Bismarck

Consider this another vote for Tamiya. You can't go wrong with one of their ships. And I agree with Ric about Trumpeter; I've built their Arizona and Hornet and they're great kits.

I have both the Academy and Tamiya bismarks in my to-do pile. In looking at them, it would say that the Tamiya looks a bit better but not orders of magnitude better.

While a Revell (Germany) New Jersey is not worth buying at all compared to the Tamiya, I would say that if you Academy at a much better price, go with that. If all things are equal, take the Tamiya.

Go Tamiya. The quality of the kits are outstanding. The entire WWII battleship series is excellent. Also don't overlook the fletcher in 1/350 by Tamiya. Its a great starter ship for getting your beak wet.

Trumpeter has also started cranking out unbelievable quality models over the past few years as welll.

Welcome to the world of ship modeling and make sure you visit

www.modelwarships.com

we have a wonderful gallery and forum there ourselves, in fact many of us make this website and modelwarships an everyday experience.

Ric

I've built the Tamiya kit, and it is a great build. The level of detail is good, but to get the most out of the kit you really need to add a Gold Medal Models photo-etch set. The fine rails and other details can't be molded in plastic so they look better with PE. I haven't seen the Academy kit, but there's no reason why it couldn't be as good as the Tamiya kit.

The Tamiya kit is not too hard to build. It goes together in a series of sub-assemblies. The only fit problems are with the deck pieces, they leave a gap at the joins. Apart from that I had no problems during assembly. It was my first ship model too, and I got it together, so it shouldn't be too hard a build. Her's an online build of it:

http://www.rollmodels.net/nworkbench/onlinebuild/Bismarck/part01.htm

hope this helps.