by John Leyland
1/700 USS Essex CV-9 (Hasagawa)
As part of my modeling , I have been working on a series of ships to depict the development of carrier aviation in the US Navy. My original goal was to model one ship from each decade of naval aviation in 1/700 scale. At the time I started, few kits were available, so a lot of scratch building and conversions were needed to fill in the gaps.
This model, titled "Controlled Crash" depicts the decade of the 1950's, when the need to operate jet aircraft, the Cold War, and the war in Korea demanded major changes in the WWII fleet. Essex is shown after her SCB 27A conversion during her second deployment to Korea. This conversion just barely enabled her to operate jets, with accident rates far in excess of those today. The pilot of the Banshee faces conditions which modern naval aviators are very happy are in the past. He will catch a wire, crash into the barrier, or hit the planes parked forward. No angled deck or engine thrust to go around for another try will bale him out. This is the world of "The Bridges at Toko-Ri", one of my favorite childhood movies. See if you can find my tribute to James Michner in the model.
Very few kit parts were actually used. The hull was lenghtened, new sponsons for the 3in. 50's and the SCB-25 bulges were added. A hangar deck was added and the hangar sides above the deck scratched. The flight deck used parts of two kit decks with all detail sanded off and rescribed and new larger elevators were made. The flight deck galleries, guns, and the new island were scratchbuilt. All aircraft except the F4Us were resincast from scratch masters. Rails, ladders, and radars are from Gold Medal Models. Crew are from the old IPMS photoetch sheet. Water is acrylic gel painted on the surface with wakes of Liquitex tube acrylic.
