Mark McKinnis wrote:
I am on the road this week,so I am doing this from memory, but if I were doing a late war Essex or any other of the short hull ships, I would go for the DML Lexington kit. I remember that the Essex kit could be built with 3 or 4 of the 40mm but I do not remember the bridge layout. I do not think that that kit does the later bridge.
The Lexington kit gives you everything to do the late war bridge, all of the various AA layouts and the two catapult deck.
The Essex kit instructions tells you to leave off the foreward 40mm mount and just leave the tub empty for the camoflaged fit, but this is incorrect - her bridge was lengthened into the space occupied by the quad and the walkway re-shaped. This kit does not come with lengthened bridge parts. However, the Hancock and Princeton kits come with 4 extended bridge parts (variations in the shape of the deck above) and will only use one each, leaving plenty of extras.
Nice as it would be to just start with the late-war Lex kits and just have the right bridge parts from the get-go, the Essex kit is the only one with the single catapult, and I do not want to try filling in the second one and re-scribing the deck for those early vessels.
Something that's been perplexing me, as these various errors get discussed and we see Dragon correct some and not others - I have yet to see anyon emention the incorrect shape of the bow gun tubs on the long hulls. Dragon has them rectangular, but they're round in every picture I've ever seen. (Heck, look at Dragon's own box art on the Princeton, for crying out loud!) Why such an error, and why haven't they fixed it?
- Sean F.
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