For a brief history of the US Wickes- and Clemson-class "four-piper" destroyers, which fought in two world wars under a number of flags, see
the preview of Revell's 1/240 kit.
Mirage's announcement, in 2003, that they were to produce a series of 1/400 "four-piper" kits, produced quite a bit of interest among modellers,
despite, . However, several years passed with no further news or sign of the kits, so most people, myself included, thought they might have been cancelled, like ICM's HMS Hood.
Unexpectedly, in late July 2007 we were proved wrong as the first four of these kits were released and arrived at retail. These were the Pearl Harbour veteran USS Ward, the converted seaplane
tender USS Noa, and the Atlantic convoy escorts HMS Montgomery and HNoMS St.Albans, the latter being a Norwegian ship.
Mirage's earlier series of 1/400 Polish and German ships and submarines can be recommended for their excellent value and interesting selection of subjects, but although most are basically accurate, and sharply
moulded, they suffer from a general lack of fine detail, much like Heller 1/400 kits. Their new "four-pipers" are a serious improvement on their earlier efforts, however. The close-up photo of the second sprue
shows the small details like deck bollards and fairleads, moulded as individual parts, and the detail on the torpedo tubes. Also notable are the realistic deck camber and the thin parts like propeller guards and D/F aerial loop.
The only real negative point is the lack of any plating detail on the hull.
All of these kits share 2 large common sprues, containing the parts for the hull and most of the deck, superstructure, and fittings. Each kit has 2 smaller "variant" sprues containing the parts unique to the ship
represented. The fifth sprue is for the display base. As a number of parts on the common sprues will be unused (torpedo tubes on the RN ships, K-guns and Carley floats on USS Ward, for example) you will have plenty of small fittings, weapons and other parts left over which could be very useful for converting and detailing
other 1/400 and 1/350 ships. Conversion to other ships in the class would also be straightforward if you have the references needed.
Announced by Mirage for future release are a number of other Wickes-class kits: HMS Campbeltown in "Operation Chariot" configuration, a captured ship in Imperial Japanese Navy service, and several mid/late-war converted USN ships, including an APD "fast transport". Added to this lineup
are a Flower-class corvette in both long and short forecastle variants - these should be well worth looking out for, though I can only hope their development period isn't as long as the four-piper kits!
The two kits I bought were USS Ward and HNoMS St.Albans, which represent very different-looking ships; an early-war USN ship in standard destroyer configuration, and a mid-war Royal Navy ship, heavily converted for convoy escort duty.
