Sorry, I must amend my post to 3 x WW2 US Destroyers (2 of those are the same class) and a modern Burke class (with another one of that class on the way). Funny that Dragon pulled out of doing a Eugen because Trumpeter are doing one, but both are continuing to do Burke class destroyers.

Not to mention the erros in the Burke class ships.

But lets us all try to stay on topic.

Kym, I agree that Dragon has really taken the easy way out. sure the kits they have put out are nice, but they are stikcing to basically one hull. I 100% understand why they are doing it, but as I have stated before, I do not like it. Sure there is a call and a need for WWII US Dd's, but there is also a call for cruisers, battleships, and carriers.

Many of the other companies have spread out their development across classes. They release a DD, or CA, a BB, a CV. They mix things up to keep people interested. Look at how Dragon does thier armor. The milk a mold for all its worth and make every single example of a tank that can be made. again, I totally understand why they do this. I do the same in my regular job. I use the same set of swage dies as much as I can to save costs.

I am so glad to see the varied classes of ships coming out. But if you want this varity, you must buy kits from many different companies.

SO, coming back to the original intent. Dragon asked peoples opinions. Those were given. Then it appears to many people that the company just did what they wanted.

I don't know much about the topic but in reading through the posts I find it strange that Dragon backs away from a project when Trumpeter is working on it, considering how Dragon and Trumpeter are fighting it out with competing armor releases.

Couple of points.

1) The Dragon Burkes are based on the Panda molds that Dragon acquired, so development is relatively cheap, hence they can compete with Trumpeter on price. Accuracy is an issue, which is why I traded all my Dragon Burkes in and got a Trumpeter

2) Regarding the "spreading things out" comment, wait a year and then re-evaluate. If you can't wait, then take into account the Subs they released (Akula, Typhoon, Los Angeles, Ohio) and modern ships (Tico class cruisers and the different spru-cans).

3) I have* and am currently helping Dragon with some kits and talk with them (via e-mail) on a somewhat regular basis (got a new set today in fact) but I am not involved in their decisions as to what they want to produce. That said, like I said, the Eugen was scrapped because it was EARLY in the design phase; we were still rooting out research materials and no CAD had been laid out. Compettion does not necessarily mean you make the exact same thing as your competitor does. You choose your battles when you can, and it made little sense for Dragon to continue with the Eugen. It did free the resources to speed up another project though, so not all was "lost."

I'm sorry some of you feel Dragon is taking the easy way out, can't do anything more than say "wait a bit." and hope that you will.

* Antietam, CV-16 Lexington, CV-12 Hornet, and one other 700th Essex class that has not been announced yet.

Well I for one am happy with any new 350 scale kit. 10 years ago there was only the Tamiya few. trumpeter slipped out an Arizona and then a Hornet and look where we are now. Dragon, Hasegawa, Aoshima, Fujimi, Pit Road and Tamiya is back. So splitting hairs is pointless. How many of you have bought and built all the kits? I've skipped several and lord knows I've got a dozen in the stash. You want a Nelson or a Scharnhorst...have you done the Hood, Bismarck Repulse and POW yet. Or maybe kick over and tackle the Akagi...that should keep you busy for a while.

Oh and Tracy:

This is Model shipwrights, not ModelWarships, please keep personal comments about non essential things like a person's grammer or spelling to yourself. Those sort of comments are things we really try to avoid here as they can be easily construed as personal attacks.

Thank you for your cooperation

Thanks for that post Steve as I had been thinking about a fire mission, nuff said Model on Tracy.

Dragon's next supposed release is an Independence class CVL. There is supposition that they will reverse the hull in order to get the base ship for the CVL. Now you know the secret.

Hello pot, this is Kettle; you're black!

I wasn't attacking him, I was asking for clarification in a somewhat joking way; did you notice that he put a at the end of his line? I genuinely did not understand PRECISELY what he was trying to say. I'd say your comment was an attack on ModelWarships if I didn't know that you are, of course, not into that.

In other words Tracy nothing bigger than Tin cans? And so what if trumpy was going to come out with a Prinz Eugen maybe Dragons would have been nicer, no way to tell now.

I need to retract this; I did not have the full story and I need to make sure that I'm not mis-representing things. As I've said, I don't have the full ear of Dragon, I'm just a guy who's volunteered to help. That said, Dragon did not start work on a PE; it was a separate effort to get them interested in doing one. I had mistakenly thought or remembered that Dragon was more involved than they were.

I have always said that I make mistakes and people should take what I say with a grain of salt; that's one reason why I post the research I come across! It makes it harder for my mistakes to be taken as gospel, which is not what I'm after.

I thought it was a bit out of the norm for Dragon, as they only seem to be interested in US ships.
Though technically Prinz Eugen was a US ship after the end of the war, that is, until they blew it up.

Technically we didn't blow it up... we nuked it, but t'was a storm did 'er in, not man.

Still a regrettable incident.

Nope... there is larger in the works.

But before anyone gets their hopes up, no angle-deck essex that I'm aware of.

Hey Tracy, I make my living from 'blowing crap up' and believe me, nuking something is definitely being blown up. Actually, I didn't know that about the storm and after seeing those photo's in Steve Wiper's book, always thought she just gave up and rolled over.

Let's see I stated that this is one website and not another website. I learned a lot of legal concepts in school, but maybe i missed the part where a statement like that is a personal attack. No where do I see anything that says anything adverse about either site. I studied subljects like libel in my torts class. Did I miss something that you know that I don't?

The analysis is....... was the intent to say something bad about the other website or point out something else. It could be more taken as an inferrence that on the other site that behavior by an individual may not be condemned. I have heard from many mny people as of late that at they no longer want ot go to any other website becasue of that behavior. The request was not to do it here.

The use of emoticons whether smiley faces, laughing faces. winks or mugs of beer are used liberally by many of us you and myself included

Steady on you Yanks, don't go reaching for your lawyers, err guns,

I had always heard the Prinz Eugen sank due to flooding. No matter how she turned over it was still a waste of a beautiful ship. Something sort of strange is she was farther away from the blast than several US ships. Nagato was closer than the Prinz.

Also please keep things civil. I would not like nuking anyone.

As for Dragon making a larger ship I am sure we have all heard the rumors. One source I have heard from did say it was going to be a class of ship not done before in 350, and it would be larger than a cruiser. But, as Tracy said, he did know it was not an angled deck Essex.

Then as mentioned above that the CVL class was going to be done and nobody squashed that rumor. You never know. Tin cans are nice, but I would like something larger for them to escort.

A CVL would be different and welcome. Though I still would like to see a Baltimore class as my #1 choice since the Littorio is in the working stages at Trumpy

This is me of course, so Im a happy camper with a stash worth years of building!

One question - you are telling me that those modern Dragon 350 kits I have been picking up for cheap in LuckyModels (

After doing some reading this morning on the other places around there is some buzz about one of the potential ships being done by Dragon, USS Atlanta CL51.

This is just rumor, but there are so many rumors. Hey, it gives us another way to think.

Now that would be a welcome additoin. 16 5 inchers on that puppy.