| USS Carp was built by the Electric Boat
Company in Groton, Connecticut and commissioned in February 1945. The Carp
was active off the coast of Japan during the latter stages of the war.
She survived the war and was based on San Diego as flagship for Submarine
Division 71. To extend her usefulness Carp was upgraded in February 1952.
The changes are pretty obvious to anyone familiar with Submarines. Carp
was typical of the Electric Boat fleet snorkel conversions with a new larger
sail that bristled with periscopes and all kind of apparatus. She also
had distinctive domes on the deck and lower bow. These changes allowed
the Carp to remain active into the early 60's first holding the line and
then training new submariners for the new classes of subs that were replacing
the old WW2 conversions.
Many of you are familiar with Mario
Grima. His Model Ship Gallery is full of all kinds of ship subjects.
But one look will tell you that he prefers subs. In his quest to build
more sub types, he has take the basic Revell Lionfish and Flasher kit and
produced his own conversion set. |
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| SAIL |
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| The sail is cast as one piece and is not bad as far as
casting quality goes. The sides are not perfectly smooth, but rather have
an "oil canned" appearance typical of the sail sides on the real subs.
The surface detail is pretty good as well with large raised rivet heads
all over. You will have to do a little touch up on the casting, but not
too much. |
Click images
to enlarge |
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| BOW REPLACEMENT |
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| Revell originally released these subs back in the 70's. The kit
is supposed to represent a typical wartime Gato class sub. But it is not
very accurate. So one of the things in the set is this bow replacement.
It requires you to cut into the plastic kit and graft this section in.
This is not an easy task, but if you are willing to do the work, the parts
are here to help make it right. |
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| SMALL PARTS AND DETAIL ITEMS |
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| The other parts include the new bow deck, and the domes. The casting
on these items varies, some will need a little more cleanup than others.
Some of the parts are cast on a resin wafer and will have to be separated
with a little flat sanding. This is best achieved by taping a piece of
sandpaper on a hard flat surface and gently sanding the part in a circular
motion until you have sanded away the base. This is best done with wet
sandpaper to control the resin dust. |
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This is truly a multimedia kit with a wide variety of parts made of all
kinds of materials. Rather than recommending that the builder fabricate
items from his spare parts box, Iron Bottom Sound provides them for you.
I especially liked the way some of these parts were taped to the sheet
with labels to identify them. |
| INSTRUCTIONS |
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| The instructions are three pages that show the various
steps to grafting these parts onto the Revell kit.
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| Conclusions: |
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| This EB Sail Set among others is available direct from Iron
Bottom Sound on their website for $39.50. You can even order online
and pay via Paypal. I have seen earlier IBS sets, and this one is
a great improvement over them. It still some problems, mostly with the
casting of the small parts. But it provides you will a solid basis to build
your own Electric Boat sub conversion. Mairo has done extensive research
on this subject and other more evolved Guppy type conversions and offers
the fruits of his research in a variety of conversion kits. So whether
you want to go with a full conversion or just a sail, Iron Bottom Sound
has something for you. |
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