USS Herbert J Thomas DD-833

USS Herbert J Thomas in Hong Kong Harbor circa July 1969. There's an aircraft carrier anchored behind us making the Thomas appear to have 3 mast. The ship was built in 1945 in Bath, Maine. I served aboard from October 68 to October 70. The ship was decommissioned in December 1970 and placed in the inactive fleet reserve until 1974 when it was transferred to the Republic of China where is served another 25 years. In 1999 it was sunk as an artificial reef off the coast of Taiwan.

Having built a number of reefers for Tom Miller's layout in Portland, Oregon, I was invited to attend a VIP tour before he had his open house for the narrow gauge convention. Tom has an impressive collection of custom built model ships which planted the idea of making the destroyer I was on in the late 60's. The Thomas was a gearing class destroyer. There were  99 gearings built between 1944 and 1946. Most had minor upgrades, namely to the radar systems in the 1950's. In the 1960's 98 of the gearings went through a FRAM upgrade. FRAM meaning Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization. There was a FRAM 1 and a FRAM 2 modification. The Thomas received the FRAM 1 starting in 1964 at Mare Island, California. The overhaul was completed in 1966. The FRAM upgrades were to remove the old WW II weapons and replace them with "modern" anti submarine warfare weapon systems and "state of the art" radar systems. The ships were striped down to the main decks and all superstructures rebuild. This time in aluminum to keep the weight down for all the new weapons.

The Thomas was selected to receive a one of a kind FRAM re-build. It  received what was called a STOPS system. STOPS stands for Shipboard Toxicology Operational Protective System. The hull was pressurized with revolving doors fore and aft and double hatch pressure doors along the port and starboard sides and no portholes at all. If you look at the picture, you can see glass bubbles on either side of the bridge. All other destroyers, gearing or another class, have open bridge wings for the lookouts. On the Thomas, the bridge was wider and closed for the pressure system. Hence the bubbles for the lookouts. The ship had several other changes made to the superstructure, mostly to accommodate the STOPS build out. You can Google the ship and read about it. You will see many sites that talk about Project Shad. Rather a sad story of what the government did to our young men while serving their country. I won't get into that here. I'll leave you to read about it and form your own opinions. I made contact with Carl Ellis who served aboard a couple years before I did. He was aboard when the ship was involved with Shad. A couple of his friends have died from complications of those events. Carl also built a model of the Thomas and the two of us have been "comparing" notes of our time in the navy.

So, enough of the boring stuff, lets get going..................

Quality model ships, like our quality model trains are expensive. I did a lot of searching and found an affordable kit manufacturer in AZ. The company is BAD Ship Models. They have kits of the Gearing Class Destroyers in WW II as built and post FRAM 1 modification. So in the spring of 2012, I purchased the FRAM kit and was on my way. When I received the kit, I found that many of the detail castings and other parts to be a bit rudimentary for my taste. Started searching the net and found a couple high end parts manufacturers. Namely John R Haynes, Tom's Model Works and Scale Shipyard. Every month I sent off an order to one of the manufactures buying replacement parts. I ended up having more dollars in parts than the original kit. Many of the parts I had to make as the Thomas was a one of the kind and no one was going to make parts that only one destroyer in the whole fleet had aboard it.

I started construction of the hull in November 2013. BAD models are a plank on frame type of construction. The kit came with a keel and 7 frames. Well, that wasn't enough frames for a guy that builds "rugged" 1:20 scale rolling stock. I added another 14 frames to the keel. To save room on the page, I am making the pictures a thumbnail that you can click to enlarge and then press your back button to return.




 
I made a frame first. Then rubber banded the sub deck to it. The frames are glued to the sub deck after that and the balsa planks glued on. For whatever reason, I didn't take any pictures of that process. Trust me, it took quite a while to attached a couple hundred 1/8" by 3/8" balsa sticks. Once they were all on, I filled all the gaps with wood putty and sanded smooth. Then added 8 to 10 coats of fiberglass resin until I had a thickness of about 1/8". Then I painted the hull to specs. I added about 5 lbs of  #5 lead shot between the frames for ballast. It will never see the water but I didn't want it to be top heavy.


Above are pictures of the propeller guards and the running gear. The running gear came with the kit but the prop guards that came with it were vacuum formed to be reinforced with wood dowel. Wasn't going to cut it with me.

When I get to pictures of the superstructure, there'll be guns, radar and other pieces that you'll think got magically built or they came pre-built. So, here are pieces I made or castings from John R Haynes that I super detailed.
This is a T-Mark 6 Fanfare device. It was used as a noise maker that was towed behind the ship if a noise seeking torpedo was fired at the ship. The trailing devices had noise generators inside that would, hopefully, draw away a noise seeking fish. Most of that type of torpedo was discontinued by our enemies after WW II. Every non US or UK sub we encountered was Soviet and pretty sure carried active sonar searching torpedo's. Glad we never had to test this thing!!


I couldn't use any of the superstructure material as the kit is based on the USS Joseph P Kennedy DD-850. Also a gearing but very different from the HJT (Herbert J Thomas). I use 1/8 poplar plywood for all bulkheads and skinned it with .010" styrene. Squadron Green puttied the joints, sanded and painted. The stanchions are 1/16" brass rod with etched brass stanchions solder to them. The little eyes will support the three stanchion cables of the main deck.

More main deck structure. The bridge is starting to come together as is the rear structure. The orange colored castings came with the kit. Some will get used, some not.