Trumpeter 1/200 USS Missouri, by Kelly Yoho

Trumpeter 1/200 USS Missouri

KIT #:	03705
PRICE:	$400.00 when new
DECALS:	One option
REVIEWER:	Kelly Yoho
NOTES:	Pontos 1/200 USS Missouri Super Deluxe Upgrade Set With Blue Deck (23003F1), Pontos 1/200 USS Missouri/Iowa 1944 Advanced Add-on Set (21002F1), and the Model Monkey 1/200 Fast Battleship and Atlanta class 5"/38 Mk.28 Mounts

From the Wikipedia article: “USS Missouri (BB-63) is an Iowa-class battleship built for the United States Navy (USN) in the 1940s and is now a museum ship. Completed in 1944, she is the last battleship commissioned by the United States. The ship was assigned to the Pacific Theater during World War II, where she participated in the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and shelled the Japanese home islands. Her quarterdeck was the site where the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed, officially ending World War II.”

Paul Stillwell’s “Missouri: An Illustrated History” had an interesting observation from a young ensign who had served on both the New Jersey and the Missouri. The former, which had been commissioned in 1943, he considered to be a “happy” ship, while the Missouri, commissioned a year later, was an “unhappy” ship, in part because of its large compliment of married men with children whose previous exemption from the draft had ended in 1943.

First released in 2013, the USS Missouri is one of a series of 1/200 WWII model ships from Trumpeter, including the Yamato, Bismarck, Hood, and USS Arizona, the last of which I had previously built. The Missouri kit includes 11 photo-etch sheets (very little of which I used), a small chain for the anchors, and 1500+ plastic parts.

It’s a magnificent piece of engineering but, like all kits, it has a few faults, which other reviewers have noted. The front of the ship lacks the dramatic upsweep of the Iowa-class battleships; ironically, the box art on the Trumpeter kit depicts this pretty well. The kit’s bow is considerably less bulbous that the original, which some modelers try to correct with putty and plastic card (I chose not to). Finally, the 5-inch twin mount turrets are closer in shape to Mk.32 mounts instead of the correct Mk.28s. These I replaced with the aforementioned Model Monkey 3D-printed mounts.

I relied heavily on two previous Trumpeter Missouri builds to assist me, both of which are first-rate: Ben’s on the “Midwest Model Shop” YouTube channel, and a chap named Steinerman in the Large Scale Planes forum (I wish I had seen Ben’s 1/200 Arizona videos before tackling that kit). I had to decide whether to do the 1944 Measure 32 “dazzle” camouflage scheme, which I really liked, or the more subdued two-tone 1945 Measure 22. I chose the latter because of its simplicity. I also flirted with trying to recreate the September 1945 surrender ceremony – there’s at least one online build that depicts this – but chickened out when I realized that it meant painting several hundred (if not thousand) 1/200 scale dignitaries and onlookers.

The bow of the hull consists of two pieces that need to be glued to the main hull, which I assume is due to limitations of the injection molding process. The fit was pretty good and with careful puttying and painting, the seam lines are almost invisible. Ben from “Midwest Model Shop” did some subtle “oil canning” on his hull, plus he “dinged” it where a Japanese kamikaze struck the Missouri in 1945 – neither of which I attempted. I did, however, use the small Eduard hull plate P.E. set, and recreated the prominent horizontal plating by masking off the hull and then varying the thickness of the airbrushed paint. The anchor chain supplied by Trumpeter has the incorrect link shape, but I was unable to find a replacement, so I used the kit chain after letting it soak overnight in Brass Black to make it look more worn. I had chosen the blue wooden deck version of the Pontos upgrade set, but the color doesn’t (to my eye at least) look anything like the Deck Blue 20-B used during the war – I wish I had gotten the teak wood color, since I ended up painting it anyway. I also wish I had watched Ben’s video first on how he applied these decks, which involved spraying Krylon flat on the adhesive side, which removed the stickiness, then using wood glue to attach them to the kit and, if necessary, reposition them. I didn’t do this for the main deck, and couldn’t move it after I realized it was slightly out of place – very frustrating!

The Pontos upgrade set, which was almost as expensive as the kit itself, comes with 18 sheets of photo etch, 297 brass parts (gun barrels, antennas, capstans, etc.), 33 resin parts, and the aforementioned wooden decks – plus a small sheet of dry transfers. The set is well engineered and of high quality, but is let down by the instructions, which are frustratingly vague in spots (Ben complained about this as well). I also purchased the Pontos add-on set, which includes exquisite resin castings for the quad 40mm mounts, and 4 brass screw propellers. Assembling all of the 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikon mounts (20 of the former and 49 of the latter!) with their intricate P.E. was mind-numbingly tedious. The Midwest Model Shop online store now sells 3D-printed replacements for both, and I would have used them instead had they been available during my build. The other task that really tested my sanity was attaching the hundreds of tiny vertical handrails to the superstructure and stern of the ship. Fortunately, Pontos provides templates to help you drill the 0.3mm holes needed for each rail.

The porthole detail on the kit is excellent, but I chose to drill some of them out and use the Pontos P.E. details (the “eyebrows”) for both the open and closed portholes. In retrospect, doing this didn’t add a great deal to the overall look of the model. I also fabricated oars and food and water casks for the life rafts, plus floats for the floater net baskets. I didn’t have any serious fit or assembly issues with the kit, with two exceptions. The first occurred when trying to add clear windows to the Pontos photo-etch navigation bridge – I couldn’t get it to come together and ended up using the kit parts instead. Even more frustrating was attaching the subassembly with the forward funnel and fire control tower to the deck behind the navigation bridge. There was so much clutter already on the deck that the subassembly refused to go down, and I broke several parts while trying to force it into place. Afterwards, I rewatched Ben’s video on how he handled this assembly, and I noticed that he left off the fire control tower, as well as the 40mm gun tubs, until the funnel was glued to the deck – which made the process much easier.

One of the least enjoyable tasks with any ship model is, in my opinion, the rigging – and the Missouri was no exception. I learned that there aren’t any 100% reliable guides to the ship’s WW2 configuration here – blueprints only include the most basic details, and photographs from that era also fail to capture much detail (the Trumpeter and Pontos instructions whiffed on this as well). I ended up cobbling together a “best guess” from various references and online builds. I used EZ Line Fine thread (.010" diameter), which has a built-in elasticity and is easy to attach with super glue. Ben’s rigging video recommended using thin stretched sprue for the cables between the two masts – this prevents the multiple vertical cables (antennas?) that attach from the deck from causing the horizontal cables to sag.

The Pontos railings were nicely done. There was a lot of bending and shaping involved, and I included the rail stanchions on the main deck, which were tedious to install but added to the overall realism. I also had to make periodic cuts in the railings to accommodate the chocks on the main deck – I didn’t always measure correctly and had to insert small bits of railing to cover any gaps.

Finally, I added a couple dozen 1/200 figures in various poses and locations, which help give viewers a feeling for the sheer size of the Missouri. Most were from a US Navy set by Ion, but I also used some leftover figures from my Arizona build, including the rubbery, oddly shaped ones from Trumpeter itself.

The Measure 22 camouflage scheme consists of Navy Blue 5-N and Haze Gray 5-H on the vertical surfaces, and Deck Blue 20-B on the horizontal ones – plus Anti Fouling Red Oxide (aka Hull Red) for the lower hull. For paint, I used Badger ModelFlex Marine Colors and the AK Interactive Navy Camouflages sets. I found both brands difficult to airbrush (one clogged, one ran), but it’s possible that I didn’t thin them properly or use the correct pressure. I didn’t like either’s Deck Blue, so I mixed my own using Tamiya acrylic paints. I also applied Taniya gray panel wash on the Haze Gray surfaces to make the detail “pop” – something that Ben suggested in one of his videos.

The Pontos dry transfers included draft marks and other markings, and went down without too much hassle. I copied Ben’s use of small model railroad decals to apply identification numbers to the 40mm and Mk. 51 gun director tubs, which can be seen on several WW2-era photographs, including the famous one of a kamikaze Zero menacing the side of the ship. A note of caution: the 40mm tub numbers shown in the Pontos instructions are for assembly purposes only, and don’t match the actual numbers on the side of the tubs. The latter I found in a forum post on ModelWarships.com.

My 1/200 Trumpeter Missouri took four and a half years to finish. Unlike with my previous Arizona build, I worked on other models (all aircraft) during this time, which helped break up the tedium. To do justice to something this intricate – with P.E. and resin upgrades, there were 6,000+ parts -- you need the hands and eyes of a surgeon. Unfortunately, I don’t possess either, and close inspection of the model reveals small globs of super glue here and there, slightly crumpled radar masts, and misaligned 40mm barrels. Still, I was just happy to make it to the finish line, though, to be honest, I’m not sure if I’ll ever start a project of this size and scope again.

I donated the completed model to the Military History Society of Rochester’s museum, which already displayed my USS Arizona.