USS WESTWIND WAG-281, Greenland/North Atlantic- Finished!

[sandiego89]

I'm in.  Hope you don't mind the company Cliffy B and Proditor.

Quick story.  The allied forces are building up bases in Greenland and continuing supply runs to Murmansk, and need icebreakers to escort ships into ports and to patrol the waters.  The USS WESTWIND is equipped with scout planes to patrol for Axis shipping, submarines and patrol aircraft.  

The kit: ancient Revell BURTON ISLAND. 1/300.  Pretty poor kit.  Scratch SC-1 scout aircraft and few other goodies.  

[Captain Canada]

Cool. Trump do 350 scale SC-1s that might do the trick.

[Cliffy B]

The more the merrier!!!  We need to balance out all of the wingy thingys with more floaty thingys

Long live the Greenland scenarios! 

[proditor]

Yeah, hop on in the waters...well, freezing where we're all planning on basing our poor ships.  

Glad to see more ships around as well!  

[sandiego89]

Work has begun.  Kit is better than my initial in box review.  Would be a very quick out of the box build, but the lifelines are solid.  Debated going with photetch, but can't justify the expense, so the dremel will get a work out.  Will clean it up later, but lots to do. 

Still deciding paint scheme. Leaning towards the North Atlantic splinter cammo, or standard gray.  Anyone have an idea if the wartime decks on the WIND class would remain teak color, or would they be painted over?  Most WWII photos are in poor black and white and it is tough to tell.  Post war shows a horrid greenish on the decks?   

[Cliffy B]

I say go with Ms. 16 The Thayer Blue system.  Horizontals are White (5-U)and Thayer Blue (5-B) and the decks are Deck Blue (20-B).  Although after looking at wartime camo charts for the Winds it seems their decks were painted in a dazzle pattern of Light Gray (5-L) and Ocean Gray (5-O).  The scheme calls for 20-B so I guess they tried something new on them.

The other scheme used in the Atlantic was Ms. 22 so I'd go for either of those.  All over Gray would be too boring IMO unless you weathered the heck out of it and made her look like she hadn't seen a drydock in 2 years 

That's my opinion anyway.  Hope that helps.

-Mike

[Captain Canada]

Splinter for sure. Does the kit come with the little chopper ? Can we see it ?

[sandiego89]

Cliffy B, thank you so much,  That does help.  Much to decide, but Thayer sounds good. Can you amplify by what you mean by 5-U etc.? Is that a spec. color?   Seems like few good photos of the WINDS during WWII have made it to the internet.  Doubt the soviets changes much for those ships they had.  

Captain Canada, yes the helo comes with it.  Looks like a S-55.  3 pieces.  Main rotor is actually pretty good, but the fuselage is, shall we say basic....  

[Cliffy B]

5-U, 5-O, 5-B, etc... was the color code for USN camo colors during the war.  Here's a good link showing all of the colors and their codes.

http://www.pt103.com/Ships_2_Colors.html

[sandiego89]

Great link.  Thank you. 

[Mossie]

Good to see a ship for a change, looking forward to this!

[sandiego89]

Long break, finally got my SC-1 float planes in the mail.  Had to wait for them to properly size the hangar.  Had to make the 1/350 planes a little bigger for proper 1/300 scale with 2 fuselage plugs, a float plug and wing root inserts.  Lots of surgery.  Going with a scratch hanger, and moving the cranes aft so they can lift both the floatplanes and the boats.  Scratch catapult next.  The SC-1's will help deter the long range German Condors.  

[sandiego89]

Hangar done. cranes moved aft, and scratch catapult on. 

[Mossie]

Nice work on the hanger.

[sandiego89]

Thanks Mossie

SC1 on the cat, and one in the hangar.