New Orleans Class Cruisers

Book excerpt: The ïShipCraftÍ series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeller through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sister-ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring colour profiles and highly detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modelling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic survey of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references - books, monographs, large-scale plans and relevant websites. The subject of this volume is the seven-ship New Orleans class, probably the US NavyÍs most hard-fought heavy cruisers of the War _ three were sunk in action but others survived massive damage, and by 1945 three out of four of the navyÍs most decorated ships were of this class. Although designed within treaty limitations, they proved powerful and well-balanced ships, and their unparalleled fighting record makes them popular modelling subjects.