The bow of the San Antonio-class expeditionary warship USS New York was formed with 71⁄2 tons of steel from the World Trade Center. Dedicated to the memory of Sept. 11, 2001, the ship’s motto is “Never Forget.” The ship is designed to transport 700–800 fully equipped Marines into combat. A Google image search will supply all the detail pictures you need for the model; it has been covered completely from well deck to bridge. (Special thanks to Lynn Ritger for tracking down the Google Maps shot of the ship in dock — fantastic for accurate weathering and detailing!)
With such tiny parts, Cyber-hobby’s new 1/700 scale kit will require a magnifier. Fit was perfect throughout the kit. It also comes with Amphibious Forces sprues that provide an LCAC, various helicopters, and M1A1 Abrams tanks. You use all of them on this ship.
The instructions are clear and fairly accurate, but there are errors. Photoetched-metal parts MA4 and MA5 are not needed. Pictures of the ship show no exterior doors or slides. Parts MA2 and MA3 look like replacements for plastic parts A39 and A40, but they are not shown in the instructions. Only the landing-deck netted railings were used.
Part A37 does not appear on the instructions: It is the small deck house shown in Figure 4 on the starboard aft side of the bridge house between parts A53 and A12. There is a small raised area to show where it goes. Part A23 looks like it has a sprue gate on one side — but it is not a sprue gate, so do not remove it! The bullet-shaped projection apparently belongs there. I was never able to find the location of part A25 and ended up adding it to the port aft side of the bridge as a flag locker. Also missing were the two life raft canisters on the bridge wings. Two Part A14s go in the rail openings. Be careful — there is only one spare part!
The kit has several options. Waterline or full hull with stands; open or closed off-loading door; stowed or deployed cargo crane, folded or open helicopter blades. The detail looks soft, but it is accurate. Missing are the numerous watertight hatches (doors to landlubbers).
The LCAC decals have the starboard Navy logo and a flag with the stripes leading. Tradition is that the stars always lead the way. There is no easy fix for this, so the error remains.
The color profile is inaccurate and incomplete. I painted the ship with Polly Scale undercoat light gray, a match for hazy gray. Despite the color profile, all horizontal surfaces are painted dark deck gray: I used Floquil SP lark light gray. The landing deck, bow deck, and several other areas are painted in Polly Scale tarnished black for the anti-slip coating; other grays were used on smaller details.
The 1-3⁄4" by 3-1⁄2" landing deck decal is intimidating, but it will work if the deck is gloss-coated, covered in Micro Set, and the decal is slid off the backing paper onto the deck like a pizza. I quickly and gently nudged the decal into position with a wet brush and removed excess water and air from under the huge decal. A final coat of Micro Sol on the dry decal made it look like it was painted on.
I spent half of the build time assembling and detailing the various equipment on the landing deck. A slight mold alignment problem required cleanup on each vehicle, and most aircraft required seam filling. The aircraft average eight tiny decals each. You’ll need magnification to paint and detail them! A full diorama could be built using little more than the kit parts.
Working with such tiny parts and so little direction will take an experienced modeler, but the result will be an unforgettable ship model.