USS Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG-1002) is a Zumwalt-class destroyer of the United States Navy, it is the third and final ship of the class. Lyndon B. Johnson was launched in December 2018, christened April 2019 and is currently undergoing sea trial. The Zumwalt-class destroyers were originally planned to be a 32 vessel class, however, this was cut over time to only 3 vessels due to cost overruns. The class can be easily identified due to their unique outlines made up of the composite deckhouse, enclosed turret housings and tumblehone wave piercing hull.
The kit
This kit was released around mid 2021, and is a reboxing of the 2014 U.S.S. Zumwalt DDG-1000 kit (#7141) with some new parts and a new decal sheet. Being a reboxing, the issues that were part of the original 2014 offering are still present here (for details please see below). The kit comes in a top opening box, composed of 5 sprues all in grey plastic, 1 display stand, 8 pieces of 3D printed parts and 1 small fret of photo-etch. The decal is printed by Cartograf and has excellent details. Dragon has labelled this as a 2-in-1 kit, with USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) and USS Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG-1002) having the same configuration, and USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) having different parts installed.
Dragon’s adoption of 3D printing to upgrade an existing kit makes for exciting possibilities of other upgraded kits and additional variants, however, the quality of the 3D printed parts leaves something to be desired (details below).
Dragon has broken the sprue for the upper hull to make it fit into the box. The origin of the kit can be clearly seen on the sprue labels.
The surface details are very crisp, however, the radar-absorbing material (RAM) panels around the hull are grossly over-scaled. To me personally, it’s at the point where it looks a little silly, and they will require a considerable amount of careful sanding if you wish to fix them up.
Sprue B contains the lower hull and the rest of the deckhouse. Having build the original 2014 offering, I was really hoping to see changes made to the bow sonar array, as it is rather fiddly and will require considerable amount of filling and sanding to produce a good finish.
Sprue C (x2 in box) contains the various lower hull parts and turrets for the ship.
Sprue D is an updated version of the common US Navy modern warship equipment found on many Dragon modern US Navy ship kits, the noticeable addition being the MQ-8B Fire Scout. Only the MQ-8B and SH-60 are used from this sprue. I feel that Dragon could benefit from replacing/upgrading this sprue as the equipment on this sprue (MQ-8B not included) are lacking in detail and look to be rather poor in shape.
The new additions to this release are 8 pieces of 3D printed parts that contain a new deckhouse roof, as well as sensors and secondary guns for USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000). Unlike other 3D printed kits I have seen, the parts here are not as crisp and have a rough overall look to them.
Close up examination of the deckhouse roof reveals that the radomes are not exactly round and main mast is sadly bent. Unfortunately, the bent mast is not an isolated incident and is in fact a result of the way Dragon packed the 3D printed parts (see photo below).
Here are 2 other sets of 3D printed parts for this kit, the main mast are all bent due to where Dragon decided to seal the packet, causing the mast to be crushed.
The small fret of photo-etch provides the landing struts and rotors for the MQ-8B.
Typical of Dragon 1/700 offerings, a display stand is included with this kit. I have always been a fan of the way Dragon marks out the bottom of the display stand to allow the modeller to easily determine which holes to drill open.
Markings
Dragon has kindly provided decals for all three vessels of the class.
- USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000)
- USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001)
- USS Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG-1002)
Conclusion
While it is good to see an updated Zumwalt-class kit hit the market, it is somewhat disappointing to see no changes made to the hull parts that was first offered in 2014 which had some fit issues, as well as the oversized RAM still being present in this new offering. Whilst on paper it is a reasonably straight forward build with not many parts, I would not recommend this kit to beginners, as it will require some amount of attention and care during building. For those that are willing to put in the effort, it should build up to a rather eye-catching model.
This kit should be available from most online retailers, however, I have personally found Dragon kits to often be suffering from availability issues so your mileage may vary.
Valky's Scale Models 