By Don RC
1/540 USS Lexington CV-16 (scratchbuilt from Life-Like)
Short history on the Real USS Lexington, an Essex Class Lexington CV 16 laid down as USS Cabot July 15, 1941, by Bethlehem steel in Quincy Mass. Then renamed to USS Lexington to replace CV 2 that was lost during the battle for the Coral Sea. The new Lexington was then launched Sept 23 1942 and Commission on Feb 17 1942. It was changed to an angled deck at Bremerton Wash ship yards. July 14, 1958. Decommissioned Nov 8 1991, Retired and now a floating museum at Corpus Tex.
She earned the President Unit citation and received 11 battle stars for service in World war 2. Her length is 872ft, and beam is 93 ft, extreme beam is 192 feet.
The Model short history, It came to me an empty hull was one of the old Life like kits of many years ago, In which is now the newer USS Enterprise kit, Only had a hull and part of a deck, as well as few air craft that was it. At first I was not sure on what to do with it. so it sat for about a year. Then I decided I needed another Lex in my fleet so I built this one. Most of the ship is scratch built, At first had to do a lot of cutting along the sides to change it over to the lex.
She is about 3 feet long about 6 inches wide (extreme) normal is about
2 and half inches wide. Has a small gear box to make it into a small RC.
Front of the deck is wood rest of it is plastic. all
superstructure is wood and scratch built, The ship is wood and plastic.
Half scratch, half kit and kit bash, Took about 2 months to build off and
on when I got a chance to work on it Fun to do and kind of interesting
to see when it was completed. I also had to go looking for Plans
so I can scale up to what I needed at the time, not much of a problem and
had to add all of stuffing box,s props. rudders all hand made.
