by Ralf Roggeveen
1/240 USS Buchanan DD-131 (Revell Germany)
This kit is currently being sold as a limited edition (5000) reissue of Revell's HMS Campbeltown, originally issued in 1962. There is exciting box art of a very imaginative St Nazaire Raid; which seems surprising from Revell, who are not noted for celebrating German wartime humiliations. The moulds were, in fact, acquired from a US company and once sold as Buchanan and the similar USS Ward (which fired the first American naval shot of the war at Pearl Harbor). Unless you are prepared to do as big a conversion as the Royal Navy did, both on improving the armament of the initial Lend-Lease Campbeltown, then in disguising her for the 1942 raid, forget about any British version. What we have here is a late WW1 Wickes Class four stacker. There is a nice photograph of her (in Wickipedia) looking very spruce off Panama in 1936, clearly the basis of this model.
Gold Medal used to supply 1/240 photoetch parts for those American destroyers, unfortunately they are no longer available anywhere. Yet even without enhancement, it is a remarkably good kit for the early '60s. Moulding remains crisp, except in the searchlight tower. If you wanted to improve that it could still be scratchbuilt relatively easily in this large scale. The companionways might also be replaced and improved. Quite a lot of mysterious holes had to be filled in, many join seams cut and filed away. Railing posts are moulded on and, whereas I have seen it alleged that there are not enough, they seemed to compare favourably with photos and plans of real ships of this class. So, though considered, I did not bother to remove and replace the moulded posts with metal wire or sprue, but simply added rails made of 'invisible' (actually silvery-white) thread. It might have been better to omit the large radio receiver arrangement from the rigging as it looks clumsy in the photos. Perhaps, as with a lot of model ships, it would also be more realistic to cover the boats. Nevertheless it was a fun rainy summer weekend's work in an unusual scale making an elegant-looking vessel. If you like interwar American destroyers, grab the limited edition while you can, but forget about Campeltown and the St Nazaire Raid - except as a large conversion project!
