by Carl Musselman
1/700 USS Allen M. Sumner DD-692 FRAM II (1967) (JAG)
This is another wonderful resin kit by JAG Collective. I believe that this kit is intended to be the basis for building any of the Sumner class FRAM II ships. Its not designed for any particular ship so, attention to photos of any specific ship should be referenced and appropriate modifications made.
It's hard to say anything bad about a JAG kit. But, this one had some unexpected pinholes in the hull. I overlooked these while air brushing it. I didn't apply a primer otherwise, I probably would have seen the holes. They are almost invisible to the naked eye, except for one on the port bow.
The barrels and blast bags on the 5" turrets are a little big and out of scale, in my opinion.
The PE fret should include the cross bar support under the forward O1 deck, under the hedgehogs. I didn't use the kit's hedgehogs. The launchers that I did use were from a different JAG kit, though.
PE for the UNREP station, amidships, would have been nice. I decided not to add this feature to my model.
The towed sonar buoy was missing from my kit. Either it broke off the sprue before packaging or I missed it when opening the plastic wrap. There was an extra Mk37 dish in the plastic. Maybe it was noticed that a piece broke off of a sprue and the dish was mistaken for the buoy.
The PE splinter / spray shields are a perfect fit!! But, I think the hole pattern in them are not correct. They may be correct for some ship of the class. I didn't study them all.
The molded-in details are wonderful. Truly JAG quality.
As I noticed on the JAG Belknap, I feel the chocks are molded a little too, close to the edge of the hull; like flush with the hull. This may be the way it is on the real ship(s) but it does not accommodate for placing PE railings outboard of them. I cut them off of the Sumner and ran the railings inboard of the chocks on my Belknap.
I also discarded the signal flag bags from the kit. They appeared too, big to me. I used some from a spare DRAGON sprue.
Except for the JAG PE tripod angled piece, the entire mast is scratch built and with GMM SPS-40 and SPS-10 radars.
For the finish, I used Model Master Acrylics; Neutral Gray, Gunship Gray, Engine Gray and Flat Black. I used WARPIGS Black Wash and Pigments to highlight the details and weather the bulkheads and decks a little. The PE is from JAG and GMM.
The unusual Star emblem on the DASH deck existed in 1967 and fortunately, I have been holding onto a set of TAMIYA 1/35 M48 Patton tank decals for over twenty years. One of the stars on that decal sheet was just the right size. I used .004 inch invisible thread for the rigging and .006 inch brass rod for the antennas.
Although this ship was commissioned during World War II, it is an important addition to my 1/700 Post WWII USN ship collection. I plan to display it on its own water base at some other time in the future.
