USS Independance by Bill Kluge 

This 1/700 diorama of an under way highline transfer uses the old Skywave/Pitroad USS Independence and the USS Drexler, a Sumner class DD from Albatross. The DD is a very basic kit, so spare bits and pieces, such as guns, torpedo tubes, boats and anchors from the Pit Road weapons set that came with CVL (2 were included) were used and were a great improvement over the destroyer kit parts. Photo etch details and crew figures are from Tom’s. The Independence uses PE from the Gold Medal Models CVL set, which does wonders for this kit, and the liberally used crew figures from the Tom's set really bring the ship to life. Curiously, the only two aircraft included with the kit, a TBD Devastator and an F9F Panther, never flew from her deck. In their place, I used TBMs and F6Fs from a very old Hasegawa Essex kit. I started with a dozen or so aircraft, and after stripping old paint and cutting off wings for folding, seven usable aircraft survived. Both ship's camouflage and markings were painted with Model Master enamels. Limited rigging was done with stretched sprue.

The seascape was an experimental process, using acrylic modeling paste to make the swells, covered with heavy body acrylic paint, applied like cake frosting, to replicate the waves. The base color is a mixture of blues, greens and greys (an ultimate variety of colors can be created this way), with white acrylic blended in where its required.

So here we see one of the air wing's lucky flyers returned home after a dip in the sea (I wonder how much ice cream a JG pilot was worth?). Considerable fiddling with single PE crew figures, spare bits of brass, and stretched sprue finally produced a close enough representation of a poor soul getting the ride of his life in the boson’s chair.