Liberty Ship

No Battle of the Atlantic display would be complete without some sort of merchant ship to represent the thousands that not only served but were lost during the 6 years of the battle. Thousands of merchant sailors served the Allied cause and were exposed to many of the same dangers as soldiers, sailors and airmen of the militaries, but their sacrifices are sometimes forgotten simply because they did not carry arms. The US Merchant Marine alone lost 9,521 men aboard 1,543 ships during the period December 1941 to May 1945. Britain, Canada, France, Russia and other countries lost even more as they served longer. For no other reason, if you build ships, put at least one merchant ship in your collection for these men.

Surprisingly, there aren’t that many kits out there in 1/700 scale of merchant ships, but of course the ubiquitous Liberty Ship is available from two manufacturers: Pit Road and Trumpeter. If you’re willing to build in resin, you can get a few more choices, but they are expensive.

The Subject

Since our display is to cover PQ 18 my first worry was whether that particular convoy even had any Liberty Ships in her group. To my relief I discovered that of the 40 merchants, there were 8 liberty ships. These were:

SS Esek Hopkins
SS Oliver Ellsworth — Sunk by U-408
SS Patrick Henry
SS St. Olaf
SS John Penn — Sunk in air attack
SS Nathanael Greene
SS Virginia Dare
SS William Moultrie

I don’t have any good references for Liberty Ships but I wanted the model to be somewhat representative, not specific. There were 2,751 built during the war, and while all were similar, some had some unique features such as gun configurations, lifeboats, and other minor changes.

Initially I had wanted to paint my Liberty Ship in one of the disruptive or dazzle paint schemes you see in so many photos and videos. Interestingly, most Liberty Ships were painted one color: USN Ocean Gray. To speed construction everything was painted the same color with the exception of the Charlie Noble (galley smoke stack) and the top of the main boiler stack.

To be fair some ships were camouflaged, but that is rare and unless you’re modeling a specific ship (I wasn’t) that was camouflaged, it should be Ocean Gray.

The Model

As mentioned earlier, there are two kits of the Liberty Ship. Pit Road did a model in the 1970’s listed as an AK class ship or a Liberty Ship, depending on the boxing. Tamiya and Skywave also released the kit. It’s a bit rare and a bit expensive, and as I understand it reflects typical Pit Road quality, which is quite good for the vintage.

Trumpeter’s Liberty Ship is the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, a working Liberty Ship that tours the US ports and is currently berthed in San Francisco. The kit is also boxed as the SS John W. Brown, the other surviving Liberty Ship berthed at Baltimore and while the parts are the same, there are obviously two different configurations and some variation that can be built.

Construction was quite easy, and I have to say this is a great kit for first getting into ship modeling in this scale. Detail is excellent, fit is superb and the parts count, while high for this aircraft modeler, is not bad. I didn’t quite follow the sequence, I made everything that I could as a subassembly, painted it and then glued it onto the hull. A small amount of filler was needed along the deck – hull seam.

The instructions would have you paint her in modern colors, as she is currently restored. That’s only accurate for a post war Liberty Ship, not her wartime service. Since I have a couple of bottles of Model Master RAF Ocean Grey enamel, and that color is too blue as the RAF color, I decided to use it as USN Ocean Gray. This latter color is quite a dark blue with a gray tinge to it, according to online sources. Since in 1/700 scale I would normally lighten the color by about 30%, I decided the Model Master color could be okay.

I’m quite happy with the color as it really looks “scale” to my eye based on available color photos of ships painted in USN Ocean Gray. And there are lots of them available.

Painting was almost too easy, I just sprayed it all over. Then I picked out the Charlie Noble and stack in black. The canvas covers under the battens were olive drab, as was ALL canvas during the war, I’ve been told, so I chose a random bottle and picked out the canvas I attempted a wash but it didn’t look right, so I cleaned it off.

Again, as a first kit it’s great, I’ll definitely get another for my shelf.

Thanks for reading.

The Subject

The Model

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