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The USS Missouri - Trumpeter 1:700 scale

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  • Member since
    December 2002
The USS Missouri - Trumpeter 1:700 scale
Posted by SNOOPY on Sunday, December 26, 2010 3:24 PM

I have a USS Missouri, Trumpeter 1:700 scale, and I was thinking off assembling it this winter since it is very cold out and I will not fly my RC airplanes during the cold winter.  Can anyone give me recommendations on a good painting scheme appropriate for this model.  One thing i would like to know is the Missouri has always had a wooded deck, correct?  This will be my first ship and possibly my third or fourth model? 

  • Member since
    December 2002
Posted by Dreadnought52 on Sunday, December 26, 2010 11:36 PM

Missouri wore two different camouflage schemes in WW2.  During 1943-44 she wore measure 32/22d in 1945 she was painted in measure 22.  Should you like to see what these schemes looked like go to http://www.shipcamouflage.com/ there you will find a wealth of information on USN camouflage schemes.

As to your question on wooden decks, Missouri always had one and still does.  During WW2 the deck was painted in 20B deck blue.

 

WS

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Monday, December 27, 2010 12:17 AM

The Trumpeter 1/700 kit represents the Missouri as she appeared in 1991.  (At least I think that's the only Missouri the company has released in that scale; I may be mistaken.)  Like the other three Iowa-class ships, she underwent a great number of modifications in the course of her career; she looked dramatically different in 1991 than she had during WWII.  (If you want to show her in WWII configuration, the smartest move is to buy the excellent Tamiya kit.)

If you want to build the model out of the box (i.e., in 1991 configuration), the question of the color scheme becomes pretty simple.  The basic overall color is haze grey, a medium shade.  (Somebody other than me will have to help with the matching numbers from the paint manufacturers.)  The steel decks would be a considerably darker shade of grey, and the stack caps and various other details black.  The planked wood deck surfaces would be bare teak.

I believe the kit in fact represents her just about as she looks at Pearl Harbor today.  I'm sure a number of modern weapons have been removed since she was decommissioned, but apart from that I don't think she got significantly modified after 1991.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    December 2002
Posted by Dreadnought52 on Monday, December 27, 2010 12:35 AM

ah yes, posting in the wee hours of the morning does make one miss "details" like manufacturer.  If I hadn't been so punchy earlier I might have paid a bit more attention.  As jtilly wrote you really have only one option as far as vertical surfaces are concerned and that is haze gray.  The closest to that you will find in a widely available paint is probably something like Testor's neutral gray.  Others may have a different opinion.  As for the steel decks Testor's gunship gray is pretty close as well.  Teak color is replicated in this scale probably best by Radome Tan, however, teak can be different colors dependent on its condition.  Wet teak looks brownish gray, weathered teak looks light gray.  Battleships were high value vessels and generally had lots of care given to appearance so I would go with the radome tan approach in 1/700.   If you want the more colorful camouflage schemes of WW2 you will need to pick up one of the Tamiya Missouris (they are superior to the Fujimis by a wide margin).   WS

  • Member since
    December 2002
Posted by SNOOPY on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 7:07 PM

jtilley

The Trumpeter 1/700 kit represents the Missouri as she appeared in 1991.

If you want to build the model out of the box (i.e., in 1991 configuration), the question of the color scheme becomes pretty simple.  The basic overall color is haze grey, a medium shade.  (Somebody other than me will have to help with the matching numbers from the paint manufacturers.)  The steel decks would be a considerably darker shade of grey, and the stack caps and various other details black.  The planked wood deck surfaces would be bare teak.

 

I went to one of the Navy source websites for some pictures.  Also, the instructions say "1991" version.  The deck looks like a dull wood color and everything else a deck grey.  The problem I might have with this is that I have a color blindness problem.  I see color but not what a lot of people see.  I have problem with tones.  All horizontal surfaces not wood should be a deck grey/haze grey.  What about vertical surfaces, are they to a deck gray or a lighter grey.

If I can make this USS Missouri look halfway decent then I would like to make another of a different era where she had the deck blue on her turrents.

Has anyone built this model?  The kit comes with a lower hull that is black.  Do I need to prime this and repaint it black?  Also, is there a red boot strip in between the grey and black halves and if so how wide should it be, roughly?

  • Member since
    December 2002
Posted by Dreadnought52 on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 8:43 PM

Check my post above for the paints you will need.

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Wednesday, December 29, 2010 7:40 AM

Snoopy, I appreciate, and sympathize completely with, your problem.  It's often struck me as ironic that our society makes so many genuine, well-intentioned efforts to accommodate the disabilities of people in wheelchairs, the deaf, and the blind - but scarcely anybody ever mentions color blindness in that context.  It afflicts millions of peole and can, in certain situations, be a genuine disability.

My father, who made his living for about fifty years as an architect (and had a thorough understanding of color as an objective subject), was "red/green color blind."  He found that out when, in (I think) 1930, he got a Congressional appointment to the Naval Academy.  He came in first on the competetive exam, and the Navy bought his train ticket to Annapolis.  There the medics gave him a physical, and discovered the color blindness.  (It was news to Dad.)  That did it; he was washed out.  He told me, fifty years later, that walking down the steps of Bancroft Hall after that physical was the worst moment of his life.

When WWII started, Dad enlisted in the Navy.  Shortly thereafter he encountered a doctor who claimed he knew some exercises that would cure color blindness.  The "exercises" consisted of letting Dad take the standardized test over and over again until he memorized it.  So, having convinced the Navy that he really wasn't color blind, he got a commission and was stationed on board an attack transport (U.S.S. Bollinger, APA 234) in the Pacific.   He said (long afteward) that he eventually concluded the Navy had been right:  he just couldn't see things as well as other people.

Given the mortality rate of the Annapolis class of 1934 (which Dad would have been in), it's often occurred to me that his color blindness just may have made me possible.

All of which is a long way from the Missouri; sorry about that. 

The good news is that the ship's 1991 color scheme actually ought to be relatively easy for a color-blind eye to sort out.  There are, in essence, just four colors:  haze grey, deck grey, teak, and black. 

The typical bottom treatment for a ship like this consists of dark red anti-fouling paint on the underwater hull and a black stripe separating the red from the above-water grey.  The width of the black stripe seems to vary quite a bit from ship to ship, but on a waterline model that black "waterline plate" should look just about right. 

One of the golden rules of serious plastic modeling is "paint everything."    But if you left the edges of that plate unpainted I suspect few people would notice - assuming the fit with the hull is good.

If you're going to build the model with a full hull, you'll want to paint the underwater hull piece dark red and add the black stripe along the top of it.  You'll need to check reference photos to get the width of the black stripe (or maybe somebody else in the Forum knows what it should be).

If you do decide to build another Missouri in an earlier configuration, I can recommend the Tamiya kit enthusiastically.  It shows her as she looked in 1945 - and contains color guides (printed in color, that is) for the two color schemes she wore during the war.  It's a beautiful kit.

Good luck.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    December 2002
Posted by SNOOPY on Saturday, January 1, 2011 9:28 PM

Thanks Jtilley.  I have run into this red/green problem quite a bit.  It seems that it also happens with very light blues and greens.  Mainly it is tints that really throw me off.  I see primary colors just fine.  What is funny, is golfing with a red or those green hilight balls.  Hit the ball onto the fairway and I could be stepping on it and not see it.  My brother-in-law used to get very mad because we lost another ball.  It took a few times to realize what the problem was.

I thought the bottom hull was black and the boot stripe was red.  I then saw some ship photos of what Mike Ashley have done and the bottom hull is red.  Silly me!  I would like to some day build the 1:350 Missouri, Yamato, and Bismark.  I figured before spending the money I will work on some 1:700 scale ships first.  I would also like to build a couple of Ironclads from scratch and at least one 17th or 18th century sailing ship.

Happy New Year!!!

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