I found a copy of the catalog from the Toy Soldier in Maine, dated 1977-78, from which I had ordered the Leicester miniatures. It was not my choice of ships that was odd. The only U.S. battleships they produced were Idaho (that’s what they called it, really New Mexico class) and the Alaska class battle/super heavy cruisers. No North Carolina, no South Dakota, no Iowa! And the Nagato was the only IJN battleship. The full list is reproduced below; as you can see it was really oriented to British/German ships (same as the current C in C line). I did miss one type of Japanese cruiser, the Alaska, a U.S. destroyer and the U.S. escort carriers.
It might have been possible to modify/combine Alaskas into a passable South Dakota or North Carolina. Since I didn’t get one, I’ll have to either scratch build it or hope C in C decide to do a Pacific range. I have decided that the extra Nagato can be converted into a Kongo class without too much trouble; add a new stack and move the rear super-firing turret to the forward side of the float plane area, extending that area toward the stern over the original turret location. Both models need the superstructure built up a bit in order to fully capture the effect of those "pagoda" bridges.
| Left Column, from the top: Richelieu, Strasbourg, Rodney, Huron (Tribal Class DD), New Mexico, Baltimore, Cleveland, Yarnall and Fletcher (Fletcher class DDs). | Right Column form top: Mogami, Aoba, Nagato, Ushio (Fubuki class DD), Beitzen ( Maasz class DD), Prinz Eugen, Lutzow, Koln, Pola, Navagatori class DDs |
Below is an image of the original catalog page (from The Toy Soldierof Bath, ME) Circa 1977!
As far as I can tell, these miniatures are no longer produced.
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