by Bill Batross
Scale: 1/720
The Nimitz was launched in 1972 by the United States Navy and with a displacement of 94,000 tons, was the world's biggest warship of the time. She not only had room for a crew of 6000 men, but for about 100 aircraft as well. The cost of the Nimitz was about $600,000,000.00, which means that not only was she the biggest, but the most expensive! Since 1975, the U.S.S. Nimitz has mainly been stationed in the Mediterranean. She has been patrolling the waters for about 34 years and has been keeping us safe through many skirmishes, including Desert Storm and the Iraq war. If that's not a hero ship, I don't know what is!
This model was issued in 1977 and was given to me by a good friend to build. She was manufactured by the Italeri Company and took me about 42 to 48 hrs. to complete. She had a lot of small pieces. I tried to be as realistic as possible with this ship, as to painting just about everything on this historic model as accurately as possible. I even painted the cockpits of the small planes, as well as painting the radar dish that sits on one of the radar plane two different colors (This is what an actual radar dish looks like). The biggest challenge was the mast on top of the island. It had a lot of tiny parts to connect. Surprisingly, the easiest thing to do was the decals; they were a lot easier to put on then I thought they would be! This model was 1:720 scale, which means it is about 18" long from bow to stern. I had to take several pictures of it, just to get it into the camera frame. All in all, I had a lot of fun putting this ship together and I am very proud of it.
Image: Call the ball
Image: Starboard elevator
Image: Island
Image: Bow
Image: Flight deck
Image: Amidships
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