Dobbies Hobbies 1/700 USS Marblehead, previewed by Joe Essid

USS Marblehead (CL-12) was a born survivor. Launched in 1923, she was refit a few times in her long service career. She sported ten 6” guns, four in turrets and the remainder in casemates. That made her and other Omaha-class cruisers some of the last warships laid down that that type of armament.

Marblehead left Manila Bay in November, 1941, after a war warning for the US Asiatic Fleet. She moved to The Dutch East Indies, where action followed quickly. On January 24, she was schedule to attack a Japanese convoy off Balikpapan, but as Walter Topp notes in a fascinating account of the ship’s history, engine problems led to her not participating. In the end, four US destroyers sank four transports and a patrol boat. This welcome victory would only delay what looked like an inevitable Allied defeat in the Southwest Pacific, at least until Coral Sea and Midway.

Then 4 February, during the Battle of Makassar Strait, she endured an air attack that probably saved her from being sunk later that month with other ABDA ships in the Battle of the Java Sea. Through the valiant efforts of her crew she remained afloat after hit by bombs. She then departed for Ceylon, next South Africa. In each place more repairs were carried out, but only when she reached New York in May, could the ship be refit for the long war ahead where aircraft, not big guns, would dominate naval actions.

By October 1942, Marblehead was out of the shipyard and back into the fray, losing one stern casemate gun but gaining more AA, radar, and superstructure aft of her catapults and related gear for two Kingfisher aircraft. She went on to serve with distinction in the Mediterranean, including the invasion of the south of France. She never returned to the Pacific, since the Omahas had been deemed too vulnerable for hotspots because of their lack of full-length waterline armored belts.

She did not endure long after VJ day. After a training cruise, this lucky ship was scrapped in 1946. Maybe some of her steel went into your grandad’s Pontiac and lives on at a car show somewhere.

THE KIT

Having built so many Japanese ships, I wanted to add some Allied counterparts. I also wanted cruisers, since so many issues by big companies focus on carriers or battleships.

This is my first-ever work with a 3D printed kit. Printed in resin that needed little sanding to correct lines from the printer, it depicts Marblehead in her 1930 fit. Oh oh. I stupidly did not realize this date when I ordered it. I wanted her from early 1942. Had I read the description…well, that’s what modelers are good at, right? Reading instructions. We are also good at improvising.

I began to pull down images of builds of Niko’s 1/700 kit of Marblehead, also resin but in her 1942 appearance. I found blueprints from the Brooklyn Navy Yard via Archive.org to guide my surgery, which will appear in all its gory details when I send MM a review. That will come next year, as I’m still debating a few changes, though I’ve posted photos of an initial paint job (without any washes) as well as an ocean base inspired by Frank Spahr’s work.

Dobbies Hobbies, a Canadian company that makes ships in various scales for tabletop gaming, also prints USS Raleigh in her 1941 guise, so I might have gotten that and built my ship on that basis. It’s closer to Marblehead’s appearance before she was damaged at sea or in October 1942, as well as after she was rebuilt in New York.

Thanks to the idiotic tariffs' increased delays, my kit sat in Customs at the border for two weeks and cost me $16 more in shipping.

If you want an Omaha-class light cruiser from 1942-45, you may have to get out your razor saws and spare parts. A lucky modeler might find the reportedly excellent Niko kit. I’ve seen it for $70US but good luck finding it. A firm called Corsair Armada sells USS Detroit for about $60 plus shipping at Squadron. It too is a resin kit and depicts the cruiser from 1945.

I’m slowly morphing into a ship-modeler. Resin is not hard to work with in 1/700, but plan carefully and be ready to do some scratch-building.

As much as aircraft and armor provide me great pleasure, this landlubber just loves researching the history of naval vessels. Building a Frank-Spahr base (and it’s a pale imitation of his work) is the icing on the cake.

So I’m planning on more plastic and resin ships in 1/700, plus a 1/350 or 1/200 scratch-built Caroline, the single-stack vessel that brought my grandfather, Sulieman Nassar to Ellis Island from Tripoli, in the Ottoman Empire, in 1911. He left the island as Sam Essid, his new name sharing the fate of many a new arrival. I have side views of that ship I picked up when visiting New York. I plan to give the model to my great-niece Caroline Ryan, named for the ship (“Sam” was already taken by another great-niece!).

Topp, W. “Twenty Thousand Miles to Home—The Miraculous Journey of The USS Marblehead.” Military History Now. https://militaryhistorynow.com/2019/07/17/twenty-thousand-miles-to-home-the-miraculous-voyage-of-the-uss-marblehead/

KIT #:
PRICE:	$16.00 SRP
DECALS:	None
REVIEWER:	Joe Essid
NOTES:	3D printed kit and 1930s fit