The USS Essex CV-9 is one of the best known Carriers of WWII. The name is still there in the US Navy, now an amphibious ship (LHD-2) wears the historical name. The original USS Essex described a new class with more than 20 carriers following. Some of them were serving for decades after the commissioning of CV-9, and went through several modification programs, including SCB-125 and SCB-27A/27C when the carriers got angled deck, H-8 catapults, and were modernized to utilize heavier planes just to mention a few. The Keel of the original Essex was laid at April 28, 1941 and was commissioned at December 31, 1942 The Dragon Essex kit represents the original CV-9. This kit was long awaited, and many rumours were out there about it. Maybe that was a good marketing action to provide 3D rendered images of the parts before anything was shown from the actual model. Now the Dragon / DML USS Essex it's here, and we can check closely!
I'm not sure that what to tell about the packaging, as I received more kits at once. Maybe for optimizing the space, or to fit some parcel size, this kit was removed with the original box, and it was rolled safely into a bubble bag (it was the biggest kit in the pack). The box was included anyway in the package, but it was folded to make is smaller. Although I was not happy about the box, the kit was safely packaged, and has no damage. You can trust LuckyModel in packaging, I'm sure they had good reason to do this with the box, it's almost sure that they reduced the postage fee by doing this. At first sight it's clear that this scale is a good scale for carriers if you don't have too much space in your room, or on your shelves. The Trumpeter 1/350 Essex is exactly 2 times larger. But this one doesn't take much more space than a larger 1/48 aircraft.
By "opening the box" you can find 12 different kind of sprues (there are multiple ones aslo) in grey and clear, good quality plastic, the hull in 2 parts to give you the option of building a waterline model, the decals, and surprisingly a photo etched fret with many parts! You have two build options. The first option is the fit from the Commissioning to late 1943 (Measure 21 Overall Navy Blue), the second is from Early 1944 (Measure 36-610D Camouflage Scheme) The fist part that pulled out my eyes, is the clear deck. Well, it's an option to make the hangar deck visible. Some of the modelers like this idea, some are running out of the world when even just mentioning it. It's your decision, at last modeling is a hobby and a way to impress yourself. For the ones running out of the world, there's a good news, a normal grey plastic deck is included also, with nicely detailed deck plating and tie-down areas. I think It's really nice on a 1/700 kit.
It's more than clear that Dragon has further plans with this kit, and there's more Essex class carriers on the way! As proof you can find shared sprues and PE set with the new Dragon 1/700 USS Randolph CV-15 just to mention one. With some special parts and sprues Dragon could make more than 20 models of this class with minimal investment.
This an affordable price and size kit if you're interested to carriers. Including PE parts is a good idea, but I think there would have been great to include some more parts in PE. Also I don't like the idea of making the aircrafts of clear plastic, even not by keeping in mind the reasons it's made like this, but it's not a big deal anyway. The overall impression of the Essex kit is positive. Recommended
If you like this kit, you can order it from Lucky Model at www.luckymodel.com
Sample kit courtesy by Raymond Chung at Lucky Model. Thank you! Photos and text © 2005 by Zoltan Pocza May 25, 2005 |
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