I was goofing around on the Navy Newsstand website last night and stumbled across this ship:

Cyclone Class

Granted rather than look for myself, I got lazy and thought I would ask the experts :-)

Does anyone make a model of this ship? Thanks!

Don

Sorry, but you have a bad link to your picture there. I haven't heard about any American gunboats other than the VietNam era Defiance Class that Revell had a few moons back.

Sorry about that, try this one:

Cyclone Class

I started looking over the weekend and ddin't have any luck with the major suppliers, so I figure it will have to be a specialty company.

Don

Other than the Revell Defiance kit, Aurora made a model of the USS Tucumcari (PGH-2) hydrofoil gunboat. History Channel's Mail Call featured this vessel and her first skipper. I have the kit and it is rather cool. It too served a tour in Vietnam. For more information on this gunboat: http://www.foils.org/models.htm.

It is nice to know we still have gunboats in our Navy.

Like so many areas of our hobby small craft like this are badly neglected by manufacturers. I couldn't find any sign of this one being modeled either. Couldn't that also be a Coast Guard patrol boat? It looks very similar to a boat that was shown on Mail Call doing a unrep, underway replenishment. The boat on the show was in typical Coast Guard colors, white with the red stripe.

What I have read about this ship class so far is this: It was originally designed for SEAL support missions, however it didn't quite work out as well as they had hoped for. It was transferred off to the Coast Guard and has been quite sucessfully used in the war on drugs.

I have a feeling that this one will not show up on any model manufacturers list in the near future, so now my quest has changed to trying to find line drawings of this critter. From the pictures I have looked at so far, I don't think this would be incredibly difficult to scratch build. Other than the hull itself, everything is very angular and flat. I did some quick calculations and if I go with 1/72 it would be about 28.5" long. On the other hand, if I run it out to 1/35 scale, it would be about 58.5" long and the begining of one heck of a SEAL mission diorama! :-)

If anyone has any idea of where I could go for line drawings of the Cyclone Class, please let me know. Thanks for the help so far!

Don

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/pc-1.htm

Thanks Matt for the link to that image, but I am going to have to find better detailed shots than that. I am currently searching for someone who has blueprints of the ship.

One other question, does anyone have any suggestions on the easiest way to scratch build a hull?

Don