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PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2021 3:25 pm 
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Joined: Sat Mar 11, 2017 2:34 am
Posts: 9
Location: Thailand
Hi, I've recently finished building USS Belleau Wood CVL 24 to how she's suppose to appear during the Philippine operation around October 1944
I use Dragon's kit as a starting point and it's a lot of work just to correct the mistake that come with the kit.

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Material
- Dragon 1/700 USS Belleau Wood CVL 24
- Search light, paravane, life raft and many other little pieces from shelf oddity
- Gold medal model photoetch set for light carrier
- fstar model photoetch set for Oerlikon canon, shields and much more
- Trumpeter 1/700 aircraft
- Ocean spirit dynamic propeller
- flyhawk aircraft and radar etch set
- finemolds 40mm bofors
- Home made photoetch flight deck (I'd rather only design and let the professional manufacture it but I couldn't find anyone willing to do it locally)

This build is one of the most challenging I've ever attempt. The dragon(once pit road) kit fit where it does and leave a very large gap where it doesn't
with the latter being far more common.
I'll include a build section in the replies.

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finemolds 40mm mount look very impressive despite being slightly overscaled.
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size comparison with a flash drive
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The Grumman Hellcat is a very large aircraft for it's type along with the P-47 Thunderbolt.
It's older brother, the wild look small in comparison. The aircraft is more comparable to the Stuka which is a ground based dive bomber
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Comparing the Independence class light carrier to a proper fleet carrier.
She's a lot smaller than the Illustrious which is known for having smaller dimension in exchange for better protection.
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And she's dwarfed when compared to her adversary, the Zuikaku and to the US fleet carrier, the Enterprise
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Finally comparing to how she might have look like if completed as a cruiser
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2021 3:57 pm 
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Joined: Sat Mar 11, 2017 2:34 am
Posts: 9
Location: Thailand
The first challenge in this build is the reference.
shipcamouflage.com list the ship's camouflage at the time as measure 33 but I couldn't find and good photo aside from the following photo from ww2db
https://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=24503

notice the different in shade of the superstructure.

Just like how David Griffith wrote in his San Jacinto build

David Griffith wrote:
As a plastic kit, it is something of a dog. The parts fit where they touch, with big gaps where they don’t. The parts breakdown for the hull is totally ludicrous, with separate bow and stern sections, and these give the aforementioned big gaps that keep on opening up again.


Most of his complain is true as I've experienced it first hand. I've just notice the scuttle being absurdly large with I've finished the camouflage so I decided to
leave them be as It's not very noticeable under the flight deck but I won't allow that on the island so I redo most of the surface detail on the island and
scratch build the top level as what come with dragon's kit is not accurate and look horrible (not that mine is 100% accurate tho xD)
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The hull consume a very good amount of putty just to stick them together
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The mast is inaccurate so I replace them with gold medal's mast with some enhancement I could get from fstar and flyhawk's set I got lying around
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It took a lot of attempt just to get the home made flight deck to work. even the one I have onboard is not perfect. I just hide the most obvious one by parking the aircraft on top and the less obvious one wouldn't me noticeable under paint. I wish I wouldn't have to goes through that again.
I really with midship model would also offer a 1 catapult deck in additional to their 2 catapult deck
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As David have mentioned in his build, this kit suffer badly from the “converging verticals syndrome” so I've replace all the shield around the flight deck
with fstar photoetch shield. It took a lot of effort but the result is worth it. I'm going to take a break from ship building for a while after this build

One last thing, as Computer Engineer I don't really like how outdated this site look(despite how good it's content is) so if someone decide to do something about it, I'm very willing to help ;).

Any question and criticism is welcome and appreciated.


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