WIP - New 1/48 Gato Museum Quality Kit

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  • RCSubGuy
    Welcome to my underwater realm!
    • Aug 2009
    • 1768

    WIP - New 1/48 Gato Museum Quality Kit

    Good day, all,


    I've been working with Matt Thor on amassing resources for a kit that has seen tremendous demand over the years, but has been woefully underserved by market offerings... a US Gato Class fleet boat!

    In conjunction with Matt Thor, we are working diligently on bringing a new 1/48 scale offering to market. This will be a sizeable boat at something around 78" in length and having a beam just shy of 7". It will feature bespoke photoetch details. For those of you hoping for a $400 offering, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint. This is a tremendous undertaking and the quality and accuracy of the model will warrant a worthwhile price tag. It won't break the bank, but start saving up your sheckles now if you're interested.

    Here is some preliminary commentary from Matt posted to the SC site:

    Bob Martin has asked me to push forward with an all new 1/48th WWII GATO SS-212 Museum quality kit. I had been considering such a kit for nearly 20 years, but the scale of the effort always made me turn to less daunting projects. Well, the time has come to get going on this project. The project actually started several years ago with Paul Crozier and Jeff Porteous, but due to my work activities I was not able to focus enough attention on the effort to keep it going. Bob and I discussed this project many times over the last year, and he finally convinced me to push forward with it being that there really has never been a proper kit of this boat presented with this amount of attention to accuracy and detail. I have been slowly working on a new Seawolf SSN-21 kit and that kit will still progress, but progress on the Seawolf has been slow due to my attention turning to GATO. The first step in the generation of a kit of any new subject is to gather as much information as one can muster on the subject. There is a TON of information available on the WWII GATO class submarine, but in order to find correct information on a very specific boat such as GATO herself, you have to dig a lot deeper. I reached out to Randy Fagan at the Floating Drydock and he was very excited to help out with the project. Randy has been an excellent resource and I highly recommend his company. He has been most willing to help me locate all of the drawings and plans I need to successfully complete this project. I have a collection of nearly 50 drawings and have been adding to the list weekly. This is in addition to the excellent Floating Drydock PDF plans book for the GATO/BALAO class and dozens of other books & publications.

    Initially this kit was to be of WAHOO. I have since reconsidered and will start with the lead boat out of the Electric Boat yards which will give the modeler the widest selection of boats to choose from. The kit will initially be offered with the early, as launched conning tower and deck with mods available after initial release of the kit.

    The CAD has been started, but I have found several areas that need further investigation to assure accuracy.
  • goshawk823
    Lieutenant Commander
    • Oct 2010
    • 210

    #2
    Good morning Bob. I hope you were OK with the post I made about this boat on the FB page for the SC. In talking with Matt, it seems he's already gotten a ton of email on this new offering, so I have directed any questions/comments/etc. to your email. This is going to be a show stopping model, and I'm glad that it's going to be produced in a scale that will really show well. I predict that this model will be one of the hottest kits ever offered. I can't wait to see it on the water.

    Comment

    • Monahan Steam Models
      Captain
      • Apr 2020
      • 755

      #3
      This is great news! Will it be a grp hull?

      Comment

      • goshawk823
        Lieutenant Commander
        • Oct 2010
        • 210

        #4
        Originally posted by Monahan Steam Models
        This is great news! Will it be a grp hull?
        Matt tells me that it will be epoxy resin hull, metal, photoetch, cast resin... lots of bits for this kit.

        Comment

        • Monahan Steam Models
          Captain
          • Apr 2020
          • 755

          #5
          Originally posted by goshawk823

          Matt tells me that it will be epoxy resin hull, metal, photoetch, cast resin... lots of bits for this kit.
          Thanks Sam, sounds like it is going to be an awesome kit. Really looking forward to this one.

          Comment

          • RCSubGuy
            Welcome to my underwater realm!
            • Aug 2009
            • 1768

            #6
            I'm looking forward to it as well. Certainly a big gap in the market for it... such a piece of iconic history.

            Bob

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