Tamiya German Battleship Tirpitz

It's a huge, pretty good kit right out of the box, if you add a photo etch like crane, catapult and mast you have a real crowd pleaser.

Very pleased with this model and the price.

Very Nice A ++++++++++++

I've read some great reviews about Tamiya's 1/350 ship models, so I had high hopes for this kit. Upon receiving it, I found that yes, it is big and the detailed molding is good, for the most part, though not vastly better than other 1/350 ship models I've bought from Trumpeter and Academy. My main disappointment is that the kit includes no decals at all, so the German eagle emblem on the stern is totally omitted from this kit. So is the "shield" of the Tirpitz coat of arms, which the actual ship had on each side of the bow. Completely omitted. Not to mention the large swastika emblem that was painted on the ship's deck; I didn't actually expect the kit to include that, but I was still hoping it might. No such luck. The Nazi naval jack (flag) that they do include is printed on very thin, flimsy paper, and it too omits the swastika, so the center of the flag is just an empty white circle, which looks ridiculous. I have a separate sheet of swastika decals, since so many model producers nowadays refuse to include them in their kits, but none of them is tiny enough to use on the Tirpitz's flag. So I'm really not sure how to fix that problem. I prefer historical accuracy, as do so many other modelers, and this kit doesn't really provide it. I would probably give it 3.5 stars, if I could.

Excellent scale model.

This model is great. However, it was damaged upon arrival. The bow of the ship was broken off. We decided not to return the model because we didn't want a basically good but slightly damaged product to go into a landfill. My son was disappointed, but felt better about not throwing it in the trash than returning it for another one.