The Ship

A lesser-known fact about u-boat attacks is that most came during broad daylight and were conducted with the u-boat's deck gun not at night with a torpedo. The convoy system was yet to be established, so when the u-boats encountered individual unescorted ships rather than waste a torpedo, which they had on board in limited numbers, the u-boat would surface and shell the target with their deck gun. Sometimes the target would surrender, so the u-boat would send over a boarding party to help themselves to whatever they wanted before they told the ship's crew to abandon ship. They then scuttled her using no more valuable ammunition. However, when the target did not surrender or chose to run, the u-boat would just blow them out of the water with the deck gun.

Thank you very much to the wonderful folks at Osprey Publishing for providing this new publication for review. Thanks are also due to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for allowing me the opportunity to explore a wonderful documentation and fascinating historical description of the earliest super carriers.

On opening the book you will find 48 glossy pages filled with text, 30 color photos, 11 black-and-white photos, 2 black-and-white drawings, and 7 color painting and diagrams. The softcover binding is 9.75 x 7.25 inches and a little less than a quarter-inch thick, with a color photo of the U.S.S America off the starboard bow. In 8 chapters, Mr. Elward provides a brief historical introduction explaining the roots of these early super carriers, and focuses on the Forrestal, Kitty Hawk and Enterprise classes. I appreciate the thorough bibliography and index.

This is part two “The Build”, of my review; the kit review can be seen in an earlier posting.

I followed the instruction sheet using Fishers guide for colors and building sequence. The first thing I did was take inventory of all parts. I found I was missing a couple of struts. I emailed Paul Fisher of Fisher Models and within a few days had the replacement parts in hand. Excellent customer service. As suggested, I thoroughly washed all parts using Dawn soap and warm water and let them dry overnight. It took about an hour to “clean up” the parts; this involved some molding lines and a little flash to be removed. One thing about Fisher kits, his molding is excellent and you should have very little clean up to do.