The Ben Franklin class was composed of twelve submarines, SSBN-640 to SSBN-645 and SSBN-654-659. The class was an evolutionary development from the earlier Lafayette-class of fleet ballistic missile submarines. This class can easily be identified by the fairwater planes' location halfway up the sail; the Lafayettes and James Madisons had the fairwater planes in the upper front portion of the sail. In 1993, Kamehameha was converted to a Dry Deck Shelter/swimmer delivery platform, reclassified as an attack submarine, and given hull number SSN-642; her ballistic missile capability was removed and thereafter she carried only torpedoes as armament. Following conversion, she was transferred to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for the remainder of her operational career. She holds the record for the longest service life of any nuclear submarine—nearly 37 years.

If you are looking for a unique addition to your WWII U-boat collection, let me direct your attention to the kits of Mirage Hobby. In one of their latest releases, the company offers a Type VIIC boat equipped with a pair of Biber mini subs, each carrying a pair of torpedoes. Shying away from the typical 1/700 and 1/350 scales for ships, Mirage Hobby offers this and several other submarines molded in 1/400 scale. Modelers with some experience with small parts will have no issues with the construction of this kit.

This set of replacement barrels for the 1/200 scale Mikasa. It includes 4 305mm (12”), 14 152mm (6”), 20 76mm (3”) and 12 47mm (1.85” Hotchkiss Guns). The 305mm and 152mm barrels are machined from aluminum and the other 2 are machined from brass. The 305mm barrels include brass trunnions.

These are designed for Merit International IJN Pre-Dreadnought Battleship Mikasa.

The 305mm is a straight replacement. The machining is quite good, and the only difference is that the plastic piece has what appears to be a cover on the end of the barrel while the metal barrel is bored out to depict the barrel in action.

The rest of the barrels requires surgery to remove part of the old barrel and drilling out a locating hole for the replacement barrel to slip into.

Project 628 was a design study, circa 1952-1953, to fit a Vladimir Nikolayevich Chelomei (Влади́мир Никола́евич Челоме́й) sub-sonic cruise missile to the 1,500-ton diesel-electric Soviet XIV series K-Class sub. The Russian Project 628 proposal is similar to what the US Navy did with a ‘Loon’ launching from a Gato Class submarine, the USS Cusk SSG-348. The original K-Class design was approved in 1936 as a long range "cruiser submarine" with a heavy torpedo and gun armament. The boats could operate as a "fleet submarine" working with the battle fleet or as long range commerce raiders. The double hull was divided into seven compartments. It was originally planned to carry a small floatplane for scouting but this concept was abandoned when the planned aircraft proved too flimsy. Twelve submarines were built, although seven of them ended up being trapped in Leningrad by the Germans, and were not finally completed until after the end of the war.

Mark Stille is a retired Commander of the US Navy and has written a succession of books for Osprey Publishing on naval topics. He continues as an intelligence analyst at the Pentagon. New Vanguard 258 covers Italian cruisers of World War Two, an overlooked topic. This book joints Stille’s previous Osprey Vanguard 182 book on WW2 Italian Battleships (previously reviewed for IPMSUSA in 2011). Like other Osprey books, this issue is 48 pages (not counting the front/back covers) – not enough for an in-depth treatment of WW2 Regia Marina cruisers, but enough for an excellent synopsis of design, characteristics and history of each ship.