Thank you to Osprey Publishing for providing a review copy of their new release, USS Lawrence vs. HMS Detroit, The War of 1812 on the Great Lakes, number 79 in the Duel Series. As always, I appreciate all those in the IPMS Reviewer Corps, whose work is critical to sharing new and exciting modeling products with the world.

The USS Yorktown (CV-5) is one of the important US Aircraft carriers of World War II. Her level of participation in our Pacific Theater of operations is immeasurable in terms of giving as well as taking. With the vast distances involved in the Pacific, it was clear to the military planners of the day a new strategy must be devised. One of the key components of that strategy would hinge on fast carriers and support ships to sustain the island-hopping campaigns that would bring our forces closer to the Emperors front door. Yorktown played a significant role leading up to and into the early days of the war. As the first purpose built, from the keel up aircraft carrier the designers started with a clean sheet of paper and incorporated many of the lessons learned on preceding carriers.

The British Royal Navy entered the Second World War with 160 destroyers, ranging from some holdovers from the Great War to recently commissioned vessels of vastly improved capability. In this volume, naval historian Angus Konstam describes the attributes of over a dozen classes of destroyers.

The opening chapter gives a general developmental history of the early destroyers of the Royal Navy, their design and development, roles and uses, weapons and general modifications, as well as their appearance and habitability. The author then goes on to describe, in as much detail as is possible within these limited 48 pages, the various classes of inter-war build vessels from earliest to latest, including:

The Kits

These are Round Two’s re-release of the Lindberg company’s re-release of three old Pyro molds that appeared under many guises, such as the Nina was once boxed as a Barbary Pirate and the Santa Maria appeared as the Mayflower. They were part of a series of kits called “Historic Sailing Ships” that included twelve ships, many actually duplicates with different names. When first released, the kits were of a standard box scale, but “The Ships of Columbus” are touted as being 1/144. In reality the three ships varied in size yet the kits have all the same dimensions, so the scale issue is “iffy” as each ship has a hull about 4.5 inches long.

For ship modelers looking to improve the look of their USS Independence (LCS-2) or USS Coronado (LCS-4) in 1/700 scale, the folks at Master Model now offer a set that includes aerials and a replacement gun barrel that look fantastic. The folks at Cyber-Hobby/Dragon did a great job of representing the kits in plastic, and these brass detail parts add a very nice touch. Modelers with experience handling small items should have no issues with utilizing this set.