Big is always best. The builders' models in museums are classic examples, like the QUEEN MARY battlecruiser at the National Maritime Museum in the UK. It is probably 12 feet long or more. The Maritime Museum in San Francisco has my all-time favorite a huge model of battleship CALIFORNIA built by the Mare Island Naval Shipyard to show the Navy what the ship would look like when they were done building her. I saw this model for the first time in 1963 and that was it for 1:700 scale ships. It has been some time since I have seen it but I think it was about ten feet long. Of course the Japanese beat everybody when it came to large scale ship modeling. They built a full-size battleship NAGATO on an island for the film "Tora! Tora! Tora!" in the late '60's---the whole durned ship from the waterline up.

Haw! They are both 1:48 scale!

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collectio...bject.cfm?ID=SLR1408

http://www.steelnavy.com/California48.htm