I present to you my new model, which is the famous heavy cruiser USS CA-30 Houston in the version in which she fought her last hopeless fight in the Sunda Strait.
The basis for my model is a 1/600 scale model, authored by Clifton McCullough, that can be downloaded from Papermodelers download page. As in the past, I rescaled this very nice model to 1/400 scale, completely redrawn it and, above all, improved it with new details that fit better on a larger scale.
I spent several hours on documentation, plans, photographs, and discussions in specialized forums to make the model as close as possible to the appearance of Houston at the time of the Battle of Sunda Strait. All of the Northampton-class sister ships were quite different in detail, and these differences were even greater as time went on. But I think I found out the details of Houston as best I could.
The same challenge for me was the reconstruction of the camo. After a thorough study of the materials, I can consider it almost certain that Houston wore Measure 1 camouflage during the Java battles, but the original 5-D Dark Gray color was replaced by an emergency shade, unofficially called Cavite Blue. Measure 1 had superstructures above the tops of the chimneys painted with 5-L Light Gray, but according to the photos, this color at Houston (probably by a misinterpretation of the regulations) began at the level of the captain's bridge. Just before the outbreak of war in the Pacific, the horizontal surfaces were to be painted with 20-B Deck Blue, but the ships in the Philippines and Java were given, again in an emergency, Cavite Blue paint. This coating of the decks was relatively well preserved, but the original coating of the hull, superstructures, chimneys, etc. was already heavily weathered and damaged during the battles for Java.
I tried to put all these details into my model. I hope that you will like it. I will inform you in time when it is completely finished.
And, of course, I plan to convert Houston to its sister ships.
