Fletcher Class Destroyers

An informative reference for modelers with a brief history of the U.S. Navy ship, its design aspects, and a survey of model kits and reference materials.

The ShipCraft series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeler through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sister ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring color profiles and highly-detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modeling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic survey of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references—books, monographs, scale plans and relevant websites.

The subject of this volume is the Fletcher class, often considered the most successful of all American destroyers. Built to the first design that was freed from treaty restrictions, they came into service near the beginning of the Pacific War and fought with distinction through all the most ferocious of the campaigns against Japan.

They were constructed in large numbers, with several variations, and their popularity is reflected by the wide range of available kits.