Connie, is that you?
So, I spent last week bumming around Connecticut getting some cool behind-the-scenes stuff at Colt Firearms. Part of this involved visiting the State Archives and Library, which has a ton of historically important Colts on display (and more in storage).
How about a pre-Patterson Colt with an integral under-folding bayonet?
Of interest to you guys on display at the library will be this great scale model of the USS Connecticut (Battleship No. 18).
It is just over 9.5 feet long, making it roughly a 1:48 scale whopper of the 456-foot (oal) battlewagon that served as the flagship of the Great White Fleet on its 47,000-mile circumnavigation.
Showing Connecticut in a hybrid configuration that she never sailed in, with her original military pole masts and a later haze grey scheme while lacking her original ornate bow crest, the model was apparently constructed by the Navy around the time of the naval parade for the Hudson-Fulton Expedition in New York in 1909 for shoreside display during the event.
Notably, at the time of the Hudson-Fulton, Connie had been refitted with lattice masts, which she would carry the rest of her career. The masts and new paint scheme, as well as the deletion of ornamentation, came as lessons learned from the recent war between Russia and Japan.
Connecticut (BB-18) in the Hudson River for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, 25 September – 9 October 1909. Note the lattice masts. Detroit Photographic Company postcard photo via LOC LC-DIG-det-4a16075
The model later bounced around Navy museums and archives before being presented in 1952 to Connecticut State Librarian James Brewster by U.S. Senator William Benton (D-CT). Since being in state care, it has been moved several times and underwent extensive cleaning and restoration in 2014, in line with the 100th Anniversary of the Great War.
