Interesting new warship kit announcements

Here's a bit of good news on the new kit release front. The Squadron Mail Order website has announced two forthcoming kits. First, from Hasegawa, the old Japanese battleship Mikasa, Admiral Togo's flagship at the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War. The scale is to be 1/350. For anybody interested in the early steel navy period this will be a fascinating project. By coincidence I'm currently working on the terrific 1/700 Mikasa from Sealsmodel. If Hasegawa does at least as good a job as Sealsmodel did, this will be a great kit. I suspect the designers have lavished a good deal of care on it. The Mikasa is an extremely important ship in Japanese history; she is in fact preserved as a museum ship. Squadron hasn't indicated the price yet.

The other announcement is a 1/700 Essex- class carrier, in WWII configuration, from Dragon. Just as Dragon challenged the tired old Revell Arizona and Aoshima Bismarck/Tirpitz, this one clearly has been designed to replace the sub-par old Hasegawa version in the hearts of carrier enthusiasts. Here's the description from Squadron: "...Detailed full or waterline hull. Detailed hangar deck w/interior. Optional position side doors and flight deck elevators. Finely detailed island superstructure, 5" gun turrets, and AA battery Optional radar arrays. Dauntless, Hellcat, and Avenger air group molded in clear plastic. Includes photo-etch deck crew and detail parts. Mkgs for ship and aircraft." Even allowing for advertiser's hyperbole, this sounds like a pretty impressive kit. The price is listed as $31.96 - kind of steep, but consistent with the better 1/700 large vessels these days.