Aurora
The US company Aurora were one of the first plastic kit manufacturers, and in fact Airfix used their 1/48 Spitfire kit as a model for
their own 1/72 example (the first Airfix 1/72 aircraft kit). Their first ship kits - mostly battleships to a constant scale of 1/600, with
a few odd box-scale issues - were very crude by present standards and nowadays of interest only for nostalgia, but Aurora later expanded their range with a range of
interesting and innovative subjects. This included the Japanese WW2 submarine I-19, hydrofoil gunboat USS Tucumcari, and several large scale sailing ships, including
the Civil War steam sloop USS Hartford.
Aurora's later kits have a very good level of detail for their age but virtually all are also long out of production and very hard to find. Aurora went out of business in the 1970s
and most of their tools were bought by Monogram, but many of them are rumoured to have been either melted down or lost. This is a great shame, as many are still well worth building.
Some of Aurora's earlier and cruder sailing ships have resurfaced under the label of Czech manufacturer SMER, their schooner Bluenose has been reissued (in modified form) by Hobbycraft,
and their excellent Sea Witch clipper has now been reissued by Lindberg. What happened to the tools for the other kits, I have no idea!
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1/100 American Privateer Corsair |
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1/120 Pirate Brig Black Falcon (SMER re-issue) |