by Ron Smith
1/350 USS Helena CL-50 (Classic Warships)
USS Helena CL-50, circa July 1942. This is the old 1/350 Classic Warships kit of the USS Helena, now manufactured by Yankee Modelworks/Midships Models.
Overall the kit is very good, with fair to good instructions. Other than an issue with primer adhesion, due to bad primer not the kit, I had no major problems. Since the primer was a problem I did not paint the decks 20B Deck Blue, as I did not want to risk masking after a primer failure along the boot topping.
I opted to not mount the SOC seagull aircraft since almost none of the photos show one on either catapult; normally they were kept in the fantail hangar. She is painted in Ms21 (other than the deck blue problem) with her #2 and #4 turrets color coded for identification by her scout planes. Photos show her leaving Mare Island after her refit with her turrets still coded. They appear to have light grey roofs with the willow green markings. Cruiser Division 9, assigned to Battle Force 1, had two willow green stripes on the forward turret. Helena is supposed to have been ship #5 in the division, and would have a willow green square on her aft turret. Notice the willow green was painted right over the rafts.
Rigging is 6X tippett for signal halyards, .006" diameter spring tempered stainless steel wire for the standing rigging, and .003" stainless steel suture for the flag halyard. Vallejo paint for details, Model Master Metallizer Titanium for standing rigging and Model Master Acryl marine line for the rest of the colors. I used MM Acryl deck green AN503 for willow green since it is an almost perfect match to the actual color.
