The USS Saratoga was the US Navy's third aircraft carrier, being commissioned a few months prior to its class-lead, USS Lexington CV 2, in November 1927. USS Langley CV 1, Lexington, and Saratoga were instrumental in developing a new generation of fleet tactics that embraced the capabilities of airpower.

Eduard has put together a really nice set of details for the USS Saratoga CV-3 Trumpeter kit. You get 2 sheets of PE that provide a lot of details that are not in the original kit, along with six pages of instructions to help you apply the parts to your kit. The details include upgrades for the turrets and island, upper deck safety rails & nets, stairway guide rails, and ladders. The set also comes with parts to upgrade the deck crane and the plane catcher net.

The PE parts are perfectly etched and can be easily cut from the trees without special tools.

The Ship

When the Japanese destroyers of the Fubuki class first appeared in 1928, they took the rest of the world’s sea powers completely by surprise, and their combination of large size, high speed and heavy firepower set the standard for other navies to follow for the next decade. Commissioned in 1930, HIJMS Ayanami was the lead ship of an improved Fubuki “Special Type” with its main armament of six 5” guns capable of 75º of elevation, in theory making her the first warship in the world with main guns capable of taking on surface vessels and aircraft. However, her fire control was inadequate to the anti-aircraft task, and these weapons were never effective in that role.

The Ship:

Known officially as the Type 36A class (and by the Allies as the Narvik class), these vessels were Germany’s attempt to improve their individual destroyer’s firepower to compensate for their smaller numbers. To do this, these ships carried 5.9” (150mm) main guns, a caliber usually found on light cruisers. These weapons had no AA capability, as well as having the undesirable effect of weighing the ship down by the bow. Z-31 was designed to carry a twin mount forward, but it wasn’t until late in her life that these were mounted. This model represents the ship in the 1943-44 period with a single mount forward. She was also equipped to carry mines, and many of the class had more success in that role than in any other. By the end of hostilities, several of the class had been lost to surface or air attack, but Z-31 survived to be turned over to France as a war prize.

The Kit:

This model is not a complex build, but it does have some details that are extremely small. Be forewarned: good tweezers, sprue cutters, and an extra fine razor saw blade are mandatory to release some of the over 650 parts of miniscule carpet-monster food that exist on the trees. An exploded diagram with two hull sides, 7 parts runners, one display base, a decal sheet with flags and early aircraft markings, and a PE sheet with crane structure are provided. I opted to do the kit without extra PE or rigging to show what a buyer gets for his money. In this case, a lot!

Study the instructions first; as usual, since ships hold some pitfalls if you don’t. Small parts that fit in places which are hard to get to later are the norm. Paint the splinter camo as you go along; otherwise you won’t be able to do it upon completion of the build. In this build, the hull is constructed first.

The genesis of the modern all-gun warship occurred when Jackie Fisher, who was for a time Great Britain's First Sea Lord, serving with Winston Churchill, First Lord, during WWI, designed the first fast, big-gun battleship named HMS Dreadnought, a name subsequently given to all ships of that class. Fisher was determined that the prime characteristics of a superior warship were found in two things: speed and firepower. Consequently, this same thinking that produced the Dreadnoughts also created the first Battlecruiser, HMS Invincible, which was basically a somewhat smaller, faster ship, more lightly armored than the battleships, but almost as heavily armed. As the Dreadnoughts made all other battleships obsolete, so the Battlecruisers made all other cruisers instantly obsolete.