COBI USS Kidd DD-661 Set 4866

COBI's USS Kidd (DD-661) is a 1:300 model built from 706 blocks, 38 cm long, created with the USS KIDD Veterans Museum in Baton Rouge, which owns and maintains the real ship. The guns and propellers move, and a brown display stand carries a plaque with the ship's name, the scale and the museum's emblem. All markings are printed.

Named for a man who died on the Arizona

Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd was aboard the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and was killed when her forward magazine exploded. He was the first American flag officer to die in the war, and the destroyer commissioned sixteen months later carries his name.

The crew then did something the Navy did not plan for. Isaac Kidd shared a surname with the seventeenth-century privateer William Kidd, and on the ship's first passage through New York Harbor a Jolly Roger went up the foremast. A painted pirate appeared on the funnel. The Navy let it stand, and the Kidd became the Pirate of the Pacific — the only ship in the fleet officially permitted to fly the black flag.

She is still there

The Kidd fought at Wake, Rabaul, Tarawa, Guam, Leyte and Okinawa, screened carriers against kamikaze attack and picked up downed pilots. On 11 April 1945 a kamikaze hit her; 38 men were killed and the ship stayed in action. She served again in Korea and was decommissioned in 1964.

Since 1982 she has been a museum ship on the Mississippi at Baton Rouge, and she is the only Fletcher-class destroyer preserved in her Second World War configuration — every other survivor was modernised. The river handles her docking: at high water she floats, and as the Mississippi drops she settles onto a cradle and is left high and dry until spring.

In the COBI range

Set 4843 is the USS Arizona, the ship Admiral Kidd was standing on when he was killed.

Specifications

Pieces: 706 · Scale: 1:300 · Display stand and museum plaque included
Model dimensions: 38 × 5.5 × 15 cm on the stand (15.0 × 2.2 × 5.9 in)