Old Revell question for Prof Tilley

Well, I don't pretend to remember all the old Renwall ships, but I think I built most of them when I was a kid.  They really fell, as I recall, into three categories.  There was a fairly large series in 1/500 scale, a batch in 1/1200 (issued originally in a big, $3.00 set, with a fanciful vacformed "water" base), and, of course, the notorious Polaris submarines with their fictitious interior detail.

The 1/500 ones I can remember were a North Carolina-class battleship, an Essex-class carrier (with angled deck), a Cleveland-class light cruiser (with missile launchers replacing the original after turrets, a Farragut-class destroyer leader, a Haskell-class attack transport, a Tolland-class attack cargo ship, and a real freak:  the "navigational research ship" Compass Island.

For their time (the late fifties and early sixties) they weren't bad kits by any means.  They scored over the Revell and Aurora competition in having such high-tech features as individual 20mm guns.  In my household the attack transport was especially important; my father had served on board one of them during the war.  The Renwall APA was smaller than the Revell one, but, in addition to 20mm guns that actually looked like guns (well, sort of), had a genuine full hull.  And the AKA was, so far as I know, the only plastic version of that type - ever (except for Renwall's own little 1/1200 version).

  HEY PROFF TILLEY !! Thank you ,the latest post of yours confirmed what I thought about the ships in my unbuilt section. I have inadvertantly collected ALL those models one at a time over the last 20 yrs . WOW , I even have some duplicates of some . Now if I could find the USS BUCKLEY and the CAMPBELLTOWN I.d be a real happy camper !!!! Are you very informed as to the RENWALL hidden glue point ships?? TANKERBUILDER

tankerbuilder wrote the following post at 04-06-2009 10:35 AM:

"I do have to add something here . Even though  PROFF . TILLEY may not have covered it in detail the MISSION CAPISTRANO was originally issued as one of five models in a REVELL release that championed  MFGRS. and shippers . This kit had the multi piece caddy convertible ,the dc7c passenger plane and the ss united states ,the hawaiian pilot and the texaco tanker (mission cap..)I believe it was about 1959 when they came out with it ....tankerbuilder "

Dr. Graham's book on the history of Revell lists two "Ship Gift Sets" that sort of answer this description.  The "Merchant Fleet" set, issued in 1955 with the number G-332, consisted of the Hawaiian Pilot, the J.L. Hanna (later Mission Capistrano), and the tugboat Long Beach.  The "Let's Take a Trip" set (the title coming from an early CBS/ABC TV show) was issued the same year, and contained the DC-7, the United States, and the '56 Cadillac Eldorado.

The book contains photos of the box art from both; the "Let's take a Trip" painting is especially impressive (the Caddy sitting on a pier next to the United States, with the DC-7 flying overhead and the Jersey skyline in the background).I confess I don't remember either of them.  (These were the sort of things a kid of my age ogled at the downtown department store toy department during Christmas season.)  Both, according to Dr. Graham, are among the most sought-after Revell producs among collectors, with price estimates (as of 2004) of $500-$650.

He lists five other "ship gift sets," dating from 1954 through 1958:  the "Admiral's Fleet" (Missouri, The Sullivans, Nautilus, Los Angeles, and PT-212), "Victory at Sea" (PT-212, The Sullivans, and Franklin D. Roosevelt), "Guided Missile Fleet" (Nautilus, Norton Sound, and Boston), "Famous Sailing Ships" (Constitution, Santa Maria, and Flying Cloud), and "U.S. Naval Academy (Ranger, Canberra, and Forrest Sherman).

 

The Hawaiian Pilot and the Burleigh are essentially the same model. The first issue of the HP from Revell had a different arrangement for the masts and yards than the subsequent issue of Burleigh. The Burleigh had the addition of the military equipment an additional deckhouse forward and extra deckhouse aft. The recent reissue of the HP retains the arrangement of masts and yards on the Burleigh and deletes the military equipment and deckhouse parts. However, it does not eliminate the deckhouse locating points which will have to be sanded off, which justs adds to the burden of filling in the host of ejector pin marks and the removal of the thick "railings". In spite of all the work needed to make this presentable it still makes a great looking, convincing, cargo ship, especially if waterlined! WS

Coincidentally, I just ran across this picture of Matson's Sonoma:

http://www.shipspotting.com/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=596363

A great color picture, and other than the name it's a dead ringer for the Hawaiian Pilot kit.

 

"The Randall/Montrose is a C-2 Victory, correct?"

Yes, though the precise designation is VC-2. A C-2 is yet another type.

Fred

I do have to add something here . Even though  PROFF . TILLEY may not have covered it in detail the MISSION CAPISTRANO was originally issued as one of five models in a REVELL release that championed  MFGRS. and shippers . This kit had the multi piece caddy convertible ,the dc7c passenger plane and the ss united states ,the hawaiian pilot and the texaco tanker (mission cap..)I believe it was about 1959 when they came out with it ....tankerbuilder

bondoman wrote:

The Randall/Montrose is a C-2 Victory, correct? I'd like to build it as such, although it's becoming a parts cow for my T-2. I remember Fred built a nice civilian one. I spent several summers in NN back in the early sixties. My Mom's best friends Husband was a sub XO and later Commander, and man that place was hot and humid! We also went out to Pearl Harbor in '59 and Mare Island around that time.

The summers are still hot and humid but they are mercifully short. Unlike the summers in Florida where I grew up, they lasted from March to November. And forget about spending a summer in Houston, Texas!

To Professor Tilley: Thanks for the info (in reference to the museum library).

 

The Randall/Montrose is a C-2 Victory, correct? I'd like to build it as such, although it's becoming a parts cow for my T-2. I remember Fred built a nice civilian one.

I spent several summers in NN back in the early sixties. My Mom's best friends Husband was a sub XO and later Commander, and man that place was hot and humid!

We also went out to Pearl Harbor in '59 and Mare Island around that time.

Well, in my day (1980-1983) the answer would have been an emphatic "yes."  We also had a policy in those days of answering every single written inquiry that we got in the mail, and of dropping whatever we were doing if someboy walked in the door and asked a question that could be answered by a curator.  (There were exceptions of course - like when the curator was in the process of working on something inside a glass case - but in general we tried to be as directly responsive to the public as we could.  The museum's policies have changed in that regard; you'd have to contact the museum to find out just what the policies are now.  I have the impression that the library is still open to the general public.  (Not the stacks; I imagine you still have to have a staff member go get the books for you.  That, at least, was how the place operated in the early eighties.)  A phone call in advance wouldn't be a bad idea, though.

Professor, would the "museum where you used to work" (MM in N. News) allow just any yokel who came along (like me, for instance) peruse the contents of their library?

Very interesting indeed - and thoroughly confusing.

I just spent some time trekking through various websites, trying to sort out the connection (if any) between the U.S.S. Burleigh and the S.S. Hawaiian Pilot.  I thought we'd sorted out the story in an earlier Forum thread (//forums/463882/ShowPost.aspx ).  In that thread (scroll down almost to the bottom), a member named Imperator Rex (who, unfortunately, doesn't seem to have been taking part recently) quoted an impressive-sounding source as saying the Burleigh and Hawaiian Pilot were the same ship.  I believe the instruction sheet in the Revell Burleigh kit says the same thing.  Unfortunately, Imperator Rex doesn't seem to have identified his source.

But Surface_Line's version (that the Burleigh was named Sonoma in her civilian life, and the Hawaiian Pilot was originally named White Squall - and was never a Navy ship) agrees with several other web sources I found, including this one:  http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/matson.htm .

One of these accounts obviously has to be wrong.  The scale tilts in favor of the Revell/Imperator Rex version when we consider one obvious point:  the "shipslist" site and the book quoted by Surface_Line seem to say that Matson Lines didn't operate a ship named Hawaiian Pilot prior to 1961, whereas the Revell Hawaiian Pilot kit was originally released - complete with Matson Line decals - in 1956.  There also are several accounts on the web of a collision between the S.S. J.R. Luckenbach with a freighter named Hawaiian Pilot in 1953.  (In that other FSM Forum thread, somebody - I don't remember who - turned up a photo of the damage to the Hawaiian Pilot's bow.  Apparently the wreck of the Luckenbach is still lying off the California coast.) 

Reading between the lines a bit, it looks to me like the problem may lie in the frequency of the use of the name Sonoma.  The quote from Mr. Worden's book, if I'm reading it correctly, says that (A) the U.S.S. Burleigh was eventually renamed S.S. Sonoma (3), and that (B) the S.S. White Squall was renamed S.S. Sonoma (2), which was in turn renamed S.S. Hawaiian Pilot.  The "shipslist" website seems to agree.  (I wonder if the people who set up that website may have based this part of it on Mr. Worden's book.)  A mixup by somebody of two ships named Sonoma would seem to explain the discrepancy.

The Dictionary of American Fighting Ships (which is available online) is of no help.  The entry for the Burleigh ends when she was sold out of Navy service.  Navsource.org has one photo of the Burleigh; it certainly looks  like a picture of a C-3 freighter (with the addition of that big deckhouse on top of the midships superstructure).  But it says nothing about her postwar career.

Sorting out the names of merchant ships is often a challenge.  The most reliable way to do it is to track the history of the ship in question through the annual volumes of Lloyd's Register - easy if one happens to have a shelf full of those volumes handy, which I don't.  (The library of he museum where I used to work had a full set, dating back to 1776.  Our university library doesn't.)

Trying to sort through all this has given me a headache, and I still don't know the answer.  I'm inclined to think the Burleigh and the Hawaiian Pilot were the same ship, but I'd certainly be receptive to further evidence. 

The C-3s are indeed varied - much easier to track the history of the kit than the real ships.

From "Cargoes - Matson's First Century in the Pacific", by William L. Worden:
After Burleigh served in the Navy as an APA, she was bought by Matson in 1947, renamed SONOMA (#3), transferred to Oceanic in 1961, then sold in 1970 to Pacific Far East lines and subsequently renamed MONA.  Scrapped 1973.

WHITE SQUALL was built in 1944 as a C-3 cargo ship.  Oceanic bought her in 1947, at this point renamed her SONOMA (#2, I think) , traded her to Matson in 1961.  Renamed HAWAIIAN PILOT, then U.S. PILOT.  Scrapped in 1970.

There is some knowledge about the Oceanic organization, and the renamings in 1947 and 1961 that would make good sense to me if I re-read the book, I'm sure.

Rick

The Hawaiian Pilot was indeed the U.S.S. Burleigh (the name Revell used for the "navalized" version of the kit) during her naval service.  I don't remember what her date of launch was; she may have been in the Navy before she was a civilian freighter.  I bumped into a couple of pictures of her as the Burleigh someplace on the web.  It appears she had a rather large deckhouse on top of her midships superstructure (radar/radio shack, maybe?), which the kit doesn't have. 

I don't think it would be difficult to build a civilian Hawaiian Pilot from the Burleigh kit.  I rather suspect, in fact, that it would be a bigger challenge to build an accurate Burleigh from it.

hey prof tilley ... while we,re on the subject of the tanker ( mission capistrano-j.l.hannah ) i would like to inter ject a little fact here . the c3 HAWAIIAN PILOT is out as a military ship too . before the buyers out there get confused i bought the military version and the old H.P. kit at the same time . guess what ? the ships ARE identical EXCEPT the military stuff . this ship WAS a fleet auxiliary BEFORE she became the HAWAIIAN PILOT . odd but true . the grey one can be built either way just remember ,if you have the military version , just fill the holes in the deck        tankerbuilder

Afraid I can't help much.  I remember those AHM kits vaguely; as I recall, that company reissued a fair number of plastic kits from Revell and other manufacturers (mainly Asian and ones), in addition to being the American distributor for the Austrian Minitanks line of HO-scale military vehicles and Rivarossi model railroad items, from Italy. (I think I remember seeing the superb Revell HO-scale building kits in AHM boxes.) 

The book, Remembering Revell Model Kits, by Dr. Thomas Graham, doesn't have an index, but I wasn't able to find any reference to AHM in the text.  It does mention (p. 117) that "during 1979 Revell marketed some of its older models under the 'Advent' label as low-cost kits for sale hrough department stores and mass retail outlets." 

Dr. Graham's appendix gives the date of the first issue of the Mission Capistrano (i.e., the J.L. Hanna in grey plastic, with guns added) as 1964; the kit number was H-342.  The original, civilian version appeared in 1956, and stayed in the Revell catalog for only a two years.  It apparently was, in terms of sales, one of the real duds of the Revell line.  Dr. Graham's coverage stops with 1979; as of that date the civilian version of the tanker had never been reissued - at least in the U.S.  I was happy to see it reappear under British colors fairly recently - though it seems to have disappeared from the catalog of Revell Europe again.  (As I understand it, the latest reissue in fact had the guns and other Mission Capistrano parts in it.  I imagine the old J.L. Hanna molds got permanently modified.)  Anybody who wants a Revell tanker kit, and can find one, probably would be well advised to grab it while the grabbing's good.  (Fortunately the old C-3 freighter Hawaiian Pilot is still in the Revell Europe catalog - and Squadron Mail Order lists it as in stock.)

So I guess we can pin down the AHM reissue of the Mission Capistrano to sometime between 1964 (when Revell first issued the kit - and the John Steel painting) and 1979 (the advent of Advent.)  Like I said - not much help.  Sorry.