PT by Italeri; 1:35

An 80' Elco PT boat in 1:35 scale is 27.5 inches.  That's not necessarily a big PT kit. The big advantage is in the customizing parts available for 1:35 scale armor models.  Dumas has the PT 109 in 1:20 the scale, a 4 foot model.  Midwest Products has a more accurate version of the PT 109 in 1:24 scale (40 inches long) and 1:16 scale (60 inches long).  Frank's Mosquito Boat Hobbies offers 1:16 scale kits of the PT 159 and PT 598 .  MicroGlass has the largest PT hull available, a 1:10 scale fiberglass hull for an Elco 77 footer; almost 8 feet of model.  The MicroGlass hull comes with plans; everything from the deck up must be scratchbuilt or modified from existing kits or items. 

Andy from steelnavy message board announced three new releases that utterly disappointed me. these are:

MS 61 Motosilurante 1:72 (12/2006)
Elco 80´ Torpedo Boat PT-596 1:35 10/2006)
S.L.C. "Maiale" und MTM "Barchino" 1:35 (09/2006)

Well they may not be perfect but there is both 1/32 and 1/72 kits of elco 80 on the market for many long years and neither one are lacking the potential of becomng good showpieces. I saw it many times both in Turkey and in the many photos from various online modeling archives. İn that situation I simply can't understand the issue of another elco 80 in a rather irrelevant scale (the established FAC injection molded scale is 1/72 as we know all)

second disappointment is about the italian FAC. Well, I am truly not able to understad the logic behind the selection of an apparently german S-boat copy as the first depiction of an italian MTB in injection market. I wonder what flaw did İtaleri menagers find in the hugely elegant and successful native italian MAS designs. And I need to make you remember: the most succesful MTB of history, and a true pioneer, the MAS 15 of first world war (and its equally important class of boats) is still waiting to be covered as a plastic model subject.

Only truly good news is the italian naval special operations team.

I hope that big injection tycoons will someday start to take account the true expectations of the increasingly dwindiling and equally specialising ship modelers society which, as far I'm involved and concerned, looks for new classes of ships rather than superficially different variants of the same boring subjects.

 The various 1/32 and 1/72 releases of the Elco PT boat have all been of the 80 foot PT103 class, also known as the "early war" class.  There were two other classes of 80 footers, know as the mid-war and late-war versions.  The PT 103 (early war) class had the starboard .50 caliber gun mount even with the front of the cockpit windscreen.  On the PT 314 (mid-war) class, the starboard 50 mount was moved aft about 3 feet to improve visibilty for the cockpit crew.  On the PT 486 (late war) class, both .50 caliber gun mounts were tiltedforward to give the gunners a better arc of fire.  The new Italeri release looks to be a mid or late war version. 

In response to your last comment about the big injection tycoons and specialising ship modelers - I rarely build any models from kits.  Most of my creations are built from commercially available fiberglass hulls and fittings or are complete scratchbuilds using various plans and photos.  

I'm really envious of the master modelers like you, who have the talent for serious scratch building. Yet, as far as I'm concerned, I'm shackled to the injection molded market and this market's current barrennes and its habitude of continiously repeating itself  is really embarassing to me .

Don't worry about being "shackled" to injection molded kits.  After you build a few, you'll develope a feel and technique, combined with a will to build what you really want, to scratch or kitbash a subject that interests you.

Scott

the good thing is it will be a new tooling so detail should be a bit better than the older kits(in theory anyway) also their kit price maybe better than some of the others out there

The MSRP in the Italieri catalog is almost 90 Euros -- or more than 107 USD at todays exchange rate.  Granted that someone will sell it for 60, but ....

"damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead !"

-David Glasgow Farragut.

I was stationed in USS Farragut DDG37, and was constantly exposed to that quote, or as we would call it, misquote......it all has to do with punctuation, the actual quote was "Damn!!!, the torpedoes!!!!, ...........Full speed ahead !!!!!!!!!

HMMM... a 1/35 PT Boat I might have to get one as it's more in my price range than the Dumas kit  then of course, I'll have to deck it out like I'm planning to do with the 1/72 Revell (PT-109)  Someone'll have to do up the 4M-2500 Packards tho....

Hippy-Ed wrote:

HMMM... a 1/35 PT Boat I might have to get one as it's more in my price range than the Dumas kit  then of course, I'll have to deck it out like I'm planning to do with the 1/72 Revell (PT-109)  Someone'll have to do up the 4M-2500 Packards tho....

 

Ed it's a warship not a hod rod  

DURR wrote:

Hippy-Ed wrote: HMMM... a 1/35 PT Boat I might have to get one as it's more in my price range than the Dumas kit  then of course, I'll have to deck it out like I'm planning to do with the 1/72 Revell (PT-109)  Someone'll have to do up the 4M-2500 Packards tho....   Ed it's a warship not a hod rod

DURR, it was the Hot Rod of the Pacific swift & fast as it went into Harm's Way...

This is a very good day.  I'll have to have one of these for sure!