The Ship Model Forum

Hello all,

I recently came across the S-Model Casablanca class kit on Hobbyeasy as listed as in stock, so I bit the bullet at around $45 shipped. Shipped quickly on February 21st, arrived to my doorstep in Seattle March 1st.

Pictures of the kit



Instructions are pretty basic


I cant comment on the kit accuracy, I'll leave that up to you all



Detail is pretty good on the plastic parts, flight deck looks pretty good


Aircraft detail seems mostly on par with Trumpeter, though the landing gear is something you'd see on an older Tamiya sprue. F4U, F6F, TBC, and SB2C get both a folded and unfolded aircraft, as well as a single SBD.


Included in a protective box is 2 pallets of 3-D printed parts. The first one includes parts to the island superstructure and mast.


2nd one includes what looks like some flight deck supports, aircraft propellers, and a nicely detailed 5/38 single with rail.


Overall, the kit looks pretty good with plenty of detail. 3D printed parts look pretty good. A bit disappointed only 9 aircraft are included, only decals for CVE-55, and the instructions are pretty bad (at least the island assembly is).

Its great to see the Casablanca CVEs in 1/700 plastic. I believe previously we only had a resin option from Loose Cannon/TOMs, which are rather hard to come by.

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"Also we will never see a 1/350 late war Enterprise from Dragon due to a paralyzing fear of success...." - Heavy Melder

Lots of unfinished model ships + attention issues = A busy slipway where nothing gets done!

Thanks for the review.
Do you know what differences - besides the new 3D Print items - to the 5Star model is?
The injected parts look the same
The instructions look much better

My understanding is the Five Star set (FS700077) is an upgrade detail kit. A bunch of photoetch that replaces about half of the plastic/3D printed parts. As far as I know, you still need the S-Model set as a base. Im not aware of a Five Star set that includes all the plastic.

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"Also we will never see a 1/350 late war Enterprise from Dragon due to a paralyzing fear of success...." - Heavy Melder

Lots of unfinished model ships + attention issues = A busy slipway where nothing gets done!

S-Model had released an earlier version of the same kit without the 3D printed parts and decals:

Review of earlier version of that kit

But for some reason also even without a normal S-Model box

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Glad to see this. I ordered the kit (and the upgrade set) a week or two ago, so still waiting for it to arrive.

Looks like a nice kit!

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-- Scott

CVE-90 USS Thetis Bay Booklet of General Plans (1945) https://archive.org/details/cve90bogp1945v3

When this model first appeared it was mere bagged parts with a sheet of instructions. I remember the beam was to narrow, no decals and some the aircraft were wrong. Interesting that is now being 3D printed. Does anybody know if they widened the beam?

There are still the same plastic parts included, only additional 3D printed parts for some of the details, e.g. the island and the mast.

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wider beam: the beam on my sample, with 3-d printed parts, measures 2,8cm. That comes out as 19,60 meters. Chesneau "Aircraft Carriers of the world..." gives 19,82 meters for the beam. Allow some slack for my measuring method (holding a ruler to the hull), and you are pretty much there.
The flight deck is a very tight fit on the hull. Is this the case for the "narrow hull" sample too?

Regretfully, the flight deck is too narrow by a few millimeters AND incorrectly shaped. Compare the kit's flight deck to a resized photocopy of the drawing of the flight deck from the USS Thetis Bay Booklet of General Plans provided above (p. 7). Resize the drawing so that the photocopy of the flight deck and the kit's flight deck are the same length and you'll see what I mean. For many, it won't matter, but why they got this so wrong, I have no idea. It's a beautiful kit otherwise.

Mike E.

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Mike E.

5starmodel does offer an upgrade set for the Casablanca class CVEs, including a new flight deck.

I believe the PE flight deck in the 5 Star set is sized to fit the kit's flight deck, so it replicates the kit's errors. Anyhow, the kit's flight deck was very nicely done, and not in need of replacement--except to correct the incorrect dimensions. Sigh...

Best,

Mike E.

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Mike E.