by Christoph Mentzel
1/700 USS Providence CLG-6 (Ships&Co)
The US Navy decided in the 1950's to convert some of her WWII cruiser into guided missile cruisers ( CAG and CLG). Six Cleavland light cruiser are selected to this job (CLG). They are all different and they are built in two classes the Galveston and the Providence.The first class, the Galveston and theTopeka, lost only her aft turrets for the missle launcher. The Galveston was armed instead of them with a Talos launcher, the Topeka was armed with a Terrier launcher.The forward superstructure are mostly untouched. The remaining four ships Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Providence and Springfield all became flagships and had enlarged forward superstructures to accommodate flag officers and their staffs. These four ships have only one triple six-inch turret and on twin five-inch mount forward. The first two are armed with the Talos system the last two Providence and Springfield are armed with the smaller Terrier missile system. Both classes have differnet latice masts.
Ships&Co has now realized the USS providence CLG6, a flagship conversion with the Terrier missiles.
The casting of the resin parts is fine and really good. The hull is cast with the forward superstructure and the aft missile magazin. The kit include a big decal sheet with a lot of numbers and signs. These are one of the best decals i have used up to now. The instruction contains some pictures where you can see how the parts must fit. I have got my kit without the PE set with is unfortunatley up to now not available. So i must scratch the three lattice masts and some of the radars from sprue.
I think there is no problem to build with this kit also the USS Springfield CLG 7 with is nearly identical.
In my opinion this is a great kit from Ships&Co especially if the PE set is available for a fair price.
I hope to see more kits from that company especially more variants of this CLG and CAG!!!
