Construction of the Revell kit for the USS Evans Alumni Association

USS Evans.

A long time ago in the late '70's I got a Lindberg Blue Devil destroyer kit from a thrift shop. My friend Barry's father, Pat Macciocca, had served on a Fletcher class destroyer in World War II so I decided to finish the model as his ship, the USS Evans. I only could find two photos of the ship, the one at the top of this page and one without her camouflage scheme.

Not having an image showing the starboard side or the stern very well, I guessed at it and simply mirrored the port pattern to the other side.

It was a motorized model and after building it I ran it around Loch Raven Reservoir a few times and then I gave it to Barry's dad, who was quite pleased with it.

In September of 1981 I was crewing on the schooner Pride of Baltimore when Barry came by the boat. It seems the Evans model had been irrecoverably damaged and he had gotten a new kit to replace it. This was a bit urgent because his dad wanted to take it to Alabama for a reunion of the Evans' crew in just a couple of weeks. I didn't have access to materials, or anything else while on Pride so I built it at a friends house near where Pride was docked with what I could manage. The model was basically built right out of the box. Pat was ecstatic and took the model to the reunion.

Months later, when living ashore again, I offered to improve the model with it's correct round front bridge, and more detail, if he could get the model to me. It's then I learned that the model had been left on display on board the USS Alabama in Mobile. Here I was just 22 years old and I had a model on display in a museum, why did it have to be my worst work?

Digging around the Internet many years later I happened upon this photo of the model in it's case on the Alabama. The forward stack had come off and was replaced facing aft, and the model is just wrong. It has the wrong bridge, the hull is shaped wrong, the starboard side camouflage pattern was still just the port side mirrored, and the model is just typical of Lindberg's kits in it's lack of correct detail or any detail at all.

Around 2008 Revell Germany released a 1:144 scale kit of a round bridge Fletcher class destroyer that was far and away a better and more correctly detailed model. I contacted the ship's alumni association and offered to build a correct replacement model using the Revell kit if they would supply the kit and materials for it. It was discussed, and took a while, over a year, to finally get nailed down - but as of this 2015 anniversary of the D-Day landings the kit and a full set of photo-etched details have been ordered and are enroute. So begins my project to build a model the USS Evans that will correctly represent the ship her proud crew served.