¹⁄350

Trumpeter have announced the released of their 1/350th USS Cole DDG-67.

This kitset is to contain 481 parts on 11 sprues plus the upper hull, lower hull, waterline plate, & main deck. The expected release date and the suggested retail price at this stage are not known.

We will of course update you on this kitset as and when we have more detail.


Ship History

The second USS Cole (DDG-67) is an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyer homeported in NS Norfolk, Virginia. The Cole is named in honour of Marine Sergeant Darrell S. Cole, a machine-gunner killed in action on Iwo Jima on the 19th of February 1945. The ship was built by Ingalls Shipbuilding and delivered to the Navy on the 11th of March 1996.

On the 12th of October 2000, the Cole was damaged and 17 of its sailors killed by a suicide attack in the Yemeni port of Aden.
On the 12th of October 2000, while at anchor in Aden, the Cole was attacked by Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, who sailed a small boat near the destroyer and detonated explosive charges. The blast created a hole in the port side of the ship about 40 feet (12 m) in diameter, killing 17 crewmembers and injuring 39. The ship was under the command of Commander Kirk Lippold.

Cole was returned to the United States aboard the Norwegian semi-submersible heavy-lift MV Blue Marlin owned by Offshore Heavy Transport of Oslo, Norway. The ship was off-loaded on the 13th of December 2000 from Blue Marlin in a pre-dredged deep-water facility at the Pascagoula, Mississippi, shipyard of Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Ingalls Operations. After 14 months of repair, Cole departed on the19th of April 2002, and returned to her homeport of Norfolk, Virginia. Cole left Norfolk on the 29th of November 2003 on the destroyer's first overseas deployment since the bombing. She returned to homeport of Norfolk, Virginia on the 27th of May 2004 without incident.

The U.S. Government offered a reward of up to US $5 million for information leading to the arrest of people who committed or aided in the attack on Cole. Al-Qaeda was suspected of targeting Cole because of the failure of a 3rd of January 2000 attack on USS The Sullivans, one of the 2000 millennium attack plots. On the 4th of November 2002, Ali Qaed Sinan al-Harthi, a suspected al-Qaida operative, who is believed to have planned the Cole attack, was killed by the CIA using an AGM-114 Hellfire missile launched from an MQ-1 Predator unmanned drone.

The Cole deployed to the Middle East on the 8th of June 2006 for the first time since the bombing. While passing the port city of Aden the crew manned the rails to honor the crewmembers killed in the bombing. She returned to her homeport of Norfolk, Virginia on the 6th of December 2006 without incident.
On the 28th of February 2008, the Cole was sent to take station off Lebanon's coast, the first of an anticipated three-ship flotilla. "The United States believes a show of support is important for regional stability. We are very concerned about the situation in Lebanon. It has dragged on very long," said a top US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity signaling 'impatience' with Syria.

History courtesy of Wikipedia

Image courtesy of Trumpeter & Wikipedia