Good news - Hawk reissues of Lindberg warship and civil ship kits

Modeling Subjects Ships
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Just spotted this on www.steelnavy.com:

“Hawk has now bought Lindberg, and will release next year the LCT, LST, LSD and Minesweeper. The old Marx Sea Witch, the large scale Chris Craft Cabin Cruiser, Shrimp Boat, Lightship Nantucket, Robert E Lee steamer, and the Graf Zeppelin kit in injection molding (as it was originally done) with an insert for the passenger cabin. The Hawk guys were receptive towards the idea of doing a weapons set or update for both the Blue Devil and the Minesweeper. They are also going to be revamping the Yorktown kit in the future. They have an ambitious schedule of kits planned.”

Sounds like very good news for anyone with an interest in building models of these ships and who doesn’t want to pay kit collector’s prices on eBay! There are some very interesting subjects in that list which are unlikely to be produced in styrene form by other manufacturers any time soon, certainly not in scales as large as the Lindberg kits.

Regarding the I have the recent Lindberg reissue of the LCT (don’t have a LST yet) and was lucky enough to find second-hand built examples of the LSI and LSD, but the 1/125 scale minesweeper (USN WW2 Admirable-class) is one I’ve wanted to build for some time, as a fan of both large-scale ship models and small “auxiliary” warships. Currently, it routinely sells for over $50 on eBay far more than this for older collectible boxed examples.
Lindberg have a lot of other interesting ships in their back catalogue (Coast Guard cutter, USS Carronade, LSU, fire boat, tuna clipper, etc. not to mention many ex-Pyro and Aurora sailing ships) perhaps we’ll eventually see some of these reissued - as it is, it’ll be great to see the abovementioned kits finally back on the market.

(Judging by the reference to a passenger cabin, I assume the “Graf Zeppelin” referred to is a WW1 airship, not the never-completed German WW2 aircraft carrier?)

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Good news indeed! I didn’t know Hawk was still in business; it’s been many years since I saw a kit with the Hawk label on it.

Those old Lindberg ship kits obviously don’t represent the current state of the art, but they are, if nothing else, great exercises in nostalgia. And some of them weren’t bad. The old minesweeper was one of my favorites - a basically sound kit with some pretty nice detail - along with an electric motor driving two screws by means of pulleys and a rubber band. The drag produced by the screws was enough to make the rubber band in the kit slip - and if you replaced it with a smaller one, the tension on the pulley bearings would stop them from turning. But that was really irrelevant, because while you were figuring that out, the oversized slots through which the propeller shafts passed would admit more than enough water to sink the ship. Ah, for the good olde dayes…

The only airborn Graf Zeppelin I remember was a huge vac-formed kit with injection-molded details, and was produced by Hawk. As I recall, it got reissued when I was working in a hobby shop - i.e., between 1975 and 1980. My understanding at the time was that what I was looking at then was a reissue of a much older kit. If the hull was originally injection-molded, that’s news to me; the hull halves must have been about the biggest plastic parts then produced by the kit industry.

I’ve seen the Lindberg LSU in a new-looking box (complete with Pershing tank) quite recently - though I don’t know how long it had been on the hobby shop shelf. I’d like to see the Lindberg Coast Guard patrol boat come back - along with the Air Force rescue launch. The only Lindberg tuna fisherman and fireboat I recall were a pair of tiny (50 cent) kits for little kids, but my memory may be faulty. (Pyro did a tuna fisherman - pirated from a Model Shipways wood kit, I think - that deserved to be taken seriously - as did most of the first-generation Pyro ships.)

I’ll be intereste to see what the new owners due with the notorious “Blue Devil” and the old, old Lindberg Essex-class carrier. It deserves some respect as one of the very first aircraft carrier kits. (The Revell *Midway-*class one came out at about the same time.) It’s not much of a kit, but Lindberg had some good excuses. The state of the art at the time wasn’t much to brag about, and I suspect the hull lines of the Essex class were still classified. (That would explain why the kit has two rudders - as none of the real ships did.)

Let’s watch the ads. This is interesting, fun stuff.

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That is interesting. I know Testors has issued some of Hawks odd dime store scale models such as the LST, Destroyer, Coast Guard Cutter, and PT Boat.

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I wonder if maybe - just maybe - the new owners could be pursuaded to give some of those old kits back their original, honest labels. The Lindberg Flore and Wappen von Hamburg certainly are good enough kits that they deserve to be on the market, but calling them names like “Captain Kidd” and “Jolly Roger” constitutes a deceptive marketing ploy that demeans the hobby. The same goes for the latest incarnations of the old Lindberg Sovereign of the Seas (aka “Blackbeard”) and St. Louis (aka “Sir Henry Morgan.”) Then there are the old Pyro ships in Lindberg boxes - the Harriet Lane (“Civil War Blockade Runner”), Gertrude L. Thebaud (“American Cup Racer”), and *Morris-*class revenue cutter (“Independence War Schooner”). And please spare us any more appearances of the Pyro “Natchez” (reissued Robert E. Lee) or “Maine” (reissued Olympia). There may be some more similar cases that I haven’t encountered.

A couple of old Lindberg kits that I wouldn’t mind seeing again are Fulton’s Clermont and a generic sternwheel riverboat called the Southern Belle. Both of them had electric motors, and I retain fond memories of building them when I was a kid. The Clermont had an especially ingenious drive train; the enormous exposed gears turned and the piston moved up and down in the cylinder while the paddlewheels drove the model through the water. You had to look closely in the exposed “engine room” to find the small worm gear that connected the scale components to the little electric motor lurking under the deck. Nice old kit.

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I may be in a minority here, but I think some of them, at least, are worth the time of serious modellers as well, particularly if you are interested in larger-scale models (and, judging from posts like the recent “Scale question” one, I’m not the only one). It’s unlikely any of the Lindberg warship and landing subjects will be produced any time soon in larger than 1/700 scale, let alone 1/125 and 1/250.
Similarly, most or all of the civil subjects are likely to remain unique for the foreseeable future!

I have a second-hand example of the Lindberg tuna fishing boat (usually described as a tuna clipper). It’s quite a large model, about 1/100 scale, and is a modern motor vessel, not a sailing boat. It’s quite a distinctive-looking craft, looking vaguely like a YMS minesweeper, though I don’t think there’s any relation. I’ll post a photo if anyone is interested.
The fire boat is described as 1/84 scale and was fairly recently sold as a boxed set with the tuna clipper, tug, and tow boat. It looks like a converted harbour tug.

Was the Lindberg LSU you saw labelled as a LCT? If so, it’s the one I have (reissued in 2004, along with the 1/32 LCVP and 1/250 LST, for the D-Day anniversary). I know Lindberg produced both a LSU and a LCT, so maybe they got them mixed up (presumably as the LSU was sometimes referred to as a “LCT/LSU”)

(EDIT: Totally forgot about the Clermont and Southern Belle. These would be great to see as well, particulary the Clermont. This is a very interesting and historically significant boat)

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I agree completely that some of those very old ex-Pyro sailing ship kits are more than worthy of the modeler’s attention. In another thread we’ve been following the progress of an excellent model of the Gertrude L. Thebaud (which the modeler based on an old Pyro version, but which could just as well have come from the Lindberg “American Cup Racer” kit). It came out beautifully. The Harriet Lane and the Morris-class revenue cutter also have enormous potential. The nice thing about those kits is that virtually all their weaknesses have to do with omissions, rather than mistakes. They were blatantly pirated from old Model Shipways and Marine Models kits of the 1940s, which were designed as sound but extremely basic scale models. To turn one of those old Pyro kits into a well-detailed model requires some additions (blocks, deadeyes, eyebolts, etc.), but little in the way of correction. (One howler that I do remember: the *Morris-*class cutter has most of its gunports represented in the form of raised lines inside and outside the bulwarks. The lines on the inside and outside don’t line up. And the thwarts in the small boat in that kit don’t reach the gunwales. All fairly straightforward stuff to fix.)

The big Lindberg “tuna clipper” is a reboxing of the old Pyro one, which was (I think) another pirated version of a Model Shipways wood kit. There was also a slightly smaller fishing trawler, pirated from the Model Shipways Hildina. (I’m sure about that one; I remember hearing Sam Milone of Model Shipways complaining about it - along with the Pyro diesel tugboat, which was based on the MS Dispatch No. 9.)

Lindberg (not Pyro) made another tugboat - with a wood hull and pilothouse (the prototype, that is - not the model) and the usual electric motor. The last time I saw it, Lindberg was selling it in a set of completely bogus U.S. Coast Guard markings. But it was a pretty nice old kit.

The fireboat, tuna clipper, towboat, and tugboat that were sold as a boxed set were, I’m 90 percent sure, the tiny 50-cent kits primarily designed for kids. As I recall, each of them had a couple of dozen parts; I think several of them shared the same hull components. I may well be mistaken about this, but I think they may have been issued originally with rubber band motors. (Wind up the propeller, put the model in the bathtub, and watch it go.) The figure 1/84 for the scale sounds wrong - unless it was a mighty small fireboat. Such vessels do exist.

I think the recent reincarnation of the LSU I saw may indeed have had the “LCT” label. “LCT,” of course, is the wrong label for that particular vessel - though the LCT and the LSU had the same hull. The LCT’s superstructure sat on one side, so the tank deck could run the entire length of the hull; the LSU was, in most respects, an LCT with the superstructure moved to the stern. That’s the vessel the Lindberg kit represents. To my knowledge Lindberg never made a genuine LCT.

Here’s another thought. For a few years Lindberg was selling some (not all) of the grand old Eaglewall British 1/1200 WWII warship kits. By modern standards they were pretty crude, but what fun they were.

I’m also wondering whether all this activity under the “Hawk” name means that some of the genuine old Hawk kits may reappear. That company’s ship line never amounted to much, but some of its airplanes were quite interesting. Some of them have turned up recently under the Glencoe label (one is reviewed in this month’s FSM), but many others are long forgotten. I wouldn’t mind seeing the grand old 1/48 T-33, or the Kaman Huskie helicopter, or the Westland Lysander, or the V-1 (complete with interior detail - for 50 cents), or the Baka, or…well, you get the picture. Good news all around.

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Wonderful news ineed ! the shrimp boat is a superb relaxation subject and the minesweeper is a especially welcome to me, for some of those admirable class ships were sold to Turkish navy as NATO aid. And if they should re-release the Fulton’s Clermont next year, I’d be quite happy. Remember, 2007 is the 200th anniversary of the steam power’s first succesful commercial use and the ushering of industrial age.