USS San Jacinto
by David Griffith

1/700 USS San Jacinto CVL-30 (DML)

This is the Dragon 1/700 kit of USS Independence painted up as the San Jacinto, which I chose because I preferred the colour scheme. I sweated blood and nails over this model. I saw the words “Premium Edition” on the box and bought it thinking that it was a state of the art new kit, and did not realise that it was just a twenty plus year old Skywave moulding with some twiddly gimmicks added.

As a plastic kit, it is something of a dog. The parts fit where they touch, with big gaps where they don’t. The parts breakdown for the hull is totally ludicrous, with separate bow and stern sections, and these give the aforementioned big gaps that keep on opening up again. The scuttles in the hull and superstructure are enormous, twice the size they ought to be. The gun tubs and splinter shields suffer more than most kits from the “converging verticals syndrome”. Bofors guns are clunky and heavy on the detail..

The kit gives an optional gimmicky transparent flight deck and non-optional transparent upper hull sides, but at least it gives you the choice to not paint the windows and have them apparently glazed.

I chose to lower one of the elevators and open up the hangar deck doors. It now became evident that the parts provided for the interior of the hangar were inaccurate. A photo-etched hangar deck is provided that is supposed to be glued onto the main deck level of the cruiser hull. The hangar deck was actually built about three or four feet above this deck. The part for the forward bulkhead is intended to go in entirely the wrong place, as it would shut off the forward elevator from the hangar proper. I therefore had to do a lot of structural scratchbuilding to get the hangar deck looking OK, as well as the putative detail that I was suggesting about the place.

The top deck of the island was scratchbuilt in order to lose some of the converging verticals.

The Bofors guns, both quads and twins, were replaced with a combination of scratchbuilding with resin copies being made, resin copies of Tamiya barrels and White Ensign photo-etched details.

The kit provides a photo-etched mast to replace the horrible solid plastic monstrosity, but this is the wrong pattern for the ship, so the Gold Medal set was used, which also provided the supports for the smoke stacks and the radar aerials.

Aircraft are a mixture of Trumpeter and Dragon, I believe.

Painting was eventually accomplished with Model Master acrylics. The moulded on detail on the hull sides, combined with the overhanging galleries for the AA guns, made effective masking all but impossible, and the complicated scheme was eventually painted painstakingly by hand, with endless recoatings and corrections.

The original kit is a sow’s ear. I don’t think I have achieved a silk purse with it, maybe just a cheap leather wallet from a stall on the market! All in all I was very glad to see it finished and out of the way.