The Ship Model Forum

Hi everyone,

Earlier, I posted a thread concerning my upcoming build of USS Tucson, SSN-770. As I mentioned in that thread, after I built a model of the USS Guitarro for a former shipmate, he asked me to build models of the USS Tucson, SSN-770 and the USS Arizona, SSN-803 for display at his local SubVets chapter. Building the Tucson is not a tough challenge, but on the other hand, the USS Arizona SSN-803 has not yet been built. As you can imagine, information is kinda sparse about it right now, so I reached out to the experts on the submarines forum. Many thanks to Tom Dougherty for pointing me in the right direction to the information that is currently available on the Block V design.

In my research, I found out that Arizona will have some significant differences from initial Virginia Class ships. The Arizona SSN will be a Block V submarine of the Virginia class. Interestingly, the new Virginia class of submarines has already gone through 5 significant changes, almost warranting establishment of a distinct new class. The most significant difference with the Block V ships will be an approximately 70-foot Vertical Payload Module inserted amidships, stretching the hull to about 460 feet from the 377 feet of the initial Virginia Class.

The Arizona will apparently use the same propulsion system as the rest of the Virginia Class, which is based on the S9G (ninth generation submarine reactor by General Electric) pressurized water reactor. The addition of 70+ feet will no doubt impact the performance of the ship in comparison to the initial Virginia Class maximum speed of 25+ knots.

For this model, I am beginning with the HobbyBoss USS Virginia kit. There are two drawings of the proposed ship that I am working from, shown below:

Readers who are more conversant with contemporary nautical terminology will excuse me, but the locations of the lower hull sonar bulges (I don’t know their actual names) differ between the drawings. From examining the two drawings above, it appears that I will have to modify the hull to relocate the ‘sonar bulges.’ If anyone can tell me which drawing to follow, it would be greatly appreciated.

Another difference I noted was that the sail appears quite a bit taller on the Block V subs. This makes a lot of sense; the Parche, which had a 100-foot section added amidships, also had a larger sail than other 637 Class submarines.

The drawings differ on rudder size, but it makes sense that the control surfaces would be larger on a larger boat, so I will opt to replicate a larger rudder.

As a bit of background, on 23 December 2019, the US Navy announced the naming of SSN-803 as USS Arizona. So you might ask, as I did, “What about the battleship Arizona that already carries the name? How come we’re going to give her name to a new ship?”

Here are some excerpts from Wikipedia.org:

“Unlike USS Constitution, Arizona is not perpetually in commission. Arizona is under the control of the National Park Service, but the U.S. Navy still retains the title. Arizona retains the right, in perpetuity, to fly the United States flag as if she were an active, commissioned naval vessel.”

Also from wikipedia.org: “The new Arizona will be built at Electric Boat in Groton, Conn. SSN-803 through approximately SSN-812 are planned to make up the Fifth Block. Block V involves 10 boats and may incorporate the Virginia Payload Module (VPM), which would give guided-missile capability when the SSGNs are retired from service. The Block V subs are expected to triple the capacity of shore targets for each boat. Construction on the first two boats of this block was expected to begin in 2019 but was pushed back to 2020, with contracts for long lead time material for SSN-802 and SSN-803 being awarded to General Dynamic's Electric Boat. HII Newport News Shipbuilding was awarded a long-lead materials contract for two Block V boats in 2017, the first Block Vs for the company. On 2 December 2019, the Navy announced an order for nine new Virginia-class submarines – eight Block Vs and one Block IV – for a total contract price of $22 billion with an option for a tenth boat. The Block V subs were confirmed to have an increased length, from 377 ft to 460 ft, and displacement, from 7,800 tons to 10,200 tons. This would make the Block V the second-largest US submarine, behind only the Ohio-class (at 560 ft).”
I don’t see any way around making numerous cuts to the hull during the stretching process, so to build this model, I’ve bought two HobbyBoss Virginia kits. I sure didn’t want to scratchbuild hull sections! One of the hulls will make up the basis for the finished product; the rest that isn’t used will be discarded.

The new Arizona will no doubt have SHT (Special Hull Treatment.) I’m not going to try to replicate that because my customer is not insisting on this. I intend to paint the upper hull black and the lower hull and sonar dome a black-gray.

I will begin work on this model shortly; I’m currently waiting for a mitre box and saw to arrive so that I can make accurate and neat cuts. In the meantime, if you have any experience with building this kit, including tips and critiques, I hope you will post your comments. I'm especially eager to hear from anyone who is considering this kind of conversion or has already tackled it. Any input will be greatly appreciated!

John

Hi everyone,

My mitre box and saw came a couple days early, so I’m getting an earlier start on the conversion.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am going to cut a hull section out of a donor kit to stretch the hull to the proper length. This will add 2.85 inches to the model’s length, so that overall, the model will be 460 scale feet in length.

I’ve decided to begin the cutting with the upper hull halves. Here’s a photo of the two hulls before the slashing began!
Since the Block V subs are new and there are no good drawings or photos, I am playing it by ear as far as where to cut. The upper hull in the photo below will become the Arizona. I gave myself some room to work with so that I wouldn’t destroy certain topside details; I made the cut about 1 inch aft of the weapons shipping hatch.

In this photo below, I’ve cut the donor hull, which is at the bottom. My friend wants to salvage whatever I don’t totally destroy, so I didn’t damage the weapons shipping hatch on the donor hull. He says he wants to build the remnants as a submarine surfacing. In order to have the 2.85 inch section of the hull, I did cut the engine room access hatch.
The photo below shows what I had left after making the cuts.
Here are the three pieces that will be grafted together.
The seam between the forward hull section and the forward end of the donor hull segment weren’t as precise as I was hoping, but I guess the results are better than cutting freehand. I’m using one of the lower hull halves as an improvised jig to get the alignment as close as possible. I added a piece of styrene backing inside the hull joint. Now, I will use styrene cement to bond the forward hull and the donor segment.

And that’s it for today. I’ve added the styrene cement and now I’ll wait for it to harden up before I move on to the next step, which is to bond the forward section to the stern section.

John

It looks like quite the project. I was planning on trying it on one myself someday. I dug up an old twitter post that had one of the official models of sorts. You should be able to right click and open the pictures a bit bigger. I liked the two pictures of the model even though they are not super detailed it gives an idea of the overall look of the sub. As far as where to move the middle WAA I just understand that they should be evenly spaced on the hull so that will fall somewhere along that new module. https://twitter.com/cavasships/status/9 ... 7672843264

Hi Jordin,
Thanks for tip on the twitter post. As you suggested, I went ahead and downloaded those photos for reference. Every little bit helps! The model in the photo has me contemplating whether to try to build a couple tubes open or not. Going to have to mull that one over!

Thanks also for your comments about the WAA (Wide Aperture Array.) I knew I'd seen the name somewhere but just couldn't remember where, or what they were called.

Here's a quick update for this morning. My improvised jig worked and the forward hull sections turned out fine. I went ahead and added a backing strip to the stern section and then glued the stern to the forward section, using one of the lower hull halves to maintain alignment. Here's a photo:

John

Hi everyone,

Another quick update.

The bonds on the upper hull are satisfactory, so the next step is to start hacking up the lower hull halves. First, I cut the center section out of one of the halves and centered its WAA at the location on the upper hull shown on the Block V drawing. Then, I cut two segments out of the lower hull halves; one will be the lower hull bow segment and the other will be the aft section of the lower hull with the aft WAA. Here’s a photo:
Once the glue sets, the next step will be to assemble the lower bow and aft WAA section to the hull.


John

Looking good. Makes me want to get to work on mine. I had a few I had started playing around with a while back and had sanded it down and cut the holes in the bow for the two payload tubes (from SSN 784 on). I hadn't figured out how I might build the doors to make them open and close but at some point I may just build some Virginia's with the Payload tubes shut and make some that are opened when I do decide. Not sure if you put any thought into yours yet I know you sounded like you were contemplating it on the tubes in the extension.

Hi everyone,



Thanks for your kind words and suggestion about the bow tubes! I've thought about doing this, but at this point, it may be too late to do that, since I've already assembled the bow. The bow tubes would be pretty small, so they would be tricky and a whole lot easier to build up before assembling the hull. I'd like to see how your work on the bow tubes has turned out. I will be contacting my friend to see if he'd like the VPM tubes open, though. Whether I do that is still a 'maybe.'

These photos show how far along I am on the hull.

John

Hi everyone,

The final remaining gap in the lower hull has been filled with a section of hull cut from a discarded piece of an upper hull stern. Since the piece also had part of the towed array housing on it that will need to be filed down, I glued a piece of .080 inch half round styrene inside the hull segment. Here's a couple of photos of the hull with the leftover pieces.
Next comes the worst part; filling seams!


John

I like boat builds like this! Very cool!

_________________
It's never too late for a great childhood!

I had doubts about this build at first, but man, oh man! You are doing such a very, very good job!!!

_________________
Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Hi everyone,

A couple more kind and appreciated comments:


A great big thank you to both 'pascalemod' and 'navydavesof' for taking the time to post those encouraging words! It's great to hear the positive feedback and see the interest in this project!

Since my last post, I haven't done much (I spent most of yesterday visiting friends) but after giving the glue on the hull some time to harden, I started applying filler. Here's a couple photos:

John

Looking good, nice clean work there on the cut & shut.

Hi everybody,

Thank you to Mr. Church who wrote,
I bought a hobby mitre block and razor saw specifically for this project because I wanted the cuts to be as close as possible. Of course, even with a mitre block and saw, they're still a manual cut, but they turned out pretty well. Many thanks for the kind words!

I did some filling and sanding on the seams during the past couple days. Afterwards, I painted them with Light Ghost Gray to reveal defects. I have a bit of touch up to do on some of the seams, and then I'll repeat the process until I get it looking the way I want it. Here's a look at the first go-around:

John