by Roger Torgeson
1/350 USS Duluth CL-87 (Yankee Modelworks)
When Yankee model works announced a 1/350 Cleveland Class kit of the square bridge USS Miami I had a order placed for one as soon as it was available. Once I received the kit I started looking for a different ship to build and settled on the USS Duluth for the simple reason being I liked it's camouflage. The build was a straight out of the box with only a few needed modifications for Duluth. I make inquires of Ron Smith asking for reference photos and after I received what he had plus others of the class I started the build during the winter of 2008 and finished it in time for the Seattle IPMS show in April 2009. It was a trouble free build with both hull halves matching perfectly, I replace the 40mm and 20mm weapons with a combination of L'Arsenal 40mm and modified Tamiya plastic 20mm plus the two aircraft were replaced using White Ensign Kingfisher instead. The only trouble I had was painting the camouflage to the Official Navy Design sheet for Measure 32/11a, photos of the real ship didn't match in a few areas. Since I built the Kit a second Cleveland class kit has been produced by YMW this time a round bridge and I hope to start that build sometime during 2011.
