RoR Review USS Buckley 1:249 scale Revell Review

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1 RoR Review USS Buckley 1:249 scale Revell Review Smaller than destroyers, the destroyer escorts (DE) were a World War Two ship type whose primary tasks were convoy, escort and anti-submarine warfare. The United States built a number of DE classes including the Buckley class. As the war progressed, armaments were increased or customized to meet local needs. Reference information is easily found on the various classes of DE (Squadron and The Floating Drydock both have good 'In Action' type books on DE s). Revell's Buckley class destroyer escort model # is good for both an out of the box build or as a detailed conversion. The Revell Buckley kit is a scale kit (1/249) from the Golden age of Revell in the 1950's. For its time, the kit has a highly detailed superstructure with hatches, ladders, and rafts. And for the most part--this kit holds up very well today. The kit does have a couple weaknesses. The weapons only slightly resemble the originals. The guns should be replaced or extensively rebuilt for a contest model. The railing stanchions are attached to narrow rectangular parts engineered to be inserted into the deck. It leaves a nasty seam to fill --but doesn't look as bad as it sounds when filled. The only real detail missing from the kit's hull are the bilge keels on each side of the lower hull. This is easily remedied with scratch-built strip styrene parts.

2 Figure 0a Revell's kit packaging has improved too. All the plastic parts were bagged inside the box and only a couple parts had come off the sprue. The box art is a stylized rendition of the built up model itself. Figure 1 & 2 Gold Medal Models makes a very comprehensive photo etch set for this kit (half of the set is for the Buckley and the other half is for Revell's 4 stack destroyer Ward kit). HR Products still does white metal parts in 1/250 scale for updating weapons and conversions of this kit. I had considered getting the Gold Medal Photo Etch and doing a comprehensive build. In the interests of time, I decided to do an out of the box build. My only change was the ship's paint scheme itself. My model will represent the USS England DE635 in Measure 21 (overall blue--really Navy Blue 5-N on all vertical surfaces, Deck Blue 20B on all horizontal surfaces). Decals from decal stash will provide the correct ID number for the bow. With weathering and lighting--the net effect is overall blue for the entire model. There is a fine web site dedicated to the England ship at: This site has a number of very useful reference photos.

3 Figure 3 Construction started with gluing the main deck to the one piece hull. I then started putting together the superstructure parts and gluing these to the deck. The superstructure parts went on quickly. If you take your time, you can eliminate filling any seams on the superstructure by carefully test fitting and cleaning of parts. The kit includes railing stanchions and suggests using thread to finish the railings and do the rigging. I used the smallest Evergreen rod (.020) for the railings between the stanchions and some of the rigging on the mast.

4 Figure 4 Aside from the added bilge keels, the only parts to add below the waterline are the propeller shafts and rudder (I added the gold/brass props closer to the finish). I painted below the waterline with Tamiya Hull Red using an Aztek airbrush. The upper hull and superstructure would be painted Navy 5-N (Navy 20-B is almost the exact color as 5-N, so I took a shortcut and painted the entire upper works and decks 5-N). Missing from this kit is the paper flag sheet that was included in previous issues. Without this flag sheet, the modeler is missing the commission pennant and US flag for this model. In addition, the sheet would include signal flags. Fortunately - I had a flag sheet in my parts collection to use for this build.

5 Figure 5 At this point I started using the model base (the kit stand and finished wood plaque) as a construction base (something to hold the kit as I added more pieces). Actual construction went quickly. I did a little rigging with stretched sprue and added the missing US flag from flag sheet of another kit. The bow markings (DE635) were pieced together from the kit decals and an aircraft number sheet. An overall airbrushing of Dullcote followed by Floquil 'dead' flat finish and the 'England' was complete Figure 6 For display, the kit comes with very acceptable four point display stand. The stand is easily attached with brass screws to a wood base. I painted the plastic base a brass color and attached it to a pre-finished wooden base.

6 Figure 7 Revell's USS Buckley kit holds up very well across the fifty plus years since it was first released. It fits the bill for a simple ship kit build and can easily be detailed by an advanced modeler.