Revell ships

Man that is awesome! Welcome back to the fifties!

Hey guys,
I got my 1956 issue Aurora B-17 kit last night.
What a treat. It was as if I had traveled back 50 years. The box is mint and the first thing you see when you open the box is the tissue they used to pack inside to protect the parts.
The plastic is still as shiny as the day it was boxed 54 years ago. Instructions look as if they were printed yesterday. I was originally planning to build it and I still may but for now I'm just to to keep it as is and enjoy feeling like a kid again each time I open it.
Later, "Bombs Away!"
Gary

if anyone is interested, i found a source for the book "remembering revell" you can get through squadron mailorder. these are the same folks who make the putty etc.thought i would pass it along. thanks for all the info on "bounty"

You're dead on about the nose gear, and I believe the tires are rubber. Not familiar with either of the Monogram B-25 or B26 kits.
I have the old Revell B-26, Airfix B-26, and Matchbox B-26 kits along with the Revell-Mono 1/48 B-26. Have built the Revell 1/144th B-26 converted to a JM-1 that was my Dad's plane from his days with Utility Squadron 9 in the Pacific 1945. Plane to build the 1/48th kit as a JM-1 also. Big Yellow bird with dorsal turret faired over and gun blisters removed. Almost forgot about the Monogram B-26 snap-tite kit which according to some is very accurate for an early B-26.

Let's see...I have only a vague recollection of the Mongram PBY. Does it have vinyl tires, and a nose gear molded integrally with one fuselage half - and instructions to slice it off if you want the landing gear retracted?

Two old Monogram kits I remember a little more clearly were the B-25 and the B-26. I remember being a little disappointed and confused by the B-25. It was an H model, with the solid nose, rather than the cool transparent one the Revell kit had. (Dig that nose gunner - looking to port with a perpetually open mouth.) On the other hand, as I remember, the turret on top of the Monogram one actually had a person inside it - as oppose to the stumps of gun barrels Revell provided.

I understand Thomas Graham is working on a book about the history of Monogram, to accompany the one's he's already published about Aurora and Revell. I'll be among the first purchasers.

Hey John & Ron,
Well the little kid in me has been on the loose again.
Just won a vintage mint 1955 Monogram 1/100th scale PBY on eBay.
The old box scale "Dumbo" in navy blue plastic.
That was the last of the three old kits from the fifties I was trying to obtain.
Now I need to decide whether to build the PBY and B-17 along with the Hawaiian Pilot or just display the boxes along side?
In any event, I don't have to search any more.
As soon as the PE gets here I'm starting on the Pilot. The box art scheme wih the red lead primer deck, bright yellow-ochre cargo booms, white super structure and black hull should make a colorful display. Might even capture a trophy or two if I'm lucky!
Best regards,
Gary

QUOTE: Originally posted by qmiester Hey guys, Just remember: Inside every man over 50, there's a 22 year old saying "What the hell happened?"

I'm only 42. but "Amen!"

Hey guys, Just remember:

Inside every man over 50, there's a 22 year old saying "What the hell happened?"

Got my confirmation on the Aurora B-17, should have in hand by the end of the week.
The "Twelve O'Clock High." series (early/mid 60's?) of re-releases did include the rebox of the B-17 and several of the fighters(ME-109, etc). I saw that B-17 group advertised somewhere in the $800-$1000 range for mint. ( wouldn't you like to have 5 or 6 of those in your closet!) Your description of the freighter paint scheme matches the Hawaiian Pilot box art to the "T".
I'm still searching and if I find any solid info I'll post the location.

Grimreaper - I remember that little Aurora B-17, all right. For a long time, if I'm not mistaken, it was the only B-17 on the market - though the big Lindberg one must have come along about that same time. I also recall an Aurora kit that was released in conjunction with the TV show "Twelve O'Clock High." (There's one I'd like to see rerun on cable!) It consisted of three little B-17s in formation, mounted on clear plastic stands with decals on them representing falling bombs. Ah, the things we did with our money in those days.

Schulerwb24 - somewhere on the web there's got to be a site that deals with old merchant ships, but I have no idea what it is. My recollection from those days is that such freighters' masts were usually painted a rather bright yellow ochre (the Cunard steamship line called it "mast color"). Decks were often painted with a dark, red lead primer. That's about the best I can offer.

Hey Ron,
Thanks for the info about Gasoline Alley Antiques.
I found the old Aurora B-17 circa 1956. 1/156th box scale, big rivets, etc. Haven't got a confirmation back from them a they were closed last week but it's another of those "special' kits that I've been trying to nab no matter what the cost. The old Hawaiian Pilot and the Aurora B-17 sat side-by-side on the mantle in the living room for a long time. My wife isn't as easy going as my Mother apparently was as she's informed me that I can't recreate that scenario on her mantle.
Aw schucks!!!!!!
Have been trying alot of websites looking for info on the C-3 freighters, but also have only found a few photos and not much else.
Gary

So, Box-Stock:
Looking at the picuture of Hawaiian Tropic, what color was used for the masts and yardarms, deck upper structures? And the deck? Looks like a brown. I found an obscure web site that had a couple of pictures, but not enough detail. Any web sites you know of on this?

Thanks in advance.

Grimreaper -

Ssssshhhhh! They'll hear us! Woof woof.

Thanks! Will check out Steel Navy. Two kits? My thoughts exactly! Am planning to buy a second when it finally hits the States. If my wife ever really looked at how many dupes I had of some kits, I really be in the DOGHOUSE! hahaha

Gold Medal Models makes a set of photo-etched parts called "Merchant Ship Set" in several scales, including 1/400. It includes such generic stuff as railings, ladders, life rings, etc. I haven't seen it, but it sounds like it would work nicely on the old Hawaiian Pilot. An easy way to find out about Gold Medal products is via the Steel Navy website, www.steelnavy.com . On the homepage are a bunch of sponsors' icons; click on Gold Medal Models and you'll be taken to a full listing.

I'm wondering whether I'd prefer to dress up that old kit with modern aftermarket parts, or build it right out of the box as a nostalgia trip. Might have to buy two.

Ron,
I second that " You're only as old as you think"!
My wife of 34 years and 22 year old daughter both throw sweet little digs at me now and then and I just tell them that "I'm a 16 year old guy trapped in a 56 year old body!" And yes, I still make those motor and explosion sounds too while the kit is beginning to take shape. Old habits never die. By the way, who, what or which PE railings would be the best for the Revell "Hawaiian Pilot" 1/380th? I'm not planning on doing alot to the kit except for the railings have got to replaced.
Thanks and All the best to you and all in the forum,
Gary

I just wanted to mention a source of scratch for the nostalgia itch. This is probably old news to some folks but Gasoline Alley Antiques has a lot of older kits from Revell, Aurora, Lindberg, etc. The prices are a lot lower than the other guys who specialize in this.

Today I turned 57 (57 year old kid according to the Mrs.) and that's one of the first places I going to shop. I'd love to find the Olympia and do it again with PE etc. this time.
I'm not really a collector but in hindsight I wish I had bought both kits when I picked that one up, built one and stored the other. I didn't think about the future availability. The Glencoe Oregon was sitting right next to the Olympia but I figured I'd just get one of those later. Later came and no Oregons to be found. Somebody is taking pre-orders for the re-release but I forget just now where I saw the notice.

It's nice to know there are so many other slightly aged people who remember the "good old days" of Revell, Renwal, Aurora, and 10 cent Cokes that came in green glass bottles, a dime for Twinkies (cost a buck now), and fat fendered bikes. Anyone up for some Fizzies, or a tall milk with Flavor Straws?

While I'm going on about "history" I would like to say I consider this my home forum for two reasons. First, the historical knowledge that is so freely shared. My son just finished the WW II phase in his high school history class, and he read several posts here while collection information. He even said he will take a break from video games, and we are going to do build the Trumpeter Arizona together.

The other reason, and this might be better placed in "Odds and Ends", is people are respectful and civil on this forum. Differences in opinions are expressed in a rational and mature way, unlike the other ship centered forums. If I want the personalized confrontational junk I can watch a trash talk show. I appreciate all of you who share in this forum and those who monitor and moderate it.

Regards,
Ron Harris

Jake - Thanks; I'd forgotten about that. The NG has done several stories about the Bounty over the years. I've got the full run of the magazine from its beginnings through 1996 on CD-ROM. Found it some years back for an incredibly low price at Sam's Club. I'll look that article up this evening - but I'm pretty sure it doesn't provide any explanation for the blue hull. That one, I fear, was a pure Hollywood invention.

I'm not sure I buy their claIm that the hull had to be enlarged to make room for the diesel. Plenty of smaller ships than that have diesels - notably, in my neck of the woods, the Elizabeth II and the Susan Constant. For that matter, I'm fairly certain the latest Bounty replica - the one built for the Anthony Hopkins/Mel Gibson movie - has an engine, and I'm pretty sure it's the right length.

I liked that movie the best of the three. I thought the acting was terrific, and the ship looked great (except for the obviously synthetic white running rigging). My biggest beefs with it were that (1) the script writer didn't do his homework; and (b) they used the wrong set of plans. The ship in the movie pretty closely matches the first set - the one that was drawn before she was modified to carry the breadfruit trees. As a matter of fact, if you watch carefully you can spot a copy of that drawing - the wrong one - hanging on a bulkhead in Anthony Hopkins's cabin.

Fun stuff. But we've wandered a long way from the Hawaiian Pilot and the J.L. Hanna!

John,
I have the Nat. Geographic written when they built the ship for the movie, and the extra 20 ft. was also due because they put in an aux. diesel due to ins. underwriting. Do you need a copy of the pages for your library?

Jake

Jamest - The Revell Bounty is a kit on which I feel like I can comment reasonably competently. I built a model from it quite a few years ago. Some photos of it are posted on the Drydock Models forum ( http://gallery.drydockmodels.com/album207 ).

When I was working on that model I did quite a bit of reading in primary and secondary sources. As is often the case regarding pre-20th-century ships, the amount of hard, reliable information about the Bounty is surprisingly scanty. The contemporary pictorial information about her consists of four pieces of drafting cloth. The draftsmen at the Admiralty drew two sets of plans for her - one just after she was purchased, and one showing "some contrivances" that were added for her breadfruit-carrying voyage to the Pacific. I think I can state categorically that beyond those two sets of drawings (two sheets each - hull lines and deck plans) there are no genuine contemporary paintings or drawings of her. (There is one old print that shows the sailors putting Bligh off in the ship's launch, but that obviously was drawn after the mutiny - when the artist couldn't possibly have seen the real ship.) This isn't surprising, really. She wasn't perceived as a particularly important ship. She was purchased by the Royal Navy, sailed for the South Seas a few months later - and never came back.

The honest answer to the question about the hull color scheme is - nobody knows. Bligh's logbook contains a few vague references to "blackening the sides" and "blackening the yards," and he said that after the ship got to Tahiti he ordered the figurehead painted "in colors," which amused the Tahitians (who had never seen a European woman). Otherwise we can only be guided by standard practice of the period. The typical color scheme for a naval vessel (or a merchant ship, for that matter) in the 1780s included oiled natural wood hull planking, black wales, and some yellow ochre trim. The inboard works and deck fixtures often (though probably not always) were painted red - probably not, as the books often imply, to camouflage blood stains, but because red lead was a cheap, durable primer color. Blue was sometimes used in small areas as a trim color.

For the 1959 movie version (the one with Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard), MGM built a life-size replica of the Bounty. (Actually it's a little larger than life-size; it was deliberately made about 20 feet too long, for the convenience of the Cinemascope camera crews.) For some reason that I've never figured out, they painted the hull blue. So far as I know there is no supporting evidence for that whatsoever. I've seen several paintings and other graphic renditions of the Bounty with blue hulls - all of them dating from the time after the movie came out. As the photos indicate, I gave my model a narrow strake of blue along the top of the main wale. If I were doing it again (heaven forbid) I don't think I'd do that. I'd also use a duller shade of red.

The only other thing we know for sure about the color scheme is that the bottom was copper-sheathed. Revell, unfortunately, missed that point. (They missed lots of things. My model contains seven pieces of the kit - excluding those wonderful crew figures.) I made the copper on mine out of .001" copper sheet, appied with contact cement and weathered with paint.

Hope this helps a little. There's considerably more info about this ship on the Drydock Models site, if you're interested.

you guys arent old fogeys ,i started building revell kits in 1953 with the "missouri & the sullivans & helena. my no. 1 kit is the 4-stack dd that revell came out with in the 60"s . i still build revell kits of course modifying them etc.by the way do any of you guys have the proper painting info for the hull of the revell "bounty" ?also you are only young as you think . i get static all the time being "too old to be playing with trains & boats.

Yes, I'm definitely a card caring member of that club along with several of my friends here in Kansas City. When I was a kid I lived 2 doors up from the corner drug store. Same store where my Dad and I got the Hawaiian Pilot. They had a counter in the back of the store that had 2 shelves inside that were filled with pastic kits. I used to spend a lot of time with my nose pressed up against that glass trying to decide which kit I would spend my nickels and dimes on. Those were simple times and your imagination took you on some exciting adventures inspired by some great box art. Whats really funny is that I can't ever remember getting a kit home, opening it and thinking "What a dog of a kit!". Every kit was GREAT.

Right now I'm struggling with the idea of spending a couple of hundred bucks on the old Aurora B-17 kit. Another oldie from the past that I'd like to recapture. I think I'll build the Pilot first though. By the way you'll love this...I bought those Aurora kits for $1.00 a piece about 25 years ago however I don't think they're worth a great amount these days with all the newer WWI kits flooding the market. I guess I could always put a few together and try WHIP FLYING them! hahaha

Grimreaper - Sounds like you and I are card-carrying members of the Olde Phogey Modelers' Society. If you've got 75 unbuilt Aurora kits, half of them unopened, I hope you've made provision for their distribution in your will. They're probably worth, collectively, several thousand dollars on the collectors' market.

I agree with all your observations. Modeling in those days wasn't the high-tech exercise in research and craftsmanship that it is now. But it sure was fun. And we learned a lot from it.

I remember, for instance, the "Whip Flying" craze. For the benefit of Non-Olde-Phogeys, this was a marketing ploy started by Revell. A group of its old aircraft kits got reissued with pieces of string, metal rings, and blobs of modeling clay supplied in the boxes. The modeler put the clay in the nose, tied the string to the ring, clipped the ring through a hole in one wingtip, took the model out in the back yard, and swung it around his head. (The instructions for doing so were surprisingly elaborate. They strongly recommended building the landing gear in the retracted position. If you ignored the instructions, the landing gear got retracted upon the first landing.)

Adventurous types like me went beyond the designated Revell kits and equipped anything with wings for whip-flying. We had an old-fashioned cistern in the back yard; the lid on it was held down by a big granite boulder that nobody could lift. When the string on my big Aurora B-29 broke and the plane made a beeline for that rock....Ah, sweet memories. And what a wonderful lesson in elementary physics.

Thanks jtilley!
The newer kits are great to put together. Today they offer the detail that we had to scratchbuild as addon 30 years ago provided you could find good ref material.
I still have about 75 unbuilt Aurora kits about have of which have never been opened. The others that are open are fun to browse through and remember how I used to build them and fly them at arms length around the house playing Dawn Patrol.
I'm really glad that RG has decided to bring back some of those oldies.
Yeah, by todays standards they're lacking but what great memories they pack inside those brand new boxes. And, with the wealth of info available online and the abundance of good ref material today you can take one of those "old gems" and really make a showpiece of it.
Later.

Welcome aboard, Grimreaper. It's good to know that somebody else reacts to these old kits the same way I do.

I just received the Hawaiian Pilot kit yesterday via airmail from England. I purchased it on ebay on 4-28-05. Can't tell you what a joy it was for my 56 yo eyes to gaze upon this old kit once again. Yes, it definitely has some limitations by todays standards but for me it was like picking up a Gold Bar you see it was the first kit my Dad and I ever built.

I was 8 yrs old then and have enjoyed modeling ever since. He's been gone now for over 20 years and I have tried countless times to try and locate one of the old gems no matter what the price but never succeeded. When it turned up on ebay I finally snagged it for a fraction of the collectors price I was prepared to pay! Eyes got misty when I opened the box. It's easier to cry now that I'm older. Went back to a time when I watched my Dad glue all those stanchions in place patiently one after another.
This will be one of the most fun kits for me to work on in years no matter how old or how goofy the rudder is. However I am going to look at the PE deck rails. Happy modeling guys!

I also have the second edition of that book. It's great reading! I bought mine off a guy at our Orangecon who was selling it for $40. I got him down to $15 before I bought it. Mine includes the price guide in the back, which is really interesting to read.

I got my copy of Remembering Revell Model Kits via the Barnes and Noble website ( www.bn.com ). I believe the book is currently out of print, but if you go to the "Used and Out of Print" section you'll probably find one - at a reasonable price. There are two editions. Mine is the second, "revised" one; I haven't seen the first.

hey i liked the review, but where can you get that book on revell?