notable exception of the main mast tripod and bracing, which I scratchbuilt from brass rod and stretched sprue, before adding the photo-etched platforms and radars. Most of the gun tubs and splinter shields on the superstructure were removed and replaced with strips of 2 thou brass shim. The kit parts were not that bad, but these look better. The 5” AA guns were resin copies from the Combrig Astoria kit. The 40mm quads are resin parts from Niko, although with brass barrels taken from a fret by Voyager. Although it may not be obvious on these photos, I added a fair bit of twiddly detail to the gun directors for the main and secondary batteries. Painting is mainly in acrylics, using paint from Jens Popp. Although this airbrushed quite well, it was not very user friendly when hand brushing, and the bottles seemed to contain a lot of sediment and debris, although I may have got some from a bad batch. Filters, pinwashes and drybrushing were done using artist’s oils. Rigging is a combination of “Caenis” flytying thread and nylon cord from carrier bag handles, teased out to individual fibres. The base is acrylic gel medium on top of painted water colour paper. Finally, the little tugboat came from a Dragon Essex class carrier kit that is sitting in my stash.