The Ship Model Forum

Fist let me say that I hope this is the right location for this post. Apologies if not. Admin feel free to relocate if I'm in error.

Now the question....

I stumbled upon some information today that said that the SS America and the SS United States were sister ships. In the bits and bobs I've found and with my untrained eye they look almost the same. Can anyone validate this? The reason I ask is because I was thinking of using my Revell SS United States to build the SS America/ SS West Point. Comments, suggestions, ideas....

This is what I'm looking to build

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Regards

Dirk

Currently at the yard fitting out:
1/570 HMT Olympic in Battledress
1/1200 Revell USS Yorktown

They are not really sister ships. Although they may look similar (same design firm), the United States was a much larger ship with a new design, high speed hull.

They are both designed by the Francis Gibbs, that'd why they look similar. But America was a medium sized, medium speed, second tier passenger liner designed in late 1930s, whereas United States was a prestige "ship of the state" in the same class as earlier Bremen, Rex, Normandie, Queen Mary, and the later France, and built expressedly to enable an American line to compete with top tier European liners.

A near sister ship to the United States was planned so that two fast ships can run a weekly express shuttle service between NYC and Southhampton in direct competition to the same service offered by Cunard's Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. But government subsidy required to breakeven was not forthcoming, so United States's sister ship was gradually forgotten.

The planned sistership to the United States and the planned sistership to the Normandie are both great might-have-beens in the history of passenger liners.

In the 1920s the US actually contemplated building passenger aircraft carriers in which the round time for passengers really in a hurry can be cut by having the passnger flown out to the ship at the beginning, and flown to their destination while the ship itself is still a whole day out from destonation port.

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Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.

http://www.ny1.com/content/lifestyles/travel/211567/ss-united-states-may-be-headed-back-to-nyc/

Long docked in Philadelphia, apparently there are plans afoot to move the SS United States to the NYC waterfront.

For the story of Gibbs and the United States, read "A Man and His Ship" by Steven Ujifusa.