First order of business is you have to
decide on what boat do you wish to build and what year / refit since
no two boats where alike.
This can lead to some major work in
some cases depending on the yard that built it and mods that where
made.
The Revell (1/72) Gato is mostly based
on the USS Cobia SS 245 but as a post war museum so if you stay with
that then you don't need to do to much work.
You will need to remove the doors on
the side of the fairwater (con tower) since those are only on museums
to keep the public out, leave if building as a museum.
Flip the stern horizontal diving planes
to get a more accurate shape.
The bottom flood hole openings, sound
heads and speed log are missing on the bottom of the hull.
Note: the flood openings did
not have screens over them only the sea chests and bottom of the
chain locker.(Eduard PE set)
Exhaust openings and some flood holes
are missing on the sides of the upper deck structure and the steps on
the sides should have 4 openings not 3.
Openings on the turtle back (very back
end of the main decking) need to be drilled.
Remove the broom off the top of part 94
on the periscope sheers unless you are building it as the museum.
Omit part 49 (breather)
To make it accurate to the Cobia you
will need to replace the bow torpedo shutters to the flat kind.
If you plan to build her as a WWII boat
you will need to move and replace the Buoy Markers since as far as I
can tell they where changed within a year after the war.
If you like you can PM me for the
bottom Flood Hole patterns, the ones that are for sale are not
correct for this boat.
The sound heads can be made with 6mm
airsoft pellets and some sprue and the Speed Log can be made from
sprue or metal rod.
For extra detail you can add the Zinc
blocks to the lower hull.
Floating Drydock sells copies of the
actual construction blueprints
Eduard sells PE sets (the decking set
does not correct the Marker Buoys for a WWII boat)
White Ensign makes PE, deck guns and
torpedos
Accurate model Parts (AMP) make an
assortment of torpedo shutters and some other parts
There are a few other vendors of resin
parts that I would pretty much stay clear of since they tend to need
a lot of extra work or are inaccurate, best to scratch build
yourself.
AMP has a building forum and the owner
is a member here (Rokket)
Sub Committee used to have a lot of
information but they have made their Fleetboat section a Paying
Members only section, ironically there seems to have only been 3
posts made in the area since that happened a few years ago.
http://www.maritime.org/fleetsub/
1946 Fleetboat operations manual that
includes images and diagrams of parts and how they work.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/subidx.htm
has a large collection of images of
most of the fleetboats
http://www.submarinemuseums.org/
has a fair amount of pictures and info
on the museum boats, make sure to check out the forum