Reviews : Trumpeter USS The Sullivans DD-537

This is my first Trumpeter kit, and after hearing good things from others about the quality of Trumpeter, I'm a little bit disappointed with this one. It's dated 2005, so it's not a particularly old production run but there are some really awful tooling marks on some of the decks and some fit issues that I would expect from the cheap, old Revell kits. Don't quite understand the logic behind making the 5-inch gun houses in 3 pieces; other than providing more pieces to glue together, what's the point of having to assemble the sides of the houses? Especially when they don't fit/line up well. The same can be said for the superstructure assemblies; all bulkheads are separate pieces so you need to try to glue them all together and on the deck at the same time if you don't want to run into a misalignment problem if you do it in a few stages; it's like trying to make a square out of 4 playing cards and not have any one leaning at all. A simple notch or two here and there would certainly have helped. The 20mm mounts are a bit chunky and appear to be too large, although that's fairly common with smaller ship kits. As for decals and flags, you get the hull numbers, the clovers, the Union Jack and the famous Trumpeter 50-star WWII US Flag. So if you are really looking for accuracy you'll need to find the 48-star flag yourself. Also would have been nice to have some signal flags to run up the halyard. All that said, this kit does have some redeeming qualities. There isn't much flash at all. The instructions are clear and parts are included to build Sullivans in either her '43 or '45 configuration. There is also some really nice detail with this kit. Despite the gripe with the 5-inch mounts, they at least have some detail and aren't a one size fits all as a few of them have the blast hood atop the housing. Anti-skid walkways are clear and not too thick. Depth charge rack are nice (although in 2 halves...why??), you can even see where the depth crank goes! The torpedo mounts, k-gun racks and throwers, life rafts and searchlights all have some nice detail. Even the molded hatches on the bulkheads are fairly decent. I bought the Tom's PE set to give the kit a boost where needed. Overall, I think there's more good than bad with this kit and anyone looking to build one of the fine Fletcher class destroyers would find this one suitable.

The kit itself is acceptable on a basic level. The instructions were easy to follow, the parts went together well, and the basic details of the ship are all there, so at the very least it can be considered a functional kit. One nice thing that stands out about this kit is that the ship can be built in either its initial configuration with its full 5x2 torpedo armament and early-war AA suite or in its late-war configuration with its reduced torpedo armament and reinforced AA armament. This means that you can use this kit to (somewhat) accurately portray pretty much all of the iconic Fletcher-class destroyers such as the USS Johnston, Hoel, Kidd, and so-on without any major modifications. Unfortunately, the kit falls apart in the detail compartment. To be frank, the fine details of this kit are simply unacceptable for a 1/350 kit tooled in 2005. The main guns, superstructure, AA suite, radar/FCS set, and basically every single other detail that isn't the basic outline of the ship leaves much to be desired when compared to almost any other kit from around this time. The AA armament in particular is laughably bad, with the 20mm guns included in the kit being horribly out of scale and lacking detail, and the 40mm guns somehow being less detailed than their 1/700 scale counterparts found in Trumpeter kits from the same year. It's as if they took an already mediocre 1/700 mold and up-scaled it to 1/350 scale. The ship's deck pieces also have this obnoxious looking raised line that is meant to represent an anti-slip surface for the crew to walk on that looked so bad that I just completely sanded it away before painting. Most if not all of these issues can be fixed with aftermarket parts, but getting all of the necessary parts would likely end up costing 2-3x more than the kit itself. Overall, this kit is fine if you just want to make a basic 1/350 rendition of a late-war Fletcher-class destroyer, largely on account of this being one of the only two readily available 1/350 Fletcher kits on the market as of 2024. For anyone that wants to make a faithful kit that looks good on a closer look, be ready to spend quite a bit of extra cash on aftermarket parts.

I was disappointed with this kit. It reminded me of models that I used to build in the 1960s despite the fact it was released in 2005. Many of the parts do not fit together very well and there are missing guide pins. The Deck non-skid is molded to the decks and is too thick and is a challenge to remove. Some parts have mold marks on them that need to be addressed. Many of the detail parts such as the 40mm gun Mk-51 directors and radars are poorly rendered. To build a proper Fletcher this kit needs add on detail parts. I used various parts from Gold Medal Model's Fletcher detail photo-etched brass set, Infini Model's Fletcher mast detail set and Black Cat model's 3D printed mid war Fletcher detail set. I would only recommend this kit for somebody who is starting out in our hobby or for an experienced modeler who is prepared to heavily modify the kit.

compared to Revell instructions these instruction were lack luster and bit confusing. i saw a 43 and 45 w Japanese symbol and didnt quite understand till i did bow small guns in both 1943 and 1945 configs and had to pull the 45 config off its housing. my ship ended up being a mash of 43 and 45. also a lot of bad molding. in one of torp racks was trying to cut plastic between when i snapped one off. so i made it look like it was firing a torp. it was a hard model because of directions, and size of the ship and parts and will take responsibility for what's my fault. but wouldn't recommend it to anyone however unless Revell came out w a 350 scale model for the Sullivan's.

Another very fine kit from Trumperter, the deck detail was very good for being such a small ship. Hard to believe the Fletchers were our top of the line destroyers in WWII. Very easy to work with and with the add on of a photo etch kit yoou can add as much or as little detail as you wish

Very good detail, easy to follow instructions and with a little bit of patience and imagination the finished model is superb

A fine tribute to the brothers that died together on the same ship during WWII