I picked this up last week. $18 is a rip off for such a simple toy-like kit, but pity all the people who paid hundreds on eBay for an original. It does not seem to be a model of any particular ship. It looks like an old steam collier to me. It should be fun to kit bash it.
The English weren’t going to expose expensive ships to bait a U-Boat. I believe the way they outfitted them you could call it kit bashing also.
And the “Bobtail cruiser” too.
Fred, I’m curious to see what you do with it.
Q ships were a designation for heavily armed merchant ships with their weapons concealed. Looking generic is part of the job description. The displacement of the Q ships used by the Royal Navy in WW2 started at 610 long tons and topped out just short of 6000 tons.
Kind of looks like USS Carolyn aka USS Atik AK-101.
I believe there were only Q-ships in WWI. They were called armed merchants or raiders in WWII.
Well yes, the RN used them in WW1 and they were called something else by the USN in ww2 but it was the same concept. A posthumous novel by Ernest Hemingway “Islands in the Stream” probably had an influence as did the 1977 movie starring George C Scott.
Weren’t the US armed merchant ships of WW2 more of a way of protecting actual cargo ships rather than use for baiting U-boats?
Yes you are correct, but mostly for self protection from surface subs and aircraft attacks.
Blame the $18 rip off on us old farts who want to relive our dime store memories. Glad to see you posting the kit. Looks like a lot of fun.
I remember having a few of these as a kid and they did float well, especially when Dad taught us to use modeling clay along the keel for ballast. The clay also required more BB’s from the BB gun to sink it in the neighbors pond.
Scott
Ought to dredge that pond. Might have some treasures!
Dad was digging up plastic props and melted plastic in his vegetable garden for years.
This kit is ready to motorize. There is a propeller shaft tube molded into the hull and there are parts for a battery mount, not mentioned in the instructions.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but just working from memory, think that the kit is actually a model of the “Hog Islander” cargo and troop transports mass produced in Philadelphia towards the end of WW I and “reboxed” by Lindberg as a “Q” ship, but don’t think any of them ever served in that capacity
The Hog Islanders saw a lot of different uses over time, including some being adapted as tenders between the wars, as commercial cargo ships, and as cargo ships during the war - so you could go a lot of different directions with the kit. Like many of the Lindberg kits, I recall that it originally came with a small can motor.
Although it kind of resembles a Hog Islander that has been squished fore and aft, it wouldn’t make a serious model of that type. The kit says it’s scale 1/390, which might lead one to believe it is a scale model of something, but as I said, it looks more like the old steam collier coastal freighters. In that case the 1/390 is a fantasy.
Fred
I wouldn’t be surprised if the scale of the kit was designed to fit in the boxes Lindberg had in stock. In reading the story about Revell more then one model was made to scale to fit box stock they purchased at great discount.
This is interesting. Hog Islanders were 380 feet long, and the kit measures about 12 inches. I’ll measure it exactly later. So the stated scale of 1/390 does make sense for a Hog Islander. But it just doesn’t look right, to me. More study is warranted.
Fred
There seems to be several reference to similarity to the USS Atik, AK-101 which looks pretty similar and was 382 feet long.
On a funny note, on the http://www.scalemates.com/ web site it is written " 2014 - New Tooling " [:P]
I don’t understand why the ship manufacturers have not given us a 1/350 plastic Q-Ship,or German WWI or WWII Raider like Wolf or Atlantis.I think they would sell rather well.
On further research, this kit could be bashed into a Hog Islander, with a lot of work. Just about the entire top works would have to be scratch built. The bulwarks fore and aft of the house are too scooped out, and the stern needs some work. A build of the S.S. Robin Moor would be cool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Robin_Moor
Fred
I would buy a 1/350th kit of a WWI commerce raider if that ship was or could be converted to the SMS Cormoran…