Kit: No. SW-2500
Scale: 1/700
Manufacturer: SkyWave (Pit Road), available from International Hobby Supply, P.O. Box 426, Woodland Hills, CA 91365, phone 818-886-0423
Price: $36.98
Comments: Injection molded, 136 parts, decals.
The U.S. Navy was desperately short of all types of ships at the beginning of World War II. To fill the need for cargo vessels, Kaiser Shipbuilders came up with a class of transports called Liberty Ships, which were built in subassemblies, joined on the slips, and quickly launched. Eventually the shipyards launched one new Liberty Ship every day. More than 2,400 were built by the end of the war.
SkyWave has finally issued a kit of the important vessel. Molded in light gray styrene, it uses some of the excellent accessory sprues found in many of its kits, so I ended up with 23 parts left over.
This kit breaks down differently than most; the hull is molded in left and right halves that include the flat waterline bottom. This allowed SkyWave to mold the gunnels along the deck edge. Usually kits in this line have a full lower hull with a separate waterline baseplate.
While the instructions are predominantly in Japanese, there are no great secrets to building the kit. The exploded-view diagrams tell the story. Watch out at the stern, though; you must install part No. C1 before the aft gun deck (C3).The only problem beginners might have is handling the tiny detail parts.
The list of 66 ship names on the instructions is interesting, but you get only a generic decal sheet with hull numbers (too big for WWII) and flags.
I bored open all of the gunnels with a sharp blade, then painted the major subassemblies. The paint guide on the box gives an overall dark gray camouflage, but I painted mine in Measure 22, which had Navy Blue on the hull sides up to the main deck, Haze Gray above that, and weathered Deck Blue on the decks. I used Polly Scale acrylics.
After only nine hours, my Liberty Ship was ready to make waves. That's less time than I usually spend on a 1/700 scale ship. Compared with the information in the reprint of Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships 1944, the finished model comes up only a few scale feet short in length and one scale foot narrow in beam.
SkyWave's Liberty Ship adds an important auxiliary vessel to the waterline fleet.
- David E. Ligman