Our place in the market.............

For years, ship modeling has remained one of the smaller facets of the model industry. 
Those who chose to model aircraft, armor, cars and other vehicles have long had a 
seemingly endless variety of kits and reference materials from which to choose, while the 
ship modeling community made do with the occasional release of a new kit, or the re-release 
of older kits  that were far from state-of-the-art. The comparatively small number of ship 
modelers made it difficult for manufacturers to justify the expense of tooling up to produce 
injection molded plastic kits. Subjects remained limited, and there was a good deal of 
repetition among manufacturers. That has now changed!

 The rise of “cottage industry” manufacturers producing resin kits has proved a boon to 
ship modelers. Though the “bottom line” still affects the decision as to what kit to produce, resin kit manufacturers can achieve a profit with far fewer units sold than is the case with injection-molded kits. And so the choice of ships available in model form has expanded exponentially from companies such as White Ensign Models, Classic Warships, Corsair Armada, Iron Shipwright, Nautilus Models, Tom’s Modelworks, Loose Cannon Productions, and JAG Collective, to name a few. The expansion of available subjects has given rise to photo-etched detail parts from Gold Medal Models, Flagship Models, Tom’s Modelworks. More books and other reference materials are becoming available from smaller publishers such as WR Press as well as from Naval Institute Press and other major houses. Mail-order and web-based hobby shops such as Pacific Front Hobbies, Floating Drydock, and Naval Base all expanded their stock, and ship-focused web sites developed. What was missing? Color reference material. Long available to the aircraft and armor modelers, there was very little available for the ship modeler. Though the major navies of the world all used distinctive peacetime colors and a wide range of wartime camouflage colors, the perception remained with many that warships were all painted “Battleship Gray” or some other ubiquitous color. Snyder and Short Enterprises has set out to meet this need and to supply accurate color information for the major navies of the Second World War.

We would like to hear from you. Please feel free to contact us with suggestions for future S&S projects, with contributions to our body of knowledge, or with questions. We will do our best to respond to the latter, but please keep in mind that both of us have other, full-time jobs and that ours is not a research service.

 Thank you for your interest and your purchases, and happy modeling!

 John Snyder and Randy Short