Liberty ship model project

Liberty Ship Model

Building the S.S. John Randolph

(UNDER CONSTRUCTION)

The S.S. John Randolph was one of 2,710 Liberty ships completed during the frenzied U.S. shipbuilding programs of World War II. Of those, 253 were lost - sunk by enemy action or from the normal hazards of being at sea, a numbing 9 percent loss rate. If you went to sea in a Liberty ship - especially from 1942 to mid-1943 - your odds of completing more than one voyage were not that great.

She was a standard EC2-S-C1 cargo vessel, laid down on July 15, 1941, at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyards in Baltimore, Md., and launched with little fanfare on Dec. 30, when Hull No. 0019 slid down the ways and was formally christened the S.S. John Randolph (a noted Congressman and Senator from Virginia). Things happened quickly after that. Completed on Feb. 27, 1942, by May she was in eastbound Convoy PQ-16 as one of the first Liberty ships to make the dreaded and hellish convoy run to Murmansk, Russia, as the United States strove to shore up its understrength ally. From May 24-30, 1942, German aircraft made 245 bomb and torpedo attacks against PQ-16, sinking eight and damaging four out of 36 merchant ships (1). The John Randolph was lucky, weathering the hurricane of steel the Nazis threw at her (that I was able to discover).

Her luck ran out on the trip back. On July 5, 1942, while transiting the Denmark Strait near Iceland, westbound Convoy QP-13 was groping through thick fog when it ran into a newly laid and inaccurately charted Allied minefield. The John Randolph was one of four ships lost; five men died either in the initial explosions or the scramble to abandon ship (2). She lived less than 5 months, but in that time the John Randolph did her duty, ferrying vital supplies for the war effort as part of the greatest industrial build up the world has ever seen.

I singled out the John Randolph because she seemed like a representative and nominally historic Liberty ship; it would also give me an opportunity develop new skills by showing a heavily-weathered and well-used vessel with the decks covered with all manner of cargo, plowing through the stormy North Atlantic.

The plastic kit (No. SW2500) is Skywave's 1/700 scale Liberty ship; actually it's a navalized version of a Liberty ship, hence the AK-99 moniker on the boxtop. The U.S. Navy needed lots of cargo ships, and being the Navy, they added stuff - primarily two more 20-mm gun positions on the midships superstructure, which was also enlarged aft; more substantial masts for all the signal flags the Navy likes to use; a searchlight platform on the funnel; and an additional armored crows nets on the No. 3 kingpost. Some of these were easy enough to scrape or chisel off; some I missed (the extra 20-mm positions); and some were due to (again!) inadequate research, in this case the cutout in the bulwarks at the aft deckhouse. That did not become a standard feature of Liberty ships until mid-1943.

With the usual ton of reference photos in hand (but as noted above, not thorough enough research), I set to work. The model itself goes together fairly quickly, but as usual I took the roundabout way, getting very small-detail oriented. The scuppers along the sides of the hull had to be bored out with a No. 75 drill. As did the portholes, and new portholes had to be added in the correct places.

Then there was the weird armor plating. Liberty ships were built fast and cheap; steel was not something to be wasted. Swiping an idea from the ever-inventive British, the U.S. added extra armor around the bridge/radio room and gun tubs with the same stuff they surface roads with - asphalt. Mixed with granite chips. And held in place with metal bands and metal fasteners. It looked very weird, but it was better than plain quarter-inch steel. Here are a few construction shots:


All of the scuppers along the edge of the main deck had to be bored/reamed out with a small drill bit. The moldings in the kit are quite good.		Portholes had to be added along the sides of the main deck level of the superstructure, and on the front as well. And yes, they are crooked - you should always either pencil a line or use tape to make sure the holes line up!

Front of the superstructure shows where I drilled and filed out the bridge window opening, replacing it with a very special piece of clear plastic, and added a thin piece of sheet styrene and small styrene disks made with my Waldron punch to simulate the added asphalt armor.		Side of the superstructure, showing the area where armor was added. The penciled oval is where a door goes, but I forgot that paint was going to cover that up. These styrene disks are too big, but were as small as my Waldron miniature punch-and-die set could produce. (I now have the sub-miniature set as well).

Adding thin plastic strip around the various gun tubs, to simulate the bands that held on the asphalt 'armor plate' on Liberty ships.		A bonus shot, my snazzy and well-equipped, highly organized work bench (insert laugh), showing the major subsections before painting and final assembly started.

As you can see, a lot of drill work was required so holes looked like holes instead of recesses in lumps of plastic. It takes time and a steady hand, but the end results are worth it. In a scale this small, you can't do much with the details, so it's the little things that can add up into an interesting model.
I wasn't able to find out what the John Randolph carried as deck cargo on that first Murmansk run (didn't want to spend months waiting for the National Archives to ferret it out) so I improvised - and threw in a little of everything! Boats, all kinds of vehicles, sewer pipe, aircraft ... one thing about the Liberty ships, anything and everything was piled on top as deck cargo once the holds were full. I found photos of Libertys carrying locomotives, landing craft, semi-trucks, an entire tugboat (seriously) and anything else you could think of.
I also used some different colors for this model - the more I looked at it, the more I felt that the Flat Gull Gray (Testors Model Master 1930) I'd used on the two Victory ship models was too light. I wanted something a little darker, but not so dark that it robbed the model of all visible details. I settled on Navy Aggressor Gray (Model Master 1994) and this time did the hull, decks and superstructure all the same color.
To break things up color-wise, the P-40s were painted in dark gray Schwarzgrau RLM 66 (Model Master 2079) to simulate the protective coating that airplanes riding as deck cargo got. Other small deck and ship equipment items were painted Dark Gull Gray (Model Master 1740) to make them stand out a little. The Lend-Lease 'Russian' GMC trucks were painted Afrika Corps khaki (Model Master 2098) to set them apart from the other vehicles; they also got red star decals. The halftracks, jeeps and weapons carriers were painted several shades of olive drab. The motor launches did end up in Flat Gull Gray (gotta' maintain some consistency). Hatch covers were again painted RAF Interior Green (Model Master 2062), but a couple of them were darkened with brown paint to indicate 'newer' canvas; all were then weathered with a light wash of acrylic black paint to simulate wear and tear. I was pleased with how that effect turned out.

Weathering the ship to make it look rusty and abused was done mostly with drybrushing - dabbing just the end of the brush in the paint, wiping most of that off on a paper towel, and then either 'stabbing' the brush at the deck or scrubbing it to put down a mottled, uneven, but very light coat of paint. You have to be careful, go slow and use a light touch, or you end up with dark blobs of paint that look like ... dark blobs of paint, instead of the rust effect you'd hoped for. (PRACTICE this on some scrap plastic before trying it on a model. Trust me on that one).
I did not to use my Rustall weathering set because quite honestly, I've never been able to get a really thick coat of rust on something with it. The colors I used were Testors rust (1185), flat brown (1166) and orange (1127) and Model Master Rust (1785). Of those, the flat brown looked the most like rust when it was drybrushed on the decks or streaked down from the scuppers along the sides of the hull. Using the different shades and sometimes overlapping them helped give the uneven appearance of real rust. The orange was used in only a few spots, very tiny dots to represent fresh rust, which once dry was then drybrushed over with one of the brown shades to mute it down.
It took several evenings before I was satisfied, but I think the end result looks good, especially at normal viewing distance. After I 'rusted' the decks, I masked off several areas and painted them with a different shade of gray to make it look like the deck crew was at least trying to stay ahead of the problem; Dad told me that unless they were in port, the crew never went over the side to paint the hull, it just got rustier and rustier until the ship went in to drydock.
The picture of the rust on the port bow also shows the one major structural modification I made. I wanted my ship to be listing (leaning) wayyyy over to one side, after recalling Dad's vivid stories of 40 and even 50 degree (or more!) rolls while on Victory ships, which were a lot more stable than the Libertys. I took a strip of 0.125-inch thick styrene and glued it along half of the hull lengthwise after roughly shaping it, then smoothed out the joint with Tamiya putty and sanding sticks and painted the new plastic red (Floquil Boxcar Red 110074) to represent the below the waterline hull. When all was done, it gave the model a pronounced list to the right.
The other major challenge for this model was water - for the first time, I was going to try and put a waterline model on an 'ocean' base ... and naturally I wanted to make it harder by trying to model the big waves of the stormy North Atlantic. There are tons of how-to's about this on the Web, so I read up and then went to the local arts and crafts store and bought:

A small tub of Liquitex acrylic gloss heavy gel artist's medium;

A tube of Liquitex acrylic matte gel medium (wasn't sure which one would work better);

Liquitex brand acrylic artist's colors in 2 oz. squeeze tubes - phthalocyanine green, phthalocyanine blue and titanium white. Get acrylic paints, not oils ... unless you like waiting a month for it to dry (ask me how I know).

Since the display case base was black, I scrounged some black styrene sheet for testing various 'ocean' color combinations. The experts at this said the Atlantic is bluer than the Pacific, and the North Atlantic would have a gray tinge to it, especially in the winter/spring. I finally settled on 3 parts blue, 1 part green and 20 or so drops of dark gray acrylic paint for each batch. I masked off the edges of the base, sanded it roughly to give it some 'tooth' and then put down a couple of coats of my ocean color with a wide flat brush.
When the paint was thoroughly dry, I started on the waves. First I cut a template of the bottom of the hull out of some thick plastic stock, so I could sculpt the waves around that shape without having to worry about getting acrylic gel on the model. Then I laid down several thick, parallel lines of gel at an angle to the base (it looks weird if everything is perfectly squared up), let them dry thoroughly, then added more gel, gradually building up each line of 'waves' until they looked about right (this is all very subjective, but it is my model, so I get to decide what looks 'right'!). The gel is water soluble, so I applied it and shaped each wave with a wet, broad-bristled disposable brush, trying to get the uneven look of the ocean.
The gel dries to a milky/clear finish; you can kind of see where more needs to go. When each application started to get tacky dry, I 'stippled' the surface by jabbing it lightly with the stiff-bristled disposable brush held perpendicular to the gel, giving it an uneven finish (big waves aren't smooth). When doing this, you have to remember that the wake from the stern of the ship will be almost flat for a distance behind it. Looking at color photos of ships under way in various kinds of seas helped me get a picture in my mind of what it should look like when done.
After the waves were where I wanted then, I got a broad, smooth brush, mixed more of the ocean color and carefully painted the surface. Move the brush slowly to avoid bubbles in the finish. I also mixed some slightly lighter and darker shades of the 'water' color and applied them in irregular patches so the surface wouldn't look so monochromatic. Very small amounts of the titanium white were drybrushed along the tops of some of the waves, or in the valleys between them to represent breakers and streaks of foam. The wake along the sides and aft of the ship was mostly titanium white, heavily stippled and with a few splotches of very light blue or blue-green, with more white drybrushed over the top. I did not, as some suggest, coat the entire surface with Future floor wax to give it a glistening shine - to me it looked fine as it was, with Future drybrushed over random patches. As you can see from the pictures, it turned out OK - for a first effort!
In some respects I simplified the rigging of this model by putting all of the cargo booms in the stowed position (at the tops of the kingposts instead of horizontal to the deck) because all of the hatches were going to be covered with cargo. After experimenting with my Waldron miniature and sub-miniature punch and die sets, I found a diameter that seemed to look the best for all the pulleys (blocks in sailor talk) I needed to make. After punching out a bunch from .005 sheet styrene, I stuck them to a piece of blue painter's tape, painted them gray, let them dry, flipped them over and painted the other side.
While they were drying, I made the 'cables' by stretching out lengths of sprue over a candle until I got very thin diameters. These were colored with a permanent black Sharpie marker and allowed to dry. I also painted lengths of .025 styrene rod my chosen gray, measured how long the booms needed to be (the two on No. 2 kingpost are a little shorter) and glued them in position so I could measure how much space there was between the end of each kingpost and the tip of each cargo boom. Be sure to use your calipers! This gave me how long each 'run' of block-cables-block had to be.
When everything was dry, I lined up 6 pulley halves on a piece of tape, cut off the required lengths of blackened sprue and attached them with super glue. Each block requires two lengths of sprue parallel to each other. Before the glue dried I made sure the sprue 'cables' were parallel and then tapped another pulley half lightly down on top. After that side was dry, two more block halves were added to the other side to make a complete assembly. Ten sets were needed for the cargo booms. I prefer stretched sprue for rigging because 1) It's free, 2) I can get relatively thin diameters that look to scale, and 3) It's stiff, so there's less worry about it sagging after installation. I also used stretched sprue for the radio aerials.
When the model was almost done I decided to add a barrage balloon to the mix. Some were included with the Skywave Beachhead Vehicles set, I found pictures of Murmansk convoys using them, so I figured what the heck. The only question was, how were they rigged? Research revealed that, you guessed it, no one was really sure. A Liberty ship volunteer in San Francisco said it looked like a cable was run from one of the winches at No. 5 hatch to a pulley on the No. 3 kingpost and then to a bracket on the top of the mast ... which wasn't going to work for me because the display case I bought only had a couple of inches of clearance at the top.
So I compromised and added a hawser reel to the stern, aft of the 5-inch gun platform. A length of 30-gauge wire proved sturdy enough to hold the plastic barrage balloon, so a small hole was drilled in the deck at the base of the hawser reel to insert one end of the wire into. The balloon was painted with aluminum (Testors 1181) to mimic the aluminum-doped fabric of the real balloons. A coat of semi-gloss over the aluminum toned it down and evened it out. Although not 'scale' as far as the length of the cable goes (2 inches [117 feet] instead of 17 inches [1,000 feet]), it still looks pretty cool with the clear plastic display case top in place. Other little insane detailing bits included:

Scratchbuilding the lifeboat davits out of plastic rod, and then gluing the lifeboats on so they hung at the correct angle to reflect the ship's roll to starboard (lifeboats were always kept swung out in combat areas, for a quicker escape);

Cutting the wheels off the four trucks on No. 1 hatch, and replacing them with plastic disks to look more realistic; the rest of the trucks had a square gap filed in the solid front and rear wheels so they would look more three dimensional.

Adding a short piece of round plastic rod to the left side of most of the 20mm cannon to represent the ammunition drum;

Painting olive drab 'canvas covers' over the engines of some of the P-40s;

Adding cable stays to the funnel (but not all 8, not enough room!);

Drilling out the spaces between the webbing in the bottoms of the six rectangular rafts on the aft superstructure;

Adding four crew figures. In weather as bad as what I depict, nobody wanted to be out on deck any longer than necessary (Can you find all of them in the photos?);

Drilling out the waste discharge ports on the port side at the waterline;

Adding some soot stains to the top of the superstructure mast, to reflect the coal-fired propulsion of Liberty ships

Adding a rim around the anchor hawse holes with 30-gauge wire formed around the correct sized drill bit.

Is this an exact replica of the John Randolph on that first Murmansk run? Of course not. I missed some details (filling in the aft bulwark cutouts, for instance) and some things I had no way of finding out, like what her deck cargo load was for that trip.
When all is said and done, however, I believe this model is a faithful representation of a Liberty ship doing what it was designed to do - haul the 'bullets, beans and bandages' that our fighting men needed across the oceans of the world. Here are a few more shots of the finished model, showing some more of the detail work:

Here is a fairly complete list of all the added bits:
Gold Medal Models

Photoetched fire hose racks and watertight doors for all decks, deckhouses, etc. (No. 700-22).

Forward draft marking decals (No. 700-1D). I forgot the aft ones ...

American flag decal (No. 700/350-1D).

Red star decals for some GMC trucks (No. 700-3D).

Tom’s Model Works

Used most of the Liberty ship photoetch set (No. 708); the liferaft racks defeated me, so I used the bracing from the PE fret with the kit's plastic racks. The boom collars were too small for the .025 plastic rod I used for booms.

Skywave/Pit-Road

20 2 1/2-ton GMC trucks, 5 Dodge weapons carriers, barrage balloon and white star decals for some vehicles (Beachhead Vehicles, kit SW-400).

Extra anchor at No. 5 hatch, hawser reel at stern, 4 oval life rafts (Equipment for U.S. Navy Ships WW II, kit SW-1000).

White Ensign Models

2 White halftracks (No. DM-7043).

4 Willys jeeps (no longer made).

5 P-40 fighters (No. WEMAS-7162) with photoetch landing gear (No. PE-715). Fragile items like propellers, wingtips and stabilizers were usually removed and crated separately for aircraft carried as deck cargo, which is how I depicted mine.

5 25-foot motor launches (No. PRO B011), bought for another idea that didn't pan out.

Photoetched oars for forward lifeboats and tillers/rudders for aft lifeboats (No. PE-739).

Loose Cannon Productions

8 lifeboat falls from leftover photoetch.

Evergreen Scale Models

Various sizes styrene for scratch building (No. 100, 101, 175, 211, 219, 9002, 9009).

Deck cargo of pipe (No. 221), with the ends bored out with a No. 80 bit, painted steel (Testors 1180), weathered with Rustall and glued into pyramidal stacks.

Imex Model Co.

Display case, No. 2510. I like these because they are cheap, stackable and the clear plastic is fairly distortion free.

One final note about the U.S. Merchant Marine in WWII - a lot of people at the time characterized these men (and a few women) as slackers, draft dodgers, or worse. But when all the numbers are added up, the Merchant Marine had a higher casualty rate than any branch of the U.S. armed services, including the Marines. In 1942, at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, 4,985 Merchant Marine and Armed Guard died at sea - a rate of almost 100 men per week. Looking at it that way, the saying "Freedom is not free" rings very true.
Today there are only two Liberty ships in their original World War II appearance, the S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien at San Francisco and the S.S. John W. Brown at Baltimore. Both are fully operational and go out on regular cruises into San Francisco and Chesapeake Bays, respectively.
The others are all gone.
(1) Some records say 30 ships, with five sunk and four damaged.
(2) Some records indicate the John Randolph's back was broken by the mine; the forward part was being salvaged but broke its tow and ran aground at Torrisdale Bay, north Scotland, where it was cut up for scrap in 1952.
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This page was last updated July 1, 2007.