USN 5" 38 Cal. Dual Gun Mount
Reviewed by Timothy Dike
December 2013
| The 5 inch 38 caliber was most common medium weapon in the US Navy arsenal during world war two. The twin mount was found on everything from destroyers to aircraft carriers. | |||||||||||
| RESIN PARTS | |||||||||||
| The gun mount is cast on resin sprues with detail that has to be seen to be appreciated. The mount is cast with the sights on the sides, recessed doors and sharply defined gun port openings. The latter are designed to to accept guns with or without blast bags. This version does not have the front mounted turret stop and shell extraction chutes found on some DD mounts. The casting is flawless with only a small resin runner on the bottom backside of the turret. |
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| This set comes with optional gun captain hoods, blast bags and barrel pivots for the brass barrels. These allow for full rotation of the barrels. When using the cast blast bags the gun elevation is fixed. Casting is nicely done and the parts fit is good. |  |
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| METAL BARRELS | |||||||||||
| Two types of gun barrels are provided; long ones for the non-blastbag version. Shorter ones are provided for use with the blast bags. Both have nice drilled out ends, good taper, and mounting pins for ease of install. The cool thing is you can use the extra barrels on other projects! |  |
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| PHOTOETCH | |||||||||||
| A single brass photo etch fret is supplied with the optical sight for the Gun Captain, rungs, and blast bag frames. The blast bag frames are seldom provided for these mounts and a nice option to have. |  |
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| INSTRUCTIONS | |||||||||||
| The instructions show the assembled mount with numbered leaders that indicate where each part goes. These are adequate for this kit and the builder should have no problems figuring out where things go. |  |
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| CONCLUSIONS | |||||||||||
These are very nice examples of the Twin 5" mounts. The detail and options make them an excellent alternative to the plastic ones found in current Battleship and Carrier kits now on the market. They are very affordable as well with this set of five available at Freetime Hobbies for $18.00 US. Veteran Model products are available at the following shops:
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