WSW's 1/700 DD 215 |  |
History
During the First World War the United States Navy embarked on a crash course of destroyer construction of a basic design with flush-decks and four funnels. The design emphathized high speed and as such they were long and narrow boats with poor sea-keeping ability. The result of fixing upon a single basic design was a fleet of 267 destroyers which were basically obsolescent upon completion., and most were placed into mothballs during the interwar years.
he start of the Second World War found the Royal Navy in need of ocean going escort ships. Eventually the solution was found by transferring 50 of the 'four-stackers' to the British and Canadian navies in return for handing over bases to the Americans, this was the famous "ships for bases' deal.
When the US entered the war, the rest of the surviving four-stackers were used by the USN as anti-submarine escorts (71), fast transports (32), seaplane tenders (14), minelayers (8) and minesweepers (18).
In addition to the Borie, WSW also has kits of an APD (transport conversion), RN escort and the most famous four-stacker, HMS Campbellton, which was used in the raid on the dry dock at St Nazaire.
The Kit
This kit comes molded in a light gray resin, with a one-piece waterline hull and several small details, some on runners and some on wafers. The detail throughout is quite good, with the only missing item being the railings. In this scale these are best represented with PE anyway. The hull has a fair amount of pinholes in it, with several on the upper decks in hard-to-get areas. Hopefully a couple coats of primer will fill the majority of these.
The way the kit is broken down shows some thought on the master maker, with separate pieces provided for the top halves of the superstructure. This helps keep the level of detail sharp and cuts down on soft edges. It also means that you'll want to use some slow-setting adhesive to put these parts on to give you time to position things just right. The top of the stacks are also provided as separate pieces, but they're not hollowed out, so you'll want to dig out your drill bits and grind these tops out.
Other details included are the many gun mounts, with separate guns & shields. These parts are very small, as you could probably guess, and it will take a careful hand to clean up the parts. Once that's done, though, they should work out just fine. The three-tube torpedo launchers are also well done, although the detailing on the underside is a bit soft. Then again, you'd have to be very flexible to see that area once they're on the ship, so that's not really a problem. All of the small boats are provided as one-piece castings, from the liferafts to the whaler. All are well done, as are the davits for the larger boats. The last separate piece is the foremast. This part will need some serious cleanup, and you'll probably want to replace the main mast with plastic rod.
The instructions are very basic, with little more than a few drawings and some basic painting instructions. You'll probably want to pick up some additional references on this ship anyway, so the limited information presented here shouldn't be too much of a hindrance. No decals are included, so any hull numbers & names and such will have to be provided from the spares box.
Conclusion
This is a decent little kit of the Borie and out of the box it should build up nicely. Add a PE railing set and this kit will really look great.
