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USS MONTROSE/RANDALL

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  • Member since
    September 2012
Posted by GMorrison on Wednesday, October 24, 2018 12:52 AM

Amazing. Thanks for sharing that.

 Modeling is an excuse to buy books.

 

  • Member since
    September 2016
Posted by Mertox on Tuesday, October 23, 2018 8:24 PM

Dannenbergerblitz
My father was a radioman/LCV helmsman aboard the APA 120 Hinsdale which participated in the Okinawa and Iwo Jima landings.  The ship was hit by a Kamikaze on the morning of the landings right aft the spuperstructure with major damage to the engine room and a bomb left on the rudder post.

My dad was one of the Marines on the Hinsdale awaiting to disembark for the invasion.  He talked about how they had everyone move to the other side of the ship in order to make it list enough to lift the hole out of the water so they could stabalize it.  It was just the beginning of the journey for him though.  He still went ashore to join the fight.

  • Member since
    September 2012
Posted by GMorrison on Saturday, August 25, 2018 11:35 AM

Zombie post, but it's always good to hear from the Dr.

Is Cajun Joe offering to sell the stuff? If so, a personal message would be appropriate. I'd like to see a list of what's available.

 Modeling is an excuse to buy books.

 

  • Member since
    October 2003
  • From: Canada
Posted by sharkbait on Saturday, August 25, 2018 9:39 AM

I use this site from time to time to look for out of print books. https://www.abebooks.com

Have made some great finds on it. Good service.

I just made a search for "away all boats"

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=&tn=away+all+boats&kn=&isbn=

 

You have never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3!

  • Member since
    June 2016
  • From: New iberia
Posted by Cajunjoe56 on Saturday, August 25, 2018 12:35 AM
I have collection of vintage revell 376 scale model ships and in my collection I have a couple of montrose/Randal ship models the kits are detailed
  • Member since
    August 2005
  • From: Seattle, WA
Posted by Surface_Line on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 2:23 AM

Here's what the 1/400 L'Arsenal 40mm guns look like on my still-in-progress Vietnam era Montose kit.  I can see that there MIGHT be room to put the larger 1/350 guns in there, but I think it would be a pretty tight squeeze.  I can't speak about the 20mm guns because my ship had the 20mms removed in 1963, just before she went to Vietnam.

 

Rick 

  • Member since
    April 2008
  • From: Portland, Oregon
Posted by Dannenbergerblitz on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 6:16 PM

Thanks Dreadnought and Surface_line for the heads up on the 20mms.   That among other things will be a big help in doing the Hinsdale!

Buck

www.buckbradenart.com
  • Member since
    August 2005
  • From: Seattle, WA
Posted by Surface_Line on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10:51 AM

Also with regard to the replacement of the weapons on this kit, as I replied to your same question on the Haskell class Minutia thread (/forums/960265/ShowPost.aspx) , L'Arsenal makes 1/400 resin 20mm and 40mm guns that are very well sized for this kit.  1/400 should be a bit too small since the kit is 1/375, but they look just right to me.  I would not want to put 1/350 guns on it.

Rick 

  • Member since
    January 2006
  • From: Sarasota, FL
Posted by RedCorvette on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 6:35 AM
 Surface_Line wrote:

They could have made a goldmine with these ships - either Revell or Renwal.  They were named for counties all over the USA.  After a few minutes of research (many years ago, when I was laying in my stash of these kits) I resolved to build the Renwal AKA as USS Skagit instead of Seminole and the APA as USS Okanogan instead of Sarasota or Montrose.  Skagit and Okanogan are counties very near to my home here in western Washington.

These were just changes of numbers and name on the fantail; the 119 Haskell class APAs were all identical and the six Rankin class AKAs were identical to one another.  If the manufacturer had just provided some extra decals sheets, I think a lot more people would have bought the kits for the local connections.  And that's over and above the zillions that Revell has already been selling over the last 53 years.

As it turns out, the work I put into the USS Navarro build for my Vietnam veteran friend has plumb burned me out on this kit and I don't want to touch another one for many more years to come.

Rick 

Having lived in Sarasota for 22 years, I thought a model of the USS Sarasota would make a nice conversation piece for my office.   I like the personal connection aspect of modeling.  Over the years I've tried to model most of the cars I've owned and the airplanes I've flown in. 

Mark 

 

FSM Charter Subscriber

  • Member since
    December 2002
Posted by Dreadnought52 on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 3:52 AM
 Dannenbergerblitz wrote:

I picked up the Revell Montrose a few months ago.....Had one of the earlier ones from the fifties.  My father was a radioman/LCV helmsman aboard the APA 120 Hinsdale which participated in the Okinawa and Iwo Jima landings.  The ship was hit by a Kamikaze on the morning of the landings right aft the spuperstructure with major damage to the engine room and a bomb left on the rudder post.  A bomb squad from the USS Colorado defused the bomb and removed it.  Her side was patched and she limped back to Hoboken, NJ.  Dad lost almost all his Navy stuff but picked up an Marine Garand on the beach and acquired two pieces of the Kamikaze which I have.  You can google Haskell Class Transports or APA 120 Hinsdale for photos of the holes in the ship's side and commentary.  The first model I had bit the dust long, long ago as I was 9 or 10 then.  I wish I knew what kind of plane the Kamikaze was and which outfit as it would be nice to knit all of this stuff together.  Does anyone know what one could use to replace the symbolic 20mm AA in the tubs of the model?  They are way too simple.  A very interesting thread and one close to my heart.  I too have my father's flag and uniform not to mention very interesting stories.  The movie Away All Boats was a family tradition.  Thanks

 



With regard to the weapons on this model you can pick up much nicer after market 20 mm or 40 mm guns from Pacific Front hobbies. Just look for the 1/350 scale accessories section there or at FreeTime Hobbies, both on the web. WS
  • Member since
    August 2005
  • From: Seattle, WA
Posted by Surface_Line on Monday, June 23, 2008 10:32 PM

They could have made a goldmine with these ships - either Revell or Renwal.  They were named for counties all over the USA.  After a few minutes of research (many years ago, when I was laying in my stash of these kits) I resolved to build the Renwal AKA as USS Skagit instead of Seminole and the APA as USS Okanogan instead of Sarasota or Montrose.  Skagit and Okanogan are counties very near to my home here in western Washington.

These were just changes of numbers and name on the fantail; the 119 Haskell class APAs were all identical and the six Rankin class AKAs were identical to one another.  If the manufacturer had just provided some extra decals sheets, I think a lot more people would have bought the kits for the local connections.  And that's over and above the zillions that Revell has already been selling over the last 53 years.

As it turns out, the work I put into the USS Navarro build for my Vietnam veteran friend has plumb burned me out on this kit and I don't want to touch another one for many more years to come.

Rick 

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Monday, June 23, 2008 10:05 PM
Red Corvette - that's a remarkable coincidence.  Sarasota was the name Renwall picked for its 1/500 APA kit, back in the fifties.  I haven't seen it for many years; I suspect copies of it cost an arm and a leg these days.

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

  • Member since
    January 2006
  • From: Sarasota, FL
Posted by RedCorvette on Monday, June 23, 2008 8:39 PM

I've got one in my stash.  Planning to build it as the USS Sarasota APA-204.

Mark 

FSM Charter Subscriber

  • Member since
    March 2005
  • From: West Virginia, USA
Posted by mfsob on Monday, June 23, 2008 7:47 PM

I am in the opening phases of the 1/700 Loose Cannon APA as we speak, and I zeroed in on the USS Lenawee, APA-195, for two reasons. She was at Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the surrender in Tokyo, and then Korea and finally Vietnam. Quite a career. And, early in her life, she was painted in the Measure 32 dazzle scheme, which will give me a chance to break out of my all gray, all the time, ship painting mode. I decided on a stateside dockyard scene because the thought of painting and gluing hundreds of itty bitty soldiers swarming down the boarding nets was more than I could face. 

So far the kit is going together fairly easily, except for the LCVPs, which tended to come off the sprue in pieces. I think it was brittler than normal resin, and Dave Angelo of LCP sent me some replacements right away.  

 

  • Member since
    April 2008
  • From: Portland, Oregon
Posted by Dannenbergerblitz on Monday, June 23, 2008 6:26 PM

I picked up the Revell Montrose a few months ago.....Had one of the earlier ones from the fifties.  My father was a radioman/LCV helmsman aboard the APA 120 Hinsdale which participated in the Okinawa and Iwo Jima landings.  The ship was hit by a Kamikaze on the morning of the landings right aft the spuperstructure with major damage to the engine room and a bomb left on the rudder post.  A bomb squad from the USS Colorado defused the bomb and removed it.  Her side was patched and she limped back to Hoboken, NJ.  Dad lost almost all his Navy stuff but picked up an Marine Garand on the beach and acquired two pieces of the Kamikaze which I have.  You can google Haskell Class Transports or APA 120 Hinsdale for photos of the holes in the ship's side and commentary.  The first model I had bit the dust long, long ago as I was 9 or 10 then.  I wish I knew what kind of plane the Kamikaze was and which outfit as it would be nice to knit all of this stuff together.  Does anyone know what one could use to replace the symbolic 20mm AA in the tubs of the model?  They are way too simple.  A very interesting thread and one close to my heart.  I too have my father's flag and uniform not to mention very interesting stories.  The movie Away All Boats was a family tradition.  Thanks

 

www.buckbradenart.com
  • Member since
    February 2003
Posted by shannonman on Sunday, August 22, 2004 1:16 PM
Hi all,
The film is available on AMAZON.COM for $7.99 new and used. the book is also there.
Hope this helps.
"Follow me who can" Captain Philip Broke. H.M.S. Shannon 1st June 1813.
  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Friday, August 20, 2004 10:00 AM
Out of curiosity I just looked up Away All Boats on the Barnes and Noble website. I didn't find any reference to the movie, but the Naval Institute Press edition of the book is still in print. A click on the B&N "Used and Out of Print" link disclosed 271 used copies of the book, with prices ranging from $2.00 to $364.72. Ah, the wonders of the internet.

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

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Friday, August 20, 2004 9:51 AM
Anybody with an interest in attack transports ought to watch Away All Boats. It's kind of corny and cliche-ridden, and the special effects are vintage 1950s. (Mr. Graham's book says some Revell kits were used in the distance shots.) But it was done with Navy cooperation, and contains lots of good shots of APAs and LCVPs. The leading actors are Jeff Chandler, George Nader, and Richard Boone. Look fast for a young medical corpsman in one of the final scenes - one of the first screen performances of Clint Eastwood.

The movie was based on a terrific novel of the same title by Kenneth Dodson (which attained near-biblical status in our household). It's the sort of big, fat, entertaining and extremely accurate war story that was popular just after the war. The author was an APA officer. His accounts of the Pacific landings, and the day-to-day life on board the fictitious ship, are some of the best I've read. The book also has a serious subplot, dealing with the captain of the ship. He gradually goes off his rocker as the war drags on. But (in a remarkable contrast to another novel that people were reading at the same time, The Caine Mutiny) the officers, instead of rebelling against him, quietly pick up the slack, cover for his eccentricities, and make sure the ship and the crew continue doing their jobs. (The movie doesn't pick up much of this aspect of the story. ) The grand finale comes when the ship gets hit by three kamikazes off Okinawa, and the landing craft pull it to safety.

The movie was on VHS for a while; I grabbed a copy that a local video rental place was offering at a going-out-of-business sale. Whether it's currently available I don't know. I'm also not sure whether the book is in print or not at the moment. It's been through several paperback editions, and the Naval Institute Press published it in hardback as part of the "Classics of Naval Literature" series. I'm sure a cheap copy could be found on the web.

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

  • Member since
    November 2005
Posted by Anonymous on Friday, August 20, 2004 6:27 AM
QUOTE: Originally posted by subfixer

jtilley, Thanks! I think I just earned one more college credit.


Yeah, what subfixer said. I have a Revell Montross sitting in my room waiting for a display case so that I can place it under the Flag used to cover my Dads casket when he died. Dad served on APA-202, the USS Menifee and I never knew the kit existed until about 6 or 7 years after he died. I was fortunate enough to get one off e-bay for about 25.00. It's not accurate, but it's as close to a 202 conversion as I can get. I'm sure the the casual observer wouldn't notice the differences.

I'll have to look for the movie mentioned. Thanks for all the info.

Don Alien [alien]
  • Member since
    March 2004
  • From: Spartanburg, SC
Posted by subfixer on Thursday, August 19, 2004 5:55 AM
jtilley, Thanks! I think I just earned one more college credit.

I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Wednesday, August 18, 2004 10:20 PM
Further to my earlier post - I checked the Steel Navy website. The 1/700 resin APA is by Loose Cannon Productions. It's labeled U.S.S. Haskell (the class leader), but contains decals for the Randall and Montrose. It's a little over seven inches long, includes photo-etched parts, and costs $65.00. The Steel Navy site includes, in its "Model Gallery," a built-up model based on that kit; it looks superb.

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

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Wednesday, August 18, 2004 6:28 PM
This is a sentimental subject. My father served on board another Haskell-class attack transport, the Bollinger, APA-234. I remember vividly when the kit came out, back in 1956. The family made a pilgrimage to the local hobby shop in Columbus, Ohio to get one. The building of it was entrusted to my older brother. (I was six years old at the time, and had recently desecrated my own first model - a Revell DC-7.)

The book Remembering Revell Model Kits, by Thomas Graham (which, incidentally, I highly recommend) confirms the initial release date of 1956 and says the Randall was picked as the subject in part because she'd starred in the movie Away All Boats (essential viewing for anybody interested in attack transports) a few years earlier. Graham lists the scale as 1/376 - typical of Revell's "fit the standard-sized box" philosophy of the era.

We're talking here about a really, really old kit. It appears to have been about the ninth ship Revell did, and it has most of the characteristics of the era. The 20 mm guns (or vaguely recognizable representations thereof) are molded in with the decks, there are solid "railings" cast around the deck edges, and the hull is in the odd "semi-waterline" configuration that Revell used for several kits at that time. The hull is flat on the bottom, sliced off a few scale feet below the normal waterline - and, for some reason, mounted on the same sort of trestle-like stands that Revell used for its full-hull models. Part of the explanation for this oddity may have been that the underwater lines for some of Revell's subjects (e.g., the liner United States) were still classified. At any rate, some of those vintage Revell ships had full hulls and some were waterline models - and the company didn't mention either point to its customers.

A few years later (I don't have the date) Renwall started a series of ships on the constant scale of 1/500. These kits look pretty antiquated now, but they were somewhat more sophisticated than the Revell ones. (They had individually-cast 20 mm guns, for instance - and honest-to-goodness full hulls.) Most kids I knew got enthused about the battleship North Carolina and the Essex-class carrier (which went head-to-head with Revell's), but the line also, remarkably enough, included a Haskell-class attack transport. I remember building it several times as well. Renwall also did an attack cargo ship. I haven't seen either of those kits for years.

Bottom line: the Revell kit was great for its time, and attracted some public attention to a phase of World War II that otherwise didn't get much, but it can't be described as up to current standards. Like most vintage ship kits, it's capable of being turned into a nice model but doing so would require a great deal of work.

At least one of the small specialist firms makes a Haskell-class APA in 1/700 scale; I've seen a review of it on the Steel Navy website, and it looks beautiful. An APA makes a fine model subject but a rather demanding one, with an enormous amount of rigging (think of all those cargo booms) and a great deal of repetition (think of all those boats). I believe a good set of drawings is also available from The Floating Drydock.

Hope this helps a little. Good luck.

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

  • Member since
    November 2005
USS MONTROSE/RANDALL
Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, August 18, 2004 2:58 PM
Has anyone built this kit recently ? And would like to give me an idea of any pitfalls that I may encounter. Or does anyone know of a good review of this kit.
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