The Ship Model Forum

Hello all.

My dad Served as a FCT aboard the USS Henry W Tucker during the Vietnam war and operated an experimental SAM system called the Sea Chaparral that was mounted on the helo deck while he was there. I'm a 29 year old professional model maker and prototyper and I want to build him a desktop model of the Chaparral to give to him as a gift (and because it will be fun... hopefully) I can buy a 1/35 scale model of the Army version of the system which is mounted on the back of a tracked vehicle, but that's too small. So I'll be scratch building it, I'm not sure of the scale, but it will be about 8 inches tall when the missiles are in the rest position. I've picked up a number of pictures of the Army version including a great shot of the interior.

I've got some questions for the experts though. Would the seat be covered in the same color fabric if the system was on a ship?

I've found some great info on Sidewinders but that's all air to air. Would the surface to air missiles in the 60s bear the same markings? Of the few pictures I've seen of this thing mounted on the deck of a ship the missiles are all green, not white, but those pics are recent ones of the Taiwanese (I think) Navy.

Also the most fun for me comes in the weathering, so I'd like to take advantage of that. What level of wear and rust would be appropriate for this thing on the deck of a fairly modern ship?

As a first step I knocked out a little foam of my model to make sure I liked the size I was working with. Scale's one of the hardest things for me to commit to. I might make it a bit smaller, it would be pretty dominating when it's got a case around it. Can I buy sidewinder missiles in a scale anywhere near 1/12?

Thanks for looking.

Kit

You are correct that it is indeed used on the Kang Ding frigates as well as a Supply vessel of the Taiwanese Navy. I can't think of any other navy that uses or used this system though. I've met these ships last year in Panama canal and took some pics. If I remember correctly the missiles were light blue with a white or black tip, but I could be wrong on that. I'll have to check my pictures to be sure.
great project.

As far as I know the units used by the UN were simply lifted of the army's tracked chassis(The turret was mounted on a pallet) and bolted on the ship's deck, so I would guess the interior would be identical to your photo.

The largest scale model I know of is the weapons is the Airfix 1/24th scale Harrier GR3 kit, I'm not sure what version they are though. There are some aftermarked ones but these are of the AIM9L which has a different shaped nose and canard fins to the version used by the Chaparral.

Thank you for the responses. If the color codes are universal and I thought that they would be as they are dictated by the UN (please correct me if I'm wrong here) if the missiles were blue wouldn't that mean they were practice missiles? I was thinking of putting blue stripes on the front of the missiles instead of yellow as a lame joke because my dad never actually got to fire one.

here are the only two pictures that I've got, and keep running into on the web:





It certainly looks like they could easily appear to be blue under the right conditions.

Knowing the class got me a few more pics... apparently there's even a 1/350 model of one (and a Chinese non export 1/700 model)

It sounds from the research that I've been doing like the ones that didn't go to the Taiwanese Navy went to the Israeli Army.

I was on the team at Ship Repair Facility, Subic Bay, that installed Sea Chapparral in Henry W. Tucker, and I rode along when they went back to Viet Nam.

The fire units were borrowed from the Army. The only changes made to them by the Navy were:
-Gyro stabilization in elevation, to make it easier to stay on target on a rolling deck
-An auto track function. In the Army version, the gunner had to keep the target in the crosshairs manually, in the Navy version, once the missile aquired the target, the missile's heat seeker took control of the mount and kept it pointed.
-A remote designation system that allowed a radar operator in CIC to point the mount in bearing.
-A very minor modification to the intercomm system to allow connection to a Navy sound powered telephone circuit.

None of the above had much impact on the outside appearance of the mount.

Dummy missiles, used for training and testing, are painted blue. Live missiles are painted green or white.

I probably knew your Dad. Email me at jgolabowski@gmail.com

I just came across this thread. I was an Army Specialist stationed at China Lake inthe early 70's and was involved in the installation of most of the Chaparrals that were installed on the destroyers. I did not work on the Subic installations, but did work on those done in Yokuska, Long Beach and San Diego. I also trained gunners and maintenance personnel on the system. I hope your model came out great.