February 17, 2024-COMING SOON--To fellow modelers who bought or will buy the 1/350 USS CV-41 Midway Aircraft Carrier kit: 3D-WILD (USA) and its partner Small Designer (Belgium) are co-developing a full conversion/detail upgrade kit that will be available in late March 2024!!
The full conversion/detail upgrade kit has the following components that fellow modelers can enjoy their freedom to choose:
--A new “elongated” bridge/island after the 1946 refit. The Trumpeter kit has the appearance of USS Midway from 1945-1946.
--Detailed Hangar Bay
--Accurate and Detailed Radars and Weapons based on Research
--Two Full-Airwing Options (1950 and 1954) based on Research. You can either choose the 1950 Airwing which was still dominated by propeller warplanes, or the 1954 one where the new jets had formed the backbone of the strike force.
September 22, 2023-COMING SOON--3D-WILD LLC. is very proud to announce the COMING SOON news for our 1/350 scale model kit of "a ship which did not achieve anything but became a legend anyway" (Quoted from our reference book "The Japanese Aircraft Carrier Shinano Super Drawing in 3D" by Waldmar Goralski)!!
When we built up Shinano's model starting from the great battleship Yamato's hull, we were surprised to find that a lot more structural modifications were needed than originally expected, which may
partly explain why there has not been a conversion kit developed to convert a 1/350 Yamato kit to Shinano as of today!
BACKGROUND of BOXART: This artwork depicts Shinano with her speculative appearance if she had become a fully functional aircraft carrier in naval combat, instead of being sunk in late 1944 when her conversion was still not finished. Shinano, the largest aircraft carrier built in WWII era, was once designed to function as a mobile navy base at sea which carried reserve aircraft, fuel, and ordnance in support of other carriers—rather than a fleet carrier. The carrier-based squadrons from airfields or other carriers were able to land and quickly replenish fuel and ammunition on Shinano.
Together with our Shinano kit, we will release those extremely rare 1/350 aircraft kits including N1K2-J “Shiden-Kai”, B7A2 “Ryusei/Grace”, C6N “Saiun/Myrt” and J7W “Shinden”, in addition to the already available late-war IJN aircraft such as A6M5, B6N and D4Y. Modelers will have plenty of options to build her either as sunk in real history or as an “what if” warship with a much more advanced IJN air wing.
Take-home Message of Fans who are not familiar with IJN Shinano:
--She was laid down as the third of the Yamato-class battleships and was ordered to be converted to an aircraft carrier following Japan's disastrous loss of four of its original six fleet carriers at the Battle of Midway in mid-1942.
--She was the heaviest WWII aircraft carrier built, and she held the aircraft carrier displacement record until the USS Forrestal was launched in 1954.
-- She was sunk only 10 days after commissioning by four torpedoes from USS Archerfish. She remains the largest warship ever sunk by a submarine, and the shortest-lived aircraft carrier in service.
April 16th, 2023-COMING SOON----3D-WILD is very proud to let fans of WWII armor models and RC tanks know that we will soon release 1/16 scale kit of the WWII German Self-propelled Howitzer Grille Ausf. K! This model shares the same chassis and components with our 1/16 Marder III Ausf. M model kit, but with a novel feature to fire the shells via an indirect trajectory--the only game in town for 1/16 RC models!
