WW2 submarine question

Get the Revell kit. The lindberg kit is what a kid builds for his first model (prior to taking it out back and shooting it up with his BB gun).

The answer is C.) none of the above. Seriously, the Lindburg is abysmal, while the Lionfish is passable. The Lionfish can be greatly imporved with a set of resin guns and a resin conning tower conversion by Nautilus Models

These are available in 3 Gato and the Balao configurations. See my build of the Lionfish as USS Blenny at:

Tom Dougherty ( snipped-for-privacy@aol.com)

I think I know why that is. According to a FSM from about four years ago, the Gato started life in 1945 by a company called Varney and the molds were aquired by Lindberg in the 1950s. It's state of the art, just sixty years out of date.

-- John The history of things that didn't happen has never been written. . - - - Henry Kissinger

Hmmm... looking through the big Squadron catalog, I find:

11 Russian submarine kits (of all eras) 7 Italian submarine kits 5 Japanese " " 5 Polish 3 American 2 Chinese 1 French

and 42 German submarine kits! (Every one of them from World War II.)

Please tell me I'm not the only person who thinks there's something seriously screwed up with these numbers. As many kits of Polish as Japanese subs? And more than of American boats? More German WWII than everything else put together? (Weren't there at least a few German subs before or after the Nazi era?) And didn't the UK ever operate any submarines at all?

seriously screwed up with these numbers.<

I agree. The biggest problem is the lack of good kits of the US Fleet submarine and the British submarines, such as the T-boats, in polystyrene. The only large scale fleet boast are the execrable Lindberg kit an dthe passable Revell Lionfish, which needs the Nautilus Models upgrades to be decent. Soviet WWII submarines are also under represented. Fortunatley. there are excellent resin kits of the T-boat and fleet boats available.

There is an enormous concentration on German U-boats, which have this almost romantic mystique about them. While the Type VII and Type IX were very successful in the early part of the war, they eventually took a greater than

75% loss rate. The later war Type XXI, often cast in terms of a supersub that would have returned the Battle of the Atlantic advantage to Germany, had serious engineering flaws that would have caused great operational difficulties. But the German U-boat (Type VII, IX and XXI), particularly the Type VII, is well represented (7 kits that I'm aware of). The I-Boats were almost totally ineffectual, due to the way they were used by the Japanese Naval Command.

That's NOT a complaint; I only wish there were more submarine models of other countries available. This disparity may represent the demographics of model kit makers. The Germans and Japanese are quite active and produce very good kits. The former Eastern bloc, such as Poland, is another hotbed of kit production.

Tom Dougherty ( snipped-for-privacy@aol.com)

Which is why the great hope of British navy modellers is that the Poles kit more British subjects transferred to them during the war. The nicest British carrier kit is the Heller Arromanches.

"Joe Jefferson" wrote

Sounds like you've uncovered the perfect market opportunity for your new model company!

KL

I don't own a model company, and I wouldn't have the faintest idea of how to design a submarine kit. And I'm not likely to spend much money on research material when there aren't enough kits out there to make it worthwhile (unless one is obsessed with Nazi Germany, which I'm not).

If you are willing to entertain resin, I would suggest that you check out the fine line of submarine kits offered by Yankee Modelworks. See:

Tom Dougherty ( snipped-for-privacy@aol.com)

Entertain? Do I have to sing and/or dance for them myself, or just stick a movie in the DVD player?

Seriously though, I've never attempted a resin ship, but those kits do look nice. And they're not ridiculously expensive, like the resin aircraft carriers I've seen.