1/700 USS Texas (BB-35)

33 years after I started, I finally finished my scratchbuilt 1/700 battleship Texas (BB-35).

I started the model in the spring of 1992, while in the interim between finishing law school and returning to Marshall to start my judicial clerkship. I used a set of plans I picked up when we toured the Texas in the spring of 1975, reduced to 1/700 on a copier, and drew up plans the same way I had done for the Wasp. I reused gun turrets from a Revell Arizona (two Arizona kits, actually), and other parts from the Skywave USN parts set, but other than that everything was made from sheet and rod styrene. The color - overall Navy Blue (5-N) I now realize was too dark, but in my defense, it matched the colors the just-repaired 1/1 Texas had when it returned to San Jacinto in 1990.
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In a few months I had gotten the model to around 85-90% complete with only detailing remaining, but work intervened, and Texas sat in my pine board "docks" for the next 30 years.

It may have had something to do with watching the actual battleship Texas leaving its berth at the San Jacinto Battleground for a drydock in nearby Galveston, but whatever the motivation, I finally found a reason to resume work on the Texas in the summer of 2022. Part of why I hadn't resumed work sooner was that in 2018 Trumpeter came out with a Texas in 1/700, but even before that I had decided not to finish the model based on the assumption I had mistakenly built the ship overscale. It turned out there was an error in the vertical dimension – for some reason I built the tripod foremast taller than it should have been - but when I actually closely checked the main deck of the Trumpeter model against mine, they matched precisely, and the vertical error could be remedied.

But what really gave me the motivation to complete the original model was when I realized that the Trumpeter version was of the battleship's final appearance in 1945, and not its appearance a year earlier when it supported the landings on D-Day wearing the two-tone Measure 22 camouflage. My scratchbuilt model was also of the 1945 appearance, but I could backdate it to June 1944, providing another opportunity for a double build of the same ship.

Texas at D-Day

Texas supported the landings at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944 along with Arkansas and Nevada. The next day she provided food and ammunition to U.S. Army Rangers at Pointe-du-Hoc and took aboard wounded Rangers and German POWs. She then supported the assault on Cherbourg on June 25 where she was hit by two German shells (one failed to explode and is still displayed on Texas).

Nailing down Texas' appearance at D-Day required backdating the model from the ship's 1945 appearance, because in October 1944 she underwent a major refit at the New York Navy Yard that brought the ship to its 1945 appearance - albeit only after a brief detour into a dazzle camouflage scheme.

But the analysis wasn't straightforward. Texas had numerous refits during World War II, and photographs of the ship are often misdated and mislabeled. I began my research with the ship's major refits following her repainting into Measure 12 camouflage in late 1942. There was a major refit at Norfolk in March of 1943, but the ship still carried 1.1" quad mounts, not 40mms, and didn't have the 20mm tubs on turrets 2 and 4 after this. In December 1943 Texas again underwent a major refit, this time at New York Navy Yard, where the AA armament was substantially improved with 40mm quads, and a SK and additional SG radar were mounted on the mainmast aft.

But even this wasn't quite the ship's D-Day appearance. She had another month-long refit in Boston in February 1944, at which point she received a tall foremast, which would remain only until October, and the 20mm mounts in the upper bridge area were removed. The ship's float plane catapult was then removed in Belfast, Ireland on May 22 and stored until after D-Day. And there was one additional minor change - a photo taken June 7 showed a large white "T" on the smokestack, possibly to distinguish Texas from the similar-looking battleship Arkansas which was operating with her off Omaha Beach, and later off Cherbourg as well.

The actual backdating involved tearing down most of the mainmast structure and rebuilding it to its early 1944 appearance, removing directors and other structures from the superstructure, priming and repainting it into Measure 22.


I also replaced the aft fighting top with a 3D printed version, and finishing scratchbuilding the fighting top on the foremast.

It would have been far easier and better to replace it with a 3D printed version as well - which I will do with the Trumpeter model - but the 1992 fighting top was a sentimental favorite, and I wanted to keep it. I also removed and rebuild the 40mm and 3" guns, since the Skywave versions were oversized, and added the foremast.

It turned out I had not yet installed the 20mm ready supply deck houses aft, which had pairs of 20mms on their roof, so I added those, as well as the SK and SG on the mainmast, and the missing 20mms, most of which were on the roofs of turrets 2 and 4.

I'm glad to have finally finished this very, very old build, and even more so by finishing it into my favorite Texas appearance.

3 additional images. Click to enlarge.