Quite a few years ago I got deeply interested in the U.S.S. Yorktown (CV-5), largely as a result of reading Robert Cressman's book about her, That Gallant Ship. I decided to build a 1/700 model of her. I bought the Tamiya Enterprise and Hornet kits, figuring that the two of them combined should provide most of the necessary parts and the rest could be scratchbuilt or raided from the spares box. The two kits date from the mid-to-late 1970s. By the standards of those days they were state-of-the-art in terms of detail; they obviously aren't any more. But I figured they'd make a good start.
I also bought a set of copies of the ship's "Booklet of General Plans" from the Floating Drydock. Fascinating documents. I took them to the local copy center (this was in the days before affordable home printers with enlarging/reducing functions) and made copies of the deck plans and outboard profile at 1/700 scale.
That revealed a big problem with the two Tamiya kits: the island superstructures were horribly skinny. If they'd really looked like Tamiya would have had you believe, a man just about could have stretched his arms from one side of the island to the other. Once I'd found this problem it became ludicrously obvious to the eyeball, looking at the kits themselves or at photos of models built from them.
I went to work building a revised island, with some plastic sheet spacers to fatten it up, new platforms, and changes to various other details. I got, I think, a pretty satisfactory result. Then I started studying the flight deck, and discovered a new can of worms. The deck had all sorts of detail molded into it - reasonable representations of arresting gear, tiedown strips, etc. etc. Installing the fattened island would wreck quite a bit of that detail, and putting it back would be quite a job. At that point I got interested in some other project, and put the Yorktown aside.
Just a few months ago I read on the Tamiya website that the company was releasing a 1/700 Yorktown. As members of this Forum know well, Tamiya has been producing some beautiful 1/700 kits over the past few years - including revised versions of some old ones of its own (e.g., the Yamato) and of ships that previously were covered in the "Waterline Series" by Fujimi (the Iowa-class battleships and the Zuikaku). The Yorktown announcement on the website had a couple of photos, which showed what looked to my optimistic eye like a new kit - with 1942-vintage aircraft and an island that appeared to be of the right width. (It didn't have the distinctive "gap" in the front of the funnel, but every manufacturer of a Yorktown or Enterprise seems to have missed that; I figured it would be a simple addition). So I called up the Squadron mail order site and ordered one.
The kit arrived yesterday, and when I opened the box I got pretty disgusted.
What I got for my $40.00 is a Hornet kit, minus the flight deck and the B-25s, plus the flight deck from the Enterprise. (Caveat: I don't have the old kits in front of me. But I'm pretty sure I'm right about that.) There are some nice new aircraft (F4F, SBD, and TBD), and a new sprue containing twenty - count 'em, twenty - new parts that are supposed to represent the Yorktown's island. The new island is just as skinny as the old one. (The Hornet island is in the kit for comparison.) And the flight deck details haven't been changed.
[Later edit: I don't imagine anybody's much interested in all this, but for the record...I think I was wrong in this description of the "new" island. On closer examination, I think it's nothing more or less than the original Enterprise island. (That observation is based on memory and a glance at a photo of the finished Enterprise kit on the Tamiya website. I guess my old Enterprise and Hornet are up in the attic somewhere, but I'm not about to go digging for them.) At the end of one ex-Hornet sprue are two new parts: a nameplate reading "U.S.S. Yorktown" and a little piece representing (not very well) the prominent sheet-metal wind deflector at the front of the Yorktown's bridge. Those and the nifty (but no better than Trumpeter's) aircraft appear to be the only genuinely new pieces in the Yorktown kit.]
Neither has anything else about the 35-year-old kit. The 20mm Oerlikons are still represented by little plastic pips molded in with the gun galleries. The pips are supposed to be the gun shields and pedestals. The modeler is given two options for making the barrels: cut them from the little coil of soft wire provided, or from a tiny plastic rod molded on one of the sprues. (The instruction sheet provides the dimensions.) In 1975 (or whenever the originals were released), those "guns" probably were the best in the "Waterline Series" - certainly better than the ones Fujimi and Hasegawa put in their U.S. warship kits. But these days virtually all the 1/700 manufacturers are doing much better. (Take a look at the 20mm guns in the Tamiya Missouri.)
I've studied those photos on the Tamiya website again. I guess my gullible eyes were mistaken earlier; I can't honestly claim that the photos don't show the kit that's in the box.
I'll take the thing to our model club's holiday auction next week; maybe somebody will give me five bucks for it. Tamiya used to have a reputation as one of the most progressive manufacturers in the industry, constantly producing kits that set the pace for everybody else. I guess those days are gone. The firm does produce some of the best kits in the industry, but it also engages in practices that just rip off the consumer. Remember the 1/350 battleships with the metallic boxes - housing 35-year-old kits and selling them for vastly higher prices? This "Yorktown" belongs in the same category.
The same FedEx box contained the "new" Trumpeter "H.M.S. Warspite 1915," which I described in the post labeled "Disappointing 'new' release - I." Oh, my aching wallet.
Another sad aspect of this story is that it leaves some of the most important warships of WWII still uncovered by mainstream plastic kits. Tamiya still lists its Hornet (B-25s, skinny island, and all) on its website, but the Enterprise isn't there. (A site search on the word "Enterprise" brings up several references to the 1/350 CVN-65, and a "No further information is available for this item" for the 1/700 CV-6.) So far as I know, the only decent Yorktown-class plastic kits are the 1/350 and 1/700 Hornets from Trumpeter. (I know they've taken some criticism for their fat bows, but I've seen some pretty stunning pictures of waterline models built from them. At least from the 1/350 one. The 1/700 version seems to have flown into the market below the radar of the reviewers. [Later edit: I found a detailed (and positive) review of the 1/700 Trumpeter Hornet on Modelwarships.com. Don't know how I missed it earlier: http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/ships/cv/cv-08/700-trum/trumpeter-review.html . That site's Gallery section also contains photos of several outstanding models built from the kit.]) The Hornet was sufficiently different from the other two that a conversion would be a challenging one.
To use the same parts in kits representing sister-ships is certainly a legitimate practice. My criticism of this one is that Tamiya (which claims to be the leader in state-of-the-art scale models) is trying to pass off a very slightly modified 35-year-old kit as a new one.
Surely there ought to be a nice, state-of-the-art Enterprise, at least. Trumpeter, are you listening? Tamiya - shaddup. You had your chance and you blew it.