In a departure, of sorts, from their heavily slanted look at the warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Eaglemoss announced plans to raise the USS West Virginia from the dead this fall (EMGC73) and add it to the ranks of the Warships of the World Collection. The West Virgina has a storied past, sunk at the Battle of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, raised, drained and refitted by the US Navy over the following months, so it could eventually rejoin the fleet in several important actions at the end of the war. A Colorado-class battleship, the West Virginia was first laid down after WWI in April 1920, and eventually struck from the US Navy’s roster some 27 years later after making three trips to Asia to return thousands of US servicemen to friendly soil.
October 15, 2015
Dragon Orders its Panzers Forward
First hinted at several years ago in their print catalog, Dragon is finally idling its engines no more and ordering its newest family of panzers forward. Expected some time before the year is out, two new PzKpfw IV Ausf. J medium tanks are in the offing (DRR60656 and DRR60657), both featuring schurzen side armor skirts and turret girdles. We don’t see any unit insignia on either of these vehicles and their descriptions are rather vague, indicating they are from unidentified units serving on the Western Front in the latter half of 1944.
We’re hoping that Dragon is back at producing scale, pre-assembled vehicles, which seems to have become an on-again, off-again passion of theirs over the past few years.