by John Leyland
1/720 USS Enterprise CVAN-65 (Revell Germany)
The decade of the 1960's was an eventful time for naval aviation in the U.S. Navy. In November of 1961, USS Enterprise CVA(N) 65 was commissioned and began a prolonged series of shakedown and evaluation exercises to study the capabilities of the first nuclear powered supercarrier. In August of 1962, she began her first deployment with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean with CVG-6 as her air group. This was also the first operational deployment of the F4B Phantom and the A5A Vigillante. She returned to Norfolk on 11 October, 1962 to an international crisis which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The discovery of Soviet medium range nuclear capable missles in Cuba prompted the declaration of a blockade of Cuba which saw Enterprise ordered to sea with only two hours allowed to reprovision. I chose this period to model "Big E" (the nickname she inherited from the late, great CV 6- the nickname "Starship" came later). In 1964, she joined Long Beach CV(N) 9 and Bainbridge DLG(N) 25 for Operation Sea Orbit, an around the world cruise to show the capability of a nuclear powered task force. In December of 1965, she entered her first true combat from "Dixie Station" off South Vietnam. DANFS provides an almost day to day account of her participation in this conflict.
I don't remember how many times I opened the Revell kit, inspected the contents, and began another project in despair. It is a daunting challenge to produce an acceptable model from this kit. The hull halves, flight deck, elevators, the "beehive" tower of the island, and A5A Vigillante aircraft are the only kit parts used. The hull halves were scraped to remove cast detail and cemented to a 3/16 in. waterline cutout to strengthen the hull and add freeboard to allow below waterline areas to show when the ship is depicted at high speed. The various cutouts in the hull sides were opened and appropriate interior detail scratchbuilt. A hangar deck with bulkhead and overhead detail where it would be visible through the elevator openings was added. The elevator openings need a lot of attention. The oval openings in the side are actually doubled with the area between the two oval frames filled with detail. The detail of the fantail opening was scratched. The flight deck was sanded smooth and the rudimentary depiction of galleries were cut off. The aircraft tie down points were located as accurately as possible and deepened with a centerpunch. The bomb elevators and pits for the jet blast deflectors to be shown in the raised position were opened. The flight deck was cemented into place and the detail of the underside of the flight deck, braces, and elevator openings added. New galleries were scratched. The 60's era life raft boxes were made using pieces of Evergreen stock with sections of GMM 5 bar rail to represent the "Slats" which made up the box. One excellent feature of the kit is the elevators, which include the fine detail of Enterprise's unique "gratework" elevators which would have been hard to duplicate otherwise. After assembling the island, I decided it would be easier to scratchbuild rather than fill the gaps and seams. The angled window sections were saved and reused. The "beehive" was scraped clean and the elements of the fixed array antennae were added. All flight deck markings were masked and painted. It was pointed out to me later that by 1962, the large "65" at the bow had been changed to solid white. I haven't gotten around to correcting it yet. The A5A Vigilantes were the only kit aircraft used. The F8 Crusaders, AD-1 Skyraiders, and the HUP-1 Helo were resin cast from scratch masters. The F4Bs, A4s, and "Willie Fudds" were detailed from Pitroad sets. Photoetch is GMM. Crewmen are Tom's Modelworks posed and "filled out" with dilute "green stuff". Water is Liquitex acrylic gel medium with wakes of Liquitex acrylic tube paint. The model was honored with the "Best Ship" award at the 1997 IPMS National Convention.
Note on designation. At the time of her commissioning, aircraft carriers in the USN were designated CVA for attack or CVS for ASW. As Enterprise was an attack carrier, she merited an "A". The designation(N) was added to denote nuclear power. Some time later, it was decided to delete the parentheses and the correct designation became CVAN. When the last CVS was decommissioned in the 70's, the "A" was dropped and the designation became CVN.
