I think of the interest being for military vehicle modelers working in 1/35th having new material to work with. That was why I grabbed the Storch as soon as I saw it was 1/35th. My recent bout of aircraft was almost all 1/48th but 98% WWI. I don't see well enought to do the rigging anymore. The lack of WWI stuff is another subject I could go on about because there is so little of it besides Emhar and RPM kits. At least in plastic (affordable).

It's just likely wishful thinking anyway. If I was going to wish for something reasonable it would be for models of lots of the AFVS, experimental and otherwise created and tested between the end of WWI and start of and early WWII.

Jim why look at aircraft then if you have the ability look at AFV's such as WW1, Tortoise, TOG2, and so on.

Master Box has said they intend to relaese a C-47 / Dakota , a Horsa glider and a JU-52 in 1/35 scale. How big is a c-47 in 1/35 scale? Maybe make damaged glider parts , a cockpit section or a tail section like we saw in SPR ,The Longest Day , etc. Great diorama settings. I think full size planes will just be to big. Just like the railroad stuff. With the engine and 6 cars I have now , I need 9 feet of track. I don't have shelf space to display it when / if it ever gets finished.

I switch subjects around to keep things interesting. I kept a lot of cool cars when I sold my car models off. Cars and motorcycles were the first machines I loved and still do although I get all sweaty over the Can-Am cars of the series that ran from the mid 60s to the early 70s. I lived near one of the circuit tracks and saw, heard, and watched them.

I'll be 60 in a few years and still have a 1949 Panhead chopper. My first Harley was a 42WLA. Except for my other H-D, a 1994 Heritage which I modified the engine, transmission, and the suspension on, I built every motorcycle I ever owned from the ground up. And I built a few show winners in my day. I've worked on all kinds of machines my entire working life from some true antiques to modern PC/PLC/NC/CNC stuff. It's in me and I can't get it out! (Nor do I want to.)

I also grew up near an airport that based a few Coast Guard PBYs plus a slew of civilian aircraft so planes were always an interest as well. A guy who used to live locally that ran a bike shop used to build and restore his own aircraft as well.

Even though I lived surrounded by water, boats and ships never did much for me. I guess it came from seeing too much of what lived in the water not too far off shore!

I like history anyway and have obviously always loved machines. When I look through my war history books and see photos of tanks and armored cars as they evolved I'm like a kid seeing the coolest toys ever. I was just finishing up a book on Russian tank development and saw drawings and a few scaled models of the Tsar Tank and it was just one of the damnedest things I ever saw. The British Vickers that vaguely resembled a T-35 was another that got me. My overall modeling goal is the evolution of the tank with a few side trips and distractions plus forays into other machines.

Anyway, because I like planes and military vehicles it seemed only logical to combine them. If all goes well I hope to get a small building this year or next exclusively for my modeling. Anything I'm into, I come by it honestly. It all means something to me and I've always had multiple interests in life. Just like there are type A and B personalities, I read once there are also serial and parallel people. Serial people are happiest doing one thing at a time and completing it to its end before taking on something else. Parallel people need multiple things going on all at once to be happy. Things don't always get done in the order they were started. It's more the journey than the destination. It's important to know what type you are or things can get chaotic if you are one and behave like the other. You can probably guess which I am.

So, the names you dropped? Those are what exactly? WWI model companies? I PMed several folks that commented on a preference for WWI subjects here for something other than Emhar and RPM but never received a reply. Is that what those are?

Apologies for the chattiness- waaaaaaaaay too much ultra strong hi-performance coffee today!

I will happily get you some ref pictures of WW1 armour, and the tortoise is end of WW2 but you can only get it in resin and I want one just not at the price of resin.

The price of resin is always the rub! I operated an M543A2 5 ton wrecker for about 10 months before switching to the M88 and wanted a model of it. It was only available in resin as was the model of the M123 Dragon Wagon I trained on. No way would I have spent that much had it not been for a personal history with the vehicles.

I don't remember where i read it, but recently I came across something that said how much WWI was largely forgotten in the US other than people know it happened. According to the article it is still much remembered in Britain and Europe because of the proximity of the war and that the carnage affected so many families directly. I assume physical reminders like the remains of the trenches and the battlefields, cemeteries and monuments keep it alive as well. I think the last living WWI vet passed some years back. I wish that it would remain in people's memories for the sacrifices it called for.

On the subject, I heard a discussion yesterday that said some school history books in Britain had pictures of Winston Churchill retouched airbrushing out his cigars and drinks from photographs so as not to set a bad example for young people. I was upset to learn textbooks here were recently released excluding the importance of certain Founding Fathers and their writings because they expressed separation of Church and State as well as questioned religion in general. The handful that did this are setting the standard for the entire country. Thankfully efforts are underway to fight them. It was somewhat disheartening to hear this trend of sanitizing history is appearing in other free societies. I think those of us with an interest in history and who through our hobby and often real world experiences view the sacrifices of soldiers through the various wars as acts that had meaning and counted for something are being, well, IMHO, betrayed by these Orwellian forces. Anyway, enough of the soapbox.

I'd appreciate any WWI info you'd like too share. I have a lot of the commercially available stuff from the Vanguard series. I have The Landships, British Tanks of WWI, the new Tankograd release on the A7V, Guderian's Achtung Panzer!, The Red Knight, almost the entire Schiffer Military series, and a host of other books. many model specific like on the Renault FT-17. I have a few volumes in french and Russian which I can't read, but the pictures are neat! I also have about every WWI based DVD I could find.

Hi Jim,
To answer your question about the earliest sightings of tank models, I had a 1/40 Revell Sherman M4A3E8 in 1956.Later they released a MB jeep,an M35 2 1/2t truck,some nice for the time figures and artillery stuff (Lacrosse missile on 2 1/2t chassis,some type of AAA gun 90mm? & a HST-not very detailed,crude would be a better description) all in that common scale.I believe Adams got those molds.They would show up around Christmas time in department stores in New England in the late '60s & '70s

About '58/'59 Renwal had "Patton" M47,a 5t wrecker(later molded by Revell,the box is marked 'Military Wrecker 1983),"Atomic Annie" the nuclear round throwing cannon, the Skysweeper 90mm AAA gun and others in 1/32 scale at the LHS.
I believe it was 1957/8 when Monogram started their 'Eager Beaver M34 2 1/2t truck,the halftracks,jeep etc. I think the M48 was about 1972.The '72/'83 boxes were sized to fit Shep Paine's 'How to build a Diorama' instructions (I blame him for my plastic addiction,just kidding Shep).

I can't speak to the German stuff as I was never interested in it.Living on many major Army posts from 1949 thru 1960 sort of cast the die for US vehicles.

After moving to Chicago in 1976 I discovered Tamiya and that there were adults that built military models other than aircraft.BTW I would buy 1/35 scale aircraft and have been known to dabble on the dark side in 1/48 aircraft.Fellow clubmembers state that I suck at building planes, so I've stuck with 1/35 modern & Shermans. I like to think I do okay.

I know somethere somebody with ecyclopedic memory/knowledge will come up with exact dates and that's good, cause this is 65 yr old memory which is undoubtably in error in some places(I really did check the stash for dates,etc).
Enjoy the hobby
Jake

Thanks Jake! I'm getting the idea that the ships/cars/airplane selection may well have been a choice on the part of the stores. I remember back then Aurora, Lindberg, Revell, and Monogram were the common names. Later, MPC (which were the first car models i remember that looked less like toys when they were done and more like scale replicas), AMT (among the best selection of race cars), and IMC (which were among the better detailed and more professional kits.)I still have a pair of unbuilt IMC Chaparral 2Es and a Ford GT MkII among my remaining auto kit treasures. There's also a Modelers Chaparral 2D, several Union Can Am car kits, and a still sealed MPC clear bodied Ford J car.

Back to military stuff, I know how much I loved my green plastic Army men as a kid! I was always frustrated that the plastic Army toys -tanks, jeeps, and trucks- were always too small in relation to the Army men. Issues of scale before I had a name for it! I remember when gray plastic German soldiers appeared. It was the first and only enemy toy soldiers (outside of the Blue and Gray Battle Set) I had ever seen. What I loved/hated was they had a guy down on one knee with a flame thrower while the US didn't. It was also the first toy soldier set that I ever saw that came with dead/wounded. There were 3 or 4 Germans laying on their backs with an arm across their chest, feet bent outwards, and the head off to one side. They were obviously not resting. Then came the bags of khaki colored plastic Japanese soldiers. Thinking back on them, they were so horribly stereotypical Japanese they could have been designed in 1943! Even as small as they were, the crazed look on their faces was very clear. I remember the bag had a lot of figures of the guy charging with raised sword and an insane look on his face. Though they added variety to my war play, most of the Japanese soldiers were walking with rifles slung over shoulders except for the Banzai charge with sword guys. I don't know if they didn't sell or were pulled, but both the Germans and Japanese seemed to disappear from the stores rather quickly. I was never able to amass any big number of them because my allowance was limited and how quickly they disappeared. Then, right before I got to the age I lost interest in kid toys and the skirt wearing demons began to catch my eye, somebody came out with the green US Army men, but they were smaller and closer to the size of the trucks and tank toys available. They were detailed pretty good, too. Some had camo nets on their helmets that were very visible. The set also had prone guys firing BARs (I assume) with bi-pod legs on the front. They also had the most soldiers in combat poses than the regular ones. I remember having a Long Tom artillery piece that would fire projectiles a pretty good distance and would sting like hell (as my younger brother found out) when it hit you. The sad part was within a few days of having bought the large deluxe bag of the smaller, better detailed Army men I remember setting them up preparing to fight a huge battle when a little voice inside me spoke the unspeakable, "This is so lame! You wasted your money because this is not fun!" Well, sneaking off in the woods and melting them sure was! And, no I never burned anything down and never developed any obsession in starting or playing with fires!

I guess the point is if I had ever seen military models I would have gone nuts over them! Instead all my money went to dragsters, funny cars street and hot rods. it was still fun though! AHHHH, the memories of youth!

I wonder if the Revell M62 wrecker in 1/32 is a re-box of an older, much older that is, kit? It sure has a ton of parts if it is!

Thanks again for sharing! I find a degree of fascination in knowing the history of scale modeling in plastic as we know it today. I know wood has been used forever, but know little about plastic prior to my becoming involved in it.

Hi Jim,
The answer is yes. I have an orginal Renwal wrecker & some of the Revell repops and they are identical.Some where in the stash there is a missile on a Renwal chassis ??. I also remember an Honest John on a 5t in 1/40 by Revell.
Those where the days my friend.
regards,
Jake

Hey I could go for some 1/35 aircraft kits I feel the same about 1/72 I have baseball bats for fingers. I would buy some. Aceses5