by Kieran Griffith
1/300 USS Remembrance (Scractchbuilt)
These photos are of my model of the Alternate History Fictional USS Remembrance the first "Airplane Carrier" built by USA in the year 1918 in the Alternate History Great War series by Harry Turtledove. I sold my model of the HMS Hood by Lindberg on Ebay a while back and the kit was smashed to smithereens by the USPS and returned to me. I then accidentally threw away all the broken parts making rebuilding rather difficult. My friend Fiona is a great fan of Alternate History and was deep in the Harry Turtledove Great War series. She asked me what kind of ship model would be most like her description of the Airplane Carrier built from the hull of a 1917 battlecruiser. I suggested the CV-2 USS Lexington would be most similar but still a long way off. Named the USS Remembrance after an alternate holiday "Remembrance Day" that mourns USA losing the American Civil War (The Flag for the alternate USA only has 35 stars.). The carrier fielded 36 "Wright Two-Decker Fighting Scouts" which were described as being license buit copies of Albatros fighters designed in Germany (An ally of USA in the alternate Great War.). Fiona got very excited when I said I could build her a copy of the airplane carrier from my destroyed Hood model and she sent me, through a friend, 18 1/300 Albatros D-II fighters from Heroics & Roos for $4 each that decided the scale of the rest of the model. I built the flat-top and the island from spare parts, sheet plastic, and wood and made it up as I went along. I then printed out decals for the early USAAC roundells. The ship appears as she was just after winning the Great War when USA goes to help the newly independant Republic of Ireland put down a rebellion in Belfast. Designing and building your own warship from the waterline up is incredible fun. Using my imagination and what I know of engineering I think I made a fairly plausable early airplane carrier model.
Thanks to Fiona for getting me on to this project.
