USS Johnston - Full Scale Replica

[Servo]

The Destroyer Which Fought Like a Battleship

 

"The ship which won the war in the Pacific"

The USS Johnston was one of 175 Fletcher-Class destroyers built by the US Navy during WWII. It was a highly effective design, combining speed, maneuverability, and firepower. This came at a cost - the Fletchers were completely unarmored, nicknamed Tin-Can destroyers. However, this cost would ultimately be a surprising benefit in the Fletchers’s hour of glory - The Battle of Leyte Gulf.

There, the Fletchers USS Johnston and USS Hoerl, an odd collection of destroyer escorts, and six escort carriers took on the Japanese surface fleet at its strongest - and won.

I can’t do the story justice, but I can recommend reading the story for yourself here, or if you want a more entertaining version, Drachinfel has made an absolutely superb retelling of the story here.

After learning the story of the USS Johnston and USS Hoerl's bravery in combat, I immediately wanted to recreate the Fletcher-class destroyer for myself, and I wasn't going to let some silly things like never-having-built-a-boat-before or lag-so-bad-the-game-runs-at-one-seventh-speed stop me.

The end result is the craft you see here. A functional, 1:1 scale replica of this important piece of U.S. Naval history.

The destroyer is recreated in all of its 114m-long glory, complete with five 5in turrets in swiveling and elevating mounts, four anti-aircraft guns, two twin-mounted secondary cannon, and ten torpedo tubes. Additionally, I couldn’t let any detail on the superstructure, radar, or rigging go unappreciated, so it’s recreated in as much detail as I could as well.

And if that wasn't enough to satisfy you, I've packed twelve goliaths into the hull for an accurate 30 knot top speed (well, almost accurate).  

 

DOWNLOAD LINK:

https://kerbalx.com/servo/USS-Johnston

Instructions for operation are on the KerbalX page,

Happy Sailing!

~Servo