USS Nautilas 571

Yes, Professor, the Nautilus is still tied up at the Submarine Museum in Groton. The Navy has opened up the forward section for touring and there are sailors there to answer questions. Of course, the after machinery spaces are closed off to the public and there is a very large shielding package on the aft end of the boat to minimize radiation exposure from the reactor and contaminated piping. The Navy did a good job in exhibiting it and I highly recommend it and the museum for a look-see.

I got to see the Pitroad kit in 1/350th today.  A different Bill in the club is working on it and it looks pretty good.  I am hoping he has it finished for our Nov meeting in the next couple of weeks.

The Nautilus  has a curious place in the history of plastic models.  As Mr. Cooper noted, those three kits were originally released back in the fifties, before any accurate information about the real ship was made public.  The kits were, in fact, based almost entirely on guesswork.  As I remember, the Aurora designers - probably by pure luck - came a little closer to the truth than the others. 

The Revell version was especially fictitious.  (I'm basing this on Thomas Graham's terrific book, Remembering Revell Model Kits.)  Based on some sketchy plans that had been published in Collier's magazine, it hit the shelves of the hobby shops in 1953, a few months before the real ship was launched.  (The first issue, according to Dr. Graham, was in dark blue plasic, with a clear plastic observation bridge.)  That made it the second Revell warship kit on the market (after the Missouri).  In 1955 a second version of it added a Loon missile and a cylindrical hangar for it on the deck aft of the conning tower - despite the fact that the actual Nautilus never carried any such thing.  The kit mercifully disappeared from the market for a long time, though it was one of the Revell/Monogram "Special Subjects" nostalgia reissues of the 1980s.

The Aurora Nautilus and Seawolf kits (which were virtually identical - and pretty awful) showed up in several different boxes during the fifties and sixties, if I remember right.  I'd forgotten about the Lindberg one till I saw the photo in this thread. 

It seems remarkable, in view of the ship's importance, that, since that rather bizarre burst of interest right before and after she was launched, the plastic kit industry has ignored her.  The last I heard she'd been preserved as a museum ship at the Submarine Force Museum in New London.  (I haven't been to that neck of the woods in quite a few years.  Is she still there?)  It seems like an accurate model of the Nautilus would be pretty popular - and nowadays there's surely no reason why the kit designers couldn't get it right.  Such a kit would be historically significant, easy to build, and a great souvenir for folks who'd visited the ship.  Trumpeter - are you listening?

DanCooper wrote:

Very nice builds. What strikes me is that those are 3 different kits from the same subject, and yet, they look like three completely different boats, but which one looks like the real Nautilus ?

These came out before there were any plans released of the actual sub.  Even the pictures that were used did not show the rear end due to secrecy at the time.

He really liked the fact that each manufacturer interpreted the design differently.

I'm not aware of any Triton "Kit" out there. Maybe the radio control guys at the Sub Committee know of one. I have seen scratch built or contractor built models of the Triton in the Submarine Museum in Groton but I don't think they are available anywhere.  This was a huge boat almost as long as an Ohio boat. Best joke I heard about her was that she was once docked in D.C. on the Potomac as a backup command post????? LOL. Who would run her?? Oh yeh maybe the same top gun crew that ran the Red October.....Only in Hollywood. Actually like the 571 she was the "Pie in the Eye" of Admiral Rickover so nobody complained too loudly. he he ..

But I think it went to the breakers a while ago.. She was not a very good Boat, Kinda like the RAN Collins boats, It's a love hate relationship.

Man, seeing those three models takes me back - I remember building the Revell Nautilus (pretty sure, anyway!) when I was a kid and thinking that the black plastic looked wickedly cool, even with all the glue smears I left on the hull. And of course I devoured the books on the Nautilus' and Triton's exploits, and the whole space program was ramping up for the moon landings ... yeah, a good time to be a kid and to be building models of history while it was happening. 

Is there a decent model of the Triton out there? That transitory period with the changes and evolution to the present day nukes was very interesting. The Triton had two nuclear reactors and a ridiculous radar antenna, not to mention stern torpedo tubes and a bathtub.

Look at the deck lines ... one is tapered like a long elipse, one is straight and the third is flow-shaped.  I think the rivet-counters are going into cardiac arrest ....

Actually none of them is very accurate. They are mixed Nautilas/Seawolf combined into one kinda kits. As far as I know the Combat/Sub kit is the only accurate kit out there.

Very nice builds.
What strikes me is that those are 3 different kits from the same subject, and yet, they look like three completely different boats, but which one looks like the real Nautilus ?

These are nice. Tell him if he wants to do a very good model of the 571 in 1/350 scale and $$ is really not a problem Pitroad/CombatSub does a excellent kit in Resin. It's about $70..

Walt