Need help IDing some old built ship models

EPinniger wrote:

I'm looking for help identifying some model "shipwrecks" I've recently acquired: I bought these "for a song" on eBay (US) a couple of days ago. As the seller does not ship to the UK I've had to route them through a friend in Colorado, so they may take a while to reach me. I mainly bought the lot for the two ships at the top of the photo. I think the lower 2 are Revells' 1/375 USS Montrose/Randall attack transport, and 1/720 Hipper-class cruiser, both of which (cheap and widely available at retail here in the UK) I already have as kits. (Though the USS Montrose might have potential for conversion into a T3 transport or a post-war merchant ship?). The small sailing ship at the top seems to be a two-masted schooner/cutter-type ship in a fairly large scale. I think this is either Revell's "Yacht America" or Pyro/Lindberg's schooner "Sandpiper". The spars and sails (some of them at least) appear to be included in the pile to the right of the hull. I think I can see some moulded plastic ratlines on one of the broken masts attached to the hull (this may help identifying the kit, as not all manufacturers used these), and possibly a couple of small cannons forward just aft of the catheads. The second ship from the top I -think- is Revell's 1/320 "Forrest Sherman"-class destroyer.  However there are a few other old kits of post-war DDs in this scale range, including Monogram's USS Halsey and Ramsey, so I'm not totally sure, not being very knowledgeable about post-war ships in any navy (even RN)! Anyway, any help with identifying these would be greatly appreciated!

Well, you are pretty much on the money in your IDs, or so it seems to me. The Second ship is definately the Forrest Sherman also sold as the John Paul Jones. The Third ship is also the Randall/Montrose. The last ship was sold as Hipper, Prinz Eugen and Blucher. It doesn't really match any of them very well but that's what it was sold as. The top ship has me mystified as I can't really tell what it is. WS

I would doubt very much that the top one is the America, simply because I have never seen a kit that did not replicate the round cockpit she had.

Yankee Clipper

I'm not sure, but I think the one at the top is the ancient Aurora Cutty Sark.  I haven't seen that kit in many years, but I vaguely remember two things about it:  the lines were distorted so the after part of the hull was too fat, and the hull halves were molded in green.  The deck furniture in the photo (the deckhouses, etc.) appears to be generally right for the Cutty Sark (though rather severely distorted), and the size of it, relative to the other three models, looks about as I remember the Aurora kit.  The more I look at the photo, the more firmly I'm convinced that that's what it is.

I can relay the information from Dr. Graham's Remembering Revell Model Kits about the other three.  The second one from the top is the U.S.S. Forest Sherman, originally released in 1958 (with the kit number H-352) and re-released under its original name the same year with the number G-359, as the John Paul Jones in 1961 (H-430), Decatur in 1962 (H-430), Forest Sherman in 1968 (H-459), John Paul Jones in 1972 (H-309), and Forest Sherman again in 1973 (H-463).  It's a nice old kit.  Slice off the molded-in, solid guard rails and it's a good basis for a serious scale model.

The next one is the attack transport, originally issued as the Randall in 1956 (kit number H-329).  (Dr. Graham says they picked that particular ship because she had starred in the recent movie "Away All Boats."  This one has some personal sentimental significance for me; my father was an officer on board another Haskell-class APA, and I vividly remember when my brother spotted the add for the newly-released kit in Boy's Life magazine and the whole family drove to the local hobby shop to get one.  I built it quite a few times over the years.)  It was reissued as the Montrose four times:  in 1960 (H-380), 1968 (H-452), 1972 (H-452 again), and 1979 (2503).  Dr. Graham's coverages stops in 1979.  I recall the kit reappearing again in the Revell-Monogram "Special Subjects" series in the mid-eighties, and I believe it's been issued fairly recently by Revell-Germany with the label "Randall/Montrose."

The German heavy cruiser at the bottom appeared initially as the Prinz Eugen in 1967 (H-481), and was reissued as the Blucher in 1974 (H-490) and the Admiral Hipper in 1975 (H-490).

I suspect those Revell kits have appeared in Europe under different numbers and at different times - and, again, Dr. Graham doesn't provide information about their reappearances after 1979.

Hope that helps a little.

 

Thanks to everyone for the information. Glad to hear the "Forrest Sherman" is what I thought it was.(Though it looks like this model is going to require some serious repair work, part of the mast and many of the smaller fittings seem to be missing)

The sailing ship is definitely not the Aurora Cutty Sark, though, as I have the SMER re-issue of this kit (originally bought as a source of a hull and parts for "kitbashing") and it looks nothing like this:

The Aurora kit's hull/deck lines aren't very accurate, but they do at least look roughly like the Cutty Sark, or at least a clipper, and the deck furniture is not the same.

I was sure that the model in my lot was a small ship of some kind, as the hull has the distinctive "teardrop" shape of a schooner and the remains of the masts (attached to the deck) look quite thick - suggesting a largeish scale - and there appear to be only two of them. But it is definitely not the Aurora Bluenose, as I have the Hobbycraft retooled re-issue of this kit, and the deck furniture is totally different - or the Pyro Gertrude Thebaud, which as well as having a different deck layout has a narrower hull.
Are there any other plastic kits of small 19th century schooner/yacht-type vessels like this?

You're right that it is also definitely not the America, as I did a search for photos of the Revell kit, and the hull lines and deck furniture look nothing like it. The Pyro "Sandpiper" and revenue cutter "Taney" also look very different from the kit box art I've seen.

One quite distinctive feature of the model is the head rails (is this the correct term?) at the bow.

Well, the Smer Cutty Sark and the mystery model in EPinniger's first photo certainly aren't the same.

I retain a faint memory (very faint - and now I'm starting to question whether it may be pure halucination) of an old, old plastic Cutty Sark kit with a teardrop-shaped hull.  (It was so obviously wrong that I recognized it as such when I was in elementary or middle school.)  Note that the damaged model in EPinniger's first photo has the same basic deck layout as the Cutty Sark:  raised forecastle deck, a rectangular deckhouse between the fore and main masts, another one between the main and mizzen masts, and a low, roughly trapezoid-shaped deckhouse on the raised poop.  But the hull is ludicrously wrong for the Cutty Sark.

I continue to think the model in the photo may indeed be the awful Cutty Sark that my senile memory is dredging up from my long-distant childhood.  I can't imagine who, other than Aurora, might have made the kit I'm remembering.  But that Smer kit certainly does have the look of an old Aurora kit - including the stand.

I guess I'd better withhold further speculation until EPinniger has his purchase in hand, and can take a good look at it and relay any revelatory details to us.

Hi all,

 it so happened that I just bought the Aurora Cutty Sark on ebay (not really knowing what I was actually buying...)

This looks very much like EPinninger's ship, just that my unfinished kit is missing all the deck installations that are visible in Epinniger's photo. So it seems that the Smer kit is not really a re-issue of the old Aurora kit?

SD 

By golly, it looks like I may not be as crazy as I was beginning to think.  Let's withhold judgment on whether EPinniger just bought an Aurora Cutty Sark or not until he actually gets the thing in hand.  But it's looking more likely.  Sir Drake's certainly has that "teardrop" shape that I remember (and that bears no resemblance to the real ship).

This brings us to the interesting question of what the Smer kit's origins may be.  It actually looks like a rather nice kit; all the basic shapes seem to be about right.  Revell has issued a couple of small versions of the Cutty Sark.  One of them is a reissue of the Imai one in 1/350; the other, which appeared in about 1978, is (I think) about sixteen or eighteen inches long.  I wonder if the Smer one could conceivably be it.  But I've never seen a kit from Revell (or anybody else, for that matter) with the "shrouds and ratlines" cast in that unusual circular pattern.  And that stand in EPinniger's photo certainly looks like the kind that used to come in Aurora kits. 

Trivia, but most interesting.

Well, thanks for the information and photos! It certainly looks like this... thing... is what I've got in my lot of built models.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit disappointed, as I was hoping it was one of the numerous kits of small ships produced by Pyro, Lindberg, Aurora etc. - all of which, like most kits from these manufacturers, are very, very hard to find in the UK or Europe other than by paying over the odds from US sellers (I know I sound like a broken record on this subject, but it is annoying).  Small ships like this, both naval and civil, have always been my favourite sailing ship modelling subjects. (Even with 19th and 20th century powered ships, my main interest, I prefer modelling destroyers and smaller to BBs and CVs)

As I'm not really familiar with any of these kits - in some cases I haven't even seen the box art - I wasn't able to immediately tell whether the ship in my lot was one of these or not.

I really wonder whether the designer of the moulds for that old Aurora kit had the slightest clue what the Cutty Sark, or any clipper, actually looked like! Distorted hull shapes might be more forgivable (in a 1950s kit at least) for something like a 15th century galleon, but in this case the real ship actually exists.
On the subject of the SMER kit, the hull mouldings in that look very reminiscent in moulding style of other Aurora kits I've seen, such as the privateer "Corsair". I wonder whether Aurora re-tooled their Cutty Sark kit some time in the 1960s, and SMER's kit is made from the "newer" moulds"?
On the other hand, the scale of the SMER kit is about 1/220 (not 1/180 as shown on the box), the same as the smaller Revell kit. But I've seen the latter kit built up, and I remember it as being much more finely detailed than the rather crude and basic mouldings in this kit.

Looking at it, though, I also can't help wondering whether it has some potential to make (with a lot of kitbashing, and probably some reshaping of the hull) a model of something like a naval schooner or cutter. (I have a huge collection of sailing ship parts and fittings, including masts and yards, in my spares box)  

Still, at least I've got the Forrest Sherman, another fairly rare kit (even if it will require a lot of repair work and scratchbuilding) and a USS Montrose which surely has some kitbashing/conversion potential.

I have to say I've never heard of Aurora taking the trouble to modify/improve a kit.  Oops - come to think of it, some of the old Aurora WWI airplanes, on 1/48 scale, got modified to remove the molded-in insignia on their wings and fuselages.  (Those were originally intended to show the builder where the decals went.  Ironically, those textured outlines actually made it more difficult for the decals to stick.)  I guess it's conceivable that Aurora completely changed its Cutty Sark kit, but I doubt it.  I must have bought mine in the very late fifties or early sixties, and it definitely was the one with the distorted hull.

But the stand in EPinniger's photo of the Smer kit certainly does have that classic Aurora look about it.  And the detail is indeed too crude for the Revell kit.  (The molding of the deckhouses is especially awful.)

I think Heller sold a ship model with the lines of the Cutty Sark for a while, under the name Epervier.  (Our good Forum friend MichelVRTG, who's intimitely familiar with the history of Heller, pointed out some time ago that, in the firm's early days, Heller issued a number of other companies' kits with fictitious French names, hoping to attract Frech purchasers.)  In various other threads we've assumed that the kit in question was the old Aurora one. (Heller did issue a few other Aurora ships.)  But now I'm beginning to wonder.  It seems unlikely that Heller would have designed its own Cutty Sark and issued it under an assumed, Francophied name, but stranger things have happened in the bizarre world of ship modeling.

I also have a vague recollection that a Cutty Sark kit of about that size was floating around American hobby shops in the mid-sixties under the UPC label.  Most (though by no means all) UPC kits were reissues of Japanese kits, which, in some cases, didn't get to the U.S. in any other form.  (The notorious UPC H.M.S. Prince, one of the most laughable kits I've ever seen, is - I think - in that category.)  I wonder if a Japanes Cutty Sark somehow made its way into a Smer box.

Ludicrously trivial stuff in the grand scheme of things, but interesting none the less.

Well, I can't really add much to the discussion here except memories, but that doesn't usually stop me anyway.  I've in the past owned 3 of the 4 kits pictured, the exception being the Cutty Sark.  All I have left of the 3, though, is a bunch of the landing craft from the Montrose - in deplorable condition, but bathtub-worthy nonetheless.  I got both the Forrest Sherman and the John Paul Jones, and was disappointed to find they were just the same kit with different decals (ah, the innocence of youth).  I had seen Away All Boats a few times and was happy to get the transport kit, but the ship itself eventually found its way to the ship graveyard that was the bottom of my family's bathtub.  My imagination, combined with my then-new Cub Scout penknife (which for years doubled as my only craft knife), resulted in numerous scenarios in which ship models were 'torpedoed' in the tub and left to sink to the bottom, courtesy of the boring blade of my knife (the torpedo).  Sad and horrifying, but true.  The landing craft made numerous trips ashore in the tub after that, usually under bombing attack (or kamikaze attack from the Panthers from my USS Coral Sea kit).  I still have most of them in a small box in the basement - with bright red hulls and even brighter yellow bows.

Strangely enough, the Revell 1/720 Prinz Eugen (waterline) kit was never able to float that well (gee, could it have been the huge gap between the upper and lower halves?) and maintained a steady list whenever it was launched.

While I sometimes regret the horrible things I eventually did to all my old childhood models, I still wouldn't trade those times for anything - the memories are priceless.  For the past several months, though, I've been trying to locate many of the kits I built in my youth in order to see if I can do any better this time.  And as for Aurora's infamous decal outlines - I tended to view them as a sign that I had the option of painting on the insignia instead of using the decals.  No, it didn't work any better than the decals. 

EP:

Congratulations (?) on your latest acquisition... could I interest you in buying a bridge?

Seriously, considering the great work you did on the Kearsarge, I have some parts from a complete Forrest Sherman that did not survive a move many years ago and some fittings from a Revell Fletcher that also failed to make it that you could probably use on the Montrose.  If you can send me a "snail mail" address, I will put together a mini "Bundle for Britain" and send them off to you.  With my backlog of kits its extremely unlikely that I would ever go back and re-build these kits, so you might as well have the fittings.  I have a couple of spare 9" Dahlgrens left over from the Susequehanna that I can send along as well.

I would offer to send along a semi-built Revell "four piper" Aaron Ward kit that I found at a rummage sale last year, but since the RN was not overly fond of the original fifty we sent over in 1940, I don't see much merit in repeating the offer!

Good luck with the kits!

Mike