![]() ![]() Later edit: I found the article! I'm embarrassed to admit that it was almost literally under my nose: in the CD version of the Nautical Research Jou rnal, Vols. I believe one theory is that the model represents a ship that never actually got built. (I wish I could find that article again so far no luck.) It sticks in my memory that there's some controversy among the French historians about which was which, and which one that model represents. Somewhere or other, a long time ago, I read an article about the various eigheenth- and nineteenth-century French frigates named La Flore. I'm not so sure about the description of the ship as having been part of D'Estaing's fleet. Vry interesting, Imperator Rex thanks for the link. The Sea Witch is yet another well-known Lindberg model kit, released in the 60s. Kennedy's other models are also kept there. Kennedy's model of La Flore is indeed kept at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston you can see a picture and a short description of it here: (I believe the model was presented to President Kennedy on some formal occasion by a French official of some sort.) I have the impression that she'd been a popular model subject in France for some time. I don't know where those models ended up maybe at the Kennedy Library in Boston.) Whether that Kennedy connection had anything to do with Lindberg's choice of her as a kit subject I have no idea. (The Mariners' Museum, where I eventually ended up working for a while, was holding a special exhibition of models from the Kennedy collection when I went there for the first time, in about 1970. La Flore, on the other hand, did have an American connection of sorts: there was a big model of her in President Kennedy's personal collection of ship models. They certainly don't look like anything else I've ever seen from Lindberg, Pyro, or any other plastic kit manfacturer. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that they actually originated with some European company. (subject to the very severe limits of my highly defective memory). But I can only talk about my own experience in the U.S. (They may, in fact, not have appeared at all before Pyro went out of business.) I've never seen either of them in a box with a label other than Lindberg on it. I don't recall that either of those kits ever appeared in a Pyro box. I was never able to get them to fit right (and virtually every photo of a built-up one I've seen has had the same problem), but I think the concept was worth pursuing. And Lindberg had an interesting idea for reproducing shrouds and ratlines with slightly flexible, slightly stretchy polyethelene plastic. On the other hand, they had full-length gundecks (in contrast with the Revell and Airfix warships of that vintage). ![]() The "wood grain" detail was overdone, of course, and some of the details were on the crude side. (I believe the model was presented to President Kennedy on some formal occasion by a French official of some sort.)įor their age they weren't bad kits. I know the Wappen von Hamburg was already a popular modeling subject in continental Europe, but I suspect few, if any, American modelers would have ranked her high on their list of wanted subjects. The two kits have a distinctly European look to them. ![]() I didn't see them before they appeared in those packages I think that was their first appearance in the U.S. I bought La Flore and the Wappen von Hamburg in Lindberg boxes back in the late 1960s - the former at a department store in New York City (during a family vacation trip) and the latter at the wonderful hobby shop in the basement of Hall's Hardware Store in downtown Columbus, Ohio (my home town). ![]()
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