VICTORY SHIP MODELS , WHERE ARE THEY?

Loose Cannon makes a Victory in 1:700 scale

Not a Victory but a Liberty Ship.

Liberty Ship S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien

Smaller Scale 

Eric... 

 

I don't think it's ever going to happen tankerbuilder. If you want bigger than 1/700, you have to scratchbuild. We are lucky we even have the old Revell flat bottomed kits for the T-2. C-3, and the AP transport version of the VC-2.

Fred

tankerbuilder wrote:

They have been converted for many roles but does anyone make one ,NOPE !! The VICTORY and the c3-2 were converted to passenger ships , ro-ro ships et al . Here in the states it seems to be impossible to find certain ship types even in wood .

Bluejacket makes a 1/192 Victory ship in wood:

http://www.bluejacketinc.com/kits/victoryship.htm

 

As Ed said, in 1/700 your ONLY choice is the Loose Cannon Productions kit, and it is a nice little kit that even a beginner can handle (ask me how I know this ...). The price is reasonable at $45 and the PE fret has everything you need, including the cargo boom rigging. It's showing as out of production right now but shoot Dave Angelo an e-mail and he can let you know when more are coming. It builds into a pretty nice kit - I made one for my Dad, who served on two Victorys during WW II:

I agree, though, it gets a little frustrating that those of us who prefer to build ships that aren't bristling with guns have to take the few but generally quite good offerings of the independents or pray that, someday, one of the major companies will make a plastic kit in something other than one of the weird box scales.

Heller have produced models in 1/400, often rather good, of pretty much every significant French warship of CL size or larger, as well as some smaller vessels, laid down since the mid-1930s. Not all are in production at the moment, but most can be found on eBay wthout too much effort. Quality is variable. The Jean Bart, for example, is very nice, the Charles de Gaulle rather less so.

Italian ships are scarcer, but Tauro do a 1/400 kit of the Pola-class CA in a couple of versions, and Trumpeter have recently announced a 1/350 kit of the same subject. Also, Italeri do a 1/35 kit of the explosive speedboat thingy, as well as the Italian human torpedo, both of which are rather good.

Cheers,

Chris.

 CHRIS , As I said earlier ,The fact is ,it,s the lack of NON-COMBATANT ships that irks me . Think for a minute , Has anyone done a reasonable size (1/400 or bigger ) ANDREA DORIA , or even the STOCKHOLM ? How about the liner NORMANDIE ? The ISLE DE FRANCE and CARPATHIA ,where,s the CHRISTOFORO COLUMBO ? How about The various GREEK liners and better versions of the S.S.UNITED STATES And the AMERICA ? These ,plus the backbone ships built for the war and then rebuilt or changed back to liners like the MATSONIA and LURLINE . Ships like this AND the various VICTORYS in civilian service . These ships were and in some cases still plying the seas and no one seems to care . Yes there is a VICTORY in very large scale I believe by midwest but ,whose got room for a model almost five feet long!! I HEREBY PROMISE TO be a VERY SHARP THORN IN THE MFG ,S SIDES ON THIS ISSUE , care to join me . Good ,LETS GO GET EM !     tankerbuilder

I take your point, TB, but the problem is, it seems to me, that liners are large. Yoiu've only got to look at the RoG 1/400 Queen Mary 2 to see that, and there are now sevral cruise ships of similar size, either in service or projected.

Tooling up for such a kit requires considerable outlay, to be repaid over a number of decades. Hence, large-scale ship kits tend to be of iconic vessels, often national symbols of the country in which they were built. Hence Airfix producing the Queen Elizabeth, QE2, Mauretania and Canberra in the 1960s. All iconic ships and national symbols. One thing about modern cruise ships is that few of them have any history to them, another thing that attracts modellers, and which is more often associated with warships.

That said, it does seem odd that Heller never did a kit of the France or the Normandie in 1/400 (or any other scale, for that matter). Maybe it was because the size of the hull halves would have been towards the limit of what was achievable in injection-moulded plastic, back when they weere expanding their ship range in the 1960s and 70s.

One possibility - maybe the more family-friendly cruise lines, such as NCL and Royal Carribean - could commission kits of some of their ships to be sold in their gift shops, like Shaw Saville did of Airfix all those years ago. There again, they'd probably be more likely to be small-scale efforts, partly because of kids' short cocnetration spans, and partly because of the practicalities of getting, say, a 1/350 Ventura back home on the plane at the end of the cruise.

Maybe we should campaign for RoG to do a 1/350 Bremen or Europa, complete with nude sunbathing decks and then get White Ensign or GMM to do an etched set for it, complete, of course, with passenger figures!

Cheers,

Chris.

The unpleasant truth is that civilian ships have never been popular subjects among the plastic kit manufacturers.  I'm sure virtually any ship enthusiast would be able to compile a long list of liner, freighter, tanker, and other merchant ship kits that really ought to be out there; in fact the gaps in coverage far outnumber the kits that have been released.  I wish that wasn't the case, but it always has been - and I don't see much cause for optimism.  Fortunately the situation looks somewhat better in the world of resin kits.

I remember some years ago the excellent British manufacturer White Ensign Models let it be known that, having been quite successful with its 1/700 and 1/350 resin warship kits, it had been thinking about branching out into merchant ships.  Apparently quite a few people had offered suggestions in that direction.  So White Ensign made an offer:  if 25 people agreed to pay for it in advance, the firm would produce a 1/700 R.M.S. Aquitania.  (That's the only British four-stack liner that isn't represented - or nearly represented - by a plastic kit.  The only others were the Lusitania, Mauretania, Olympic, Britannic, and Titanic.)  That was quite a few years ago - and there's no sign of a White Ensign Aquitania.  That pretty clearly, if sadly, says something about the market.

Very true. Some five years ago, WEM listed an etched set for the Heller/ Airfix 1/600 QM2 as 'coming soon'. I spoke to John and Caroline about it, and they said hey needed 50 expressions of interest to make it worth their while to proceed. I expressed great interest, and said |I'd certainly be good for a set.

Five years later, I'm still waiting. It's still in their on-line catalogue (just checked, product #PE 635), but I've long since laid in supplies of extra 1/600 railings and ladders, just in case.

Cheers,

Chris.

 This is what I was saying . The ships I want are NOT available in a scale I can work in , the smallest being 1/350 ,and that isn,t easy .   TANKERBUILDER

To be honest, TB, it's not going to happen. As the Professor and I have noted, the market simply isn't big enough to provide much in the way of merchant ships in 1/350 or larger.

That said, there are some options, albeit not, perhpas, proper 'ships'. Revell Germany, for example, provide a well-detailed 1/160 model of the Rhine steamer 'Goethe', an ocean-going tug in 1/200, and a cople of rescue vessels in 1/72.

Cheers,

Chris.