Navajo Fleet Tug
Commander Series Models - 1/350 resin
By: Lamar Jones
A modest review of the new Commander Series Models Navajo Class Fleet Tug. The hull is well done. There is on the second deck aft of the funnel a really serious error--a fiddly over what I suppose was thought to be the engine room, but what is actually the galley area. No ATF had such a structure! On the main deck aft of the correctly placed towing engine is a vertical capstan. No such on the real thing. The ATFs had a large vertical warping winch on the starboard side of the fan tail, but certainly nothing in line with the tow wire. Various hatches on the main deck are not quite all there. Especially missing is the large fan tail hatch over the aft hold, where various bits and pieces of salvage gear were stowed. The bits over the windlass are incorrectly placed. On the ATFs the bits are fore and aft of the winch, and there are only two. The kit has four set on each corner of the windlass deck plate.
Nothing is contained in the kit--no casting--to fair the funnel into the second level of the deck house. A serious omission, I think, but one which is correctable with a set of drawings. The bridge air ports are drilled, but not in line, which while correctable is a bother. The various bitts on the main deck will need to have a plate which fairs them into the main rail, but I understand why this couldn't be part of the hull casting. My guess is that one can fashion the plates and simply cut the bitts off, place the plate on top, and then add the tops of the cut off bitts to the fairing plate. Should be easy enough.
The hull is gracefully cast and the sheer seems close enough to true to please me. The funnel is correctly cast and the rake is OK. There is no support for the ten ton boom, aft on the second deck. Again, drawings will be needed, and these are readily available from Floating Drydock.
This is a cursory review of a new, and to my mind a very welcome kit in 1/350.
The subject is a good one, and the Navajo, later Apache class, are really handsome
vessels, especially when compared with modern naval and commercial tugs, with
some exceptions, of course.
For Lamar Jones and others interested in USN ATFs: The Commander kit will do
for an APACHE-class tug, but not for the earlier NAVAJO-class, which had a very
different hull form, with a lower counter stern. I did a column on the NAVAJOs
in an issue of NAVAL HISTORY several years ago and pointed out all of the differences
between the two classes.
The Commander kit can also be adapted to build a model of the later ABNAKI class, which had a thin cylindrical exhaust pipe rather than the large funnel; the final version on the basic hull design, the ACHOMAWI class went back to having a large (mostly dummy) funnel, but it had a different top to the funnel than did the APACHEs. But a NAVAJO just can't be built from the kit (unless you whittle your own hull).