The Ship Model Forum

Grazie mile Roberto.
A bit disappointing for me, I must say.
It's a bit surprising to see how the British Royal Navy is so poorly represented in 1/350 plastic kits : no carriers except the 1939 Ark Royal, a limited number of battleships...
This is surprising when we see Trumpeter releasing German Nazi Neverweres. One idea for them in 2023 : the super-Bismarck, H Klasse 1/350

Maybe the lower hull of the previously released 1/700 Essex class would fit.

You know, that is a good thought!

Not sure that a lower hull component from a straight-deck Essex class kit would work for an angled deck ship - the SCB-27 conversions included a 5-foot blister each side.

True. I guess it would be a place to start? I’m not the best scratch-builder! Probably getting ahead of myself anyways, since it will likely be a while before it hits the shelves. Especially considering how long the 1/700 HMS Belfast has been in the catalog!

RN in 1/350:
Prince of Wales
King George V
Warspite (by 2 manufacturers)
Queen Elizabeth
Hood
Repulse
Dreadnought (by 2 manufacturers)
Kent
Cornwall
Exeter
York
Belfast
Colombo
Calcutta
Roberts

Plus a couple of Tribals and a V class Destroyer. That doesn't sound so poorly represented in 1/350 plastic to me.

Off the top of my head, I think there are more RN cruisers (7) in 1/350 plastic than there are US Navy cruisers (6): 2 versions of San Francisco, 2 versions of Indianapolis, DesMoines and Salem.

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

+ Cleveland

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A lot of those are duplicates and a couple have dreadful errors.

As a proportion of the wartime navy classes it is small, and it misses out classes whose ships were involved in significant actions.

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From Takom in 1/72 scale:

Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Takom. And I do know how to spell "turret".

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World Wars were fought and won and lost in less time than that!

Martin: Don't forget the Cleveland and Birmingham!

Phil: Phillipe didn't specify that they had to be good, just observed that the RN was poorly served and implied that he meant it numerically... and some of the USN representation is just as shady, so I think we're on reasonably equal footing in that regard.
Let's reconsider this by classes (with an exception for significantly different configurations that share almost no common parts aside from some weapons and fittings), and what injection kits are available (currently available or out-of-production; not counting kits that aren't out yet) and disregarding whether anyone considers a kit good or bad: just considering it "represented":
US BB classes: Pennsylvania (Arizona kit), New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Iowa, Montana
RN BB/BC classes: Lord Nelson, Dreadnought, Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, Repulse, Hood, King George V
That's 6 vs. 7, in RN's favor.

US Cruiser classes: Portland (Indianapolis kit), New Orleans (San Francisco kit), Cleveland, and Des Moines
RN Cruiser classes: C-class, Town (Edinburgh group; i.e Belfast kit), County, York
Tied at 4 vs. 4 Granted, the C class is closer in size to a destroyer and all the USN kits are big ones. Make it 5 vs. 5 if you consider 1942 vs 44 San Francisco and Exeter vs. York as being different enough to meet the class grouping exception noted above.

Carriers.... yeah, quite right on this one; USN kits are mopping the floor with the RN right now. (How well has Ark Royal sold worldwide, I wonder?)

- Sean F.

Martin: Don't forget the Cleveland and Birmingham!

Phil: Phillipe didn't specify that they had to be good, just observed that the RN was poorly served and implied that he meant it numerically... and some of the USN representation is just as shady, so I think we're on reasonably equal footing in that regard.
Let's reconsider this by classes (with an exception for significantly different configurations that share almost no common parts aside from some weapons and fittings), and what injection kits are available (currently available or out-of-production; not counting kits that aren't out yet) and disregarding whether anyone considers a kit good or bad: just considering it "represented":
US BB classes: Pennsylvania (Arizona kit), New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Iowa, Montana
RN BB/BC classes: Lord Nelson, Dreadnought, Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, Repulse, Hood, King George V
That's 6 vs. 7, in RN's favor.

US Cruiser classes: Portland (Indianapolis kit), New Orleans (San Francisco kit), Cleveland, and Des Moines
RN Cruiser classes: C-class, Town (Edinburgh group; i.e Belfast kit), County, York
Tied at 4 vs. 4 Granted, the C class is closer in size to a destroyer and all the USN kits are big ones. Make it 5 vs. 5 if you consider 1942 vs 44 San Francisco and Exeter vs. York as being different enough to meet the class grouping exception noted above.

Carriers.... yeah, quite right on this one; USN kits are mopping the floor with the RN right now. (How well has Ark Royal sold worldwide, I wonder?)

- Sean F.[/quote]
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But the RN has many more classes to be covered, some of the busiest during the war have been missed out.

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Sorry, Phil - please don't misunderstand! I'm in no way arguing against more RN subjects. Far from it! Just pointing out the impressive strides RN representation in 1:350 has come in just the last few years, to the point where it is, by classes available, on near-even footing with USN subjects as far as surface combatants are concerned. Still a great distance to go in terms of carriers, but I'm pleased as punch to see upcoming releases of Didos, Rodney & Nelson, Renown, and Vanguard on the slates of various manufacturers. And if someone releases an HMS Furious - in any of her guises - or an early Town, or a Colony, or a Revenge-class, and I'm all over that action! Bring 'em on, I say!

- Sean F.

Might be a question of scale, too. 1/350 is not as popular everywhere like 1/700 which can be accommodated in most spaces and is cheaper to produce and more affordable to buy.

1/700 has more RN subjects in plastic than ever before. I can say that the Colossus has done well to this point in that scale, and that class is not as glamorous or well known as Hood, Ark Royal or KG5.

Mike Bartel

_________________
Harold

Waouh ! Lots of discussions around my message. I mean the following :

Carriers : nothing else than Ark Royal 1939, and the Airfix Illustrious of the 1980s. I would be happy with a WWII-Illustrious class, or the Colossus class, or the post-war carriers, Eagle, Hermes, Ark Royal of the 1950s-60s. In comparison, there are many US carriers at 1/350 : CV 1-2-3-4-5-6-8-9-(a lot of that Essex class in original version) - 22 - 28 - 11 in final version - 63 - 64 - 67 - 68.
For Germany, apart from Graf Zeppelin, they doubled it (Peter Strasser), and are now proposing some strange stuff (Weser if I remember well the name of something no one ever heard about before)

Battleships : KGV and POW are the same class, even if there are two versions. Idem with QE and Warspite. If you want a Jutland British battleship, you have to turn to Iron Shipwright, which I did. And where are the original QE ships, the R class battleships, and Nelson and Rodney and Renown ?
In comparison, US accounts BB of Arizona, Sodak, Iowa, Montana and Alaska classes, but I agree that we are missing the Pearl Harbor battleships, released only at 1/700. For Germany everything in WWII plus, in the future, a battlecruiser of a never were type.

For the largest and most fighting Navy until 1941, I might have expected more, this is what I was meaning. And I am not British

Cruisers and destroyers : I agree that there now more kits of these types, which are quite new. A few years ago, there was none. So let's hope the future will bring more carriers and battleships of Her/His Majesty.

Overall, the best deserved Navy of WWII is the Japanese one, thanks mostly to Japanese manufacturers (all BB except Hiei, and you can easily build BB Huyga from a Carrier-Battleship Ise kit), all large carriers except Shinano and all heavy cruisers except the lighter 4 Aoba)

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What I find odd is the small number of 1/350th injection moulded destroyer and smaller kits.

Plenty of destroyers, sloops and escorts which fought long and hard during the war that remain ignored.

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I'd love to see more US DDs. Not Fletchers or Gearings. A Sumner would be nice, but we need flush deckers, and all the 1500 tonners and leaders.

Would love to see early war USN DDs in 1/350 plastic.

RH fast minelayers in 1/350 for me - Manxman etc.
HMS Renown would also be welcome.