Gato Class Sub
by Paul Helfrich

1/240 Gato class submarine (Lindberg)

Lindberg recently released two submarine models - a WWII fleet boat (more or less a Gato class) in 1/240 scale, and the first atomic submarine USS Nautilus in 1/300 scale.

There are some accuracy and detail problems with these kits which are obvious just from looking at the box art.  Nevertheless, new submarine kits don't come along that often, and having already built the Revell Lionfish kit, I was eager to add another US fleet boat to my collection.

The biggest problem with the kit is right out of the box, it looks kind of bare and lacking in detail.  Adding some railings with stretched sprue and thread helped a lot with that.  I painted in some other missing details, added some flags from junk box, added some stretched sprue for gun barrels on the 20 mm guns, and got a reasonably pleasing result.

One problem I did not try to correct - most fleet boats had either oval shaped limber holes or, if they were built at Electric Boat in Groton CT, half moon shaped limber holes.  This model has the half moon shaped holes, however, it shows them extending the entire length of the casing, whereas most of my references show the half moons ending, and a solid opening beginning, a little aft of the conning tower.

This problem was beyond my admittedly meager scratch building skills to fix, so I just painted in all the half moons.

For what it costs, this is not really a bad kit, and it certainly offers lots of possibilities for experimentation and customization.