Between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II the
navies of the major powers modernized their battleships, substantially
rebuilding many of them. This was necessitated by the Washington
Treaty of 1921 which restricted the number of ships each navy could
maintain as well as their replacement dates.
The United States Navy undertook the reconstruction of
it's ships starting in the mid-1920's and continuing into the mid
1930's. During this time the appearance of all of it's remaining
battleships, except for the big five ships of the TENNESSEE and COLORADO Classes was significantly changed.
TEXAS and NEW YORK were reconstructed from 1925-27,
changing their appearance dramatically. Their cage masts were replaced
by tripods, and two funnels reduced to one. After that, periodic refits
made slight, but noticeable changes.
Navis makes the TEXAS (NM 305) as the ship was
originally built. And Neptun makes the ship as she appeared in 1945
(N 1308). But no model exists of the ship as she appeared between the
wars. To get that, I converted the Neptun model, "retrofitting" it to
1936.
The photos below show the Neptun model in it's
factory form, then with replacement parts fitted, and finally as
modified to 1936. Subsequent to my doing this conversion, Neptun
released NEW YORK (N 1308a) circa 1944, which has the earlier form of
tripod mast aft. This model could be used for a conversion also, but a
warning: Conversion of either model is not an easy task, and I would
not recommend this to anyone but an experienced modeler.
Paul Jacobs
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