Headed for the Future

 First of all, let me say that I admire those of you who can keep their momentum up on projects, especially when there isn't much opportunity to do any gaming.  With the explosion of the Delta variant of Coronavirus in Texas I have been very hesitant to do any gaming, whether here at home or out in public.  While everyone in our home has been vaccinated, we've discovered that an amazing number of people we know are not.  This tends to make me a bit more circumspect about who comes by these days.  Now, I don't want this to be a political issue, so any partisan comments about what the Coronavirus "is" or "isn't" will be quickly deleted.  If I want endless ranting about politics, I can visit any number of other websites, or turn on my television.

OK, enough of that.  As you may remember, in my last post I showed you the next ship being worked on:

As a recap, she is the USS Franklin.  Launched in August of 1815, she was the first ship built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.  She was in the Mediterranean from 1817-1820, and was Pacific Squadron flagship from 1821-1824.  She was then in ordinary until 1838, and served as a receiving ship in Boston from 1838-1852 when she was broken up.  Overall, nothing particularly noteworthy about her or her service.  So, what's the big deal?

Franklin was a member of the Independence class of ships of the line.  The class ship, USS Independence was launched in Boston in June of 1814.  In theory, she could have broken the blockade with USS Constitution, but never did because of the large British squadron outside the port.  Her first voyage was under Commodore William Bainbridge to the Barbary Coast in July of 1815 as part of the squadron sent to suppress piratical activities there.  After being razeed to a 54-gun frigate in 1836, she served in the Mexican War and other various roles before being a receiving ship at Mare Island Navy Yard in California.  She served in that role from 1857 to 1912 (!), when she was decommissioned.  She was sold, and left the navy yard in 1914 and lasted until 1919, when she was intentionally burned to recover her metal fittings.

USS Independence at Mare Island in the 1890s.

The Independence class was an interesting, and apparently flawed design.  The ships carried their lower gunports too close to the water once they were fully loaded.  In fact, Independence had only 3 foot, 10 inches of freeboard for her lower midships guns.  That's less than HMS Victory, which carried her lower ports about 4.5 feet above water.  Part of Independence's problem was due to her armament; rated a 74, she normally carried 87 guns, all of them 32 pounders.  Chapelle gives a breakdown of: 30 long 32 pounders, 33 medium 32 pounders, and 24 32 pound carronades.  In theory, that gives a broadside of 1,372 pounds.  For comparison, HMS Victory had a broadside weight of 1,148 pounds!  But, Independence would find it very difficult to fire her lower tier guns in most weather.  In fact, when she went to the Barbary Coast in 1815, "Her lower deck ports were caulked in to overcome the problem of her deep draft in crossing the Atlantic." (Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships)

So, a more realistic broadside weight (that is, not counting the lower guns) is 896 pounds.  That sounds impressive, but even a British 74 Common without carronades has a 781 pound broadside.  Replace some of the 9 pounders on that 74 Common with carronades, and now you can get up to around 950 pounds of broadside.  Naval Constructor William Doughty certainly thought that, "in blowing weather, she could not fight her lower lee guns and would therefore be liable to be captured by a ship of inferior force . . ."  Naval officers disagreed with his conclusion, and this was part of a political fight that I won't get into here. (Ibid.)  So, were these first generation American ships of the line unstoppable, or were they flawed and liable to be captured by lesser ships?  Well, I guess that's why we play naval wargames, isn't it?

That's enough history for the moment.  Now, on to some pretty pictures.

As I've said before, she will probably spend her life fighting under other flags, but was still a fun unicorn to get out of the way.

So, about the post title.  Yes, it's still a song title but it also fits this post extremely well.  As the first generation of completed US ships of the line, the Independence clearly points toward the future of these ships in several ways.  Firstly, the lineage seems pretty apparent when you look at Franklin, and my previous build USS North Carolina.

USS Franklin

USS North Carolina. Apparently both my US SOL are in a 
bit of a hurry!

The paint jobs also point towards the future of the very severe black/white schemes that we see in paintings of the transitional ships from, say, the Crimean War.  Take a look at these transitional ships from Red Eagle (formerly Skytrex).  Clearly you can't tell the players without a scorecard!

HMS Victoria

Retvizan

Like I said earlier, it is a song title.  "Headed for the Future" is the title song from Neil Diamond's 1985 album.  Now, my spouse is a huge Neil Diamond fan.  Be warned, then, that any comments disparaging him or his songs (except for "Heartlight") will be deleted as quickly as the COVID ones! 😁  Finally, here's a shot or two of the probable stars of the next post:

Another French 80 for Trafalgar

Some Spithead ACW ships that have been 
sitting around for a while.

The Fruit and Flowers Anniversary

 My calendar informed me that March 8 was the anniversary of the blog.  I've now been doing this since 2017, so this is our 4th anniversary.  According to the anniversary sites I've looked at, the traditional gift in the US are flowers and fruit.  This is because they are symbols of renewal, and sticking together.  If you're in the UK, apparently the traditional gifts are linen and silk.  In lieu of sending me gifts, go out and buy something for yourself; I'm just generous that way. 😁 If you prefer more modern anniversary traditions, apparently the appropriate gift is an electrical appliance of some sort.  So maybe I'll buy an electric paint shaker this month. 

Gifting jokes aside, it has been an interesting four years.  In that time, I've made 73 posts (not counting this one, of course) that have 45,323 views and have generated 426 comments as of March 7.  That is an average of 1.5 posts, 8.8 comments and 944.2 views a month.  On average, I almost sound like a responsible blog owner.  Loyal readers will know that those average statistics mask a multitude of sins, though. 😬  

One thing that is interesting is the sailing ship count.  On 3/8/2017 there were 97 completed sailing ships in the collection.  As of 3/6/2021, there are 111 completed sailing ships.  In four years I've completed 14 ships, or one every 3.42 months.  Hmmmm.  OK, that number is not as interesting as I first thought it was going to be. 😞 Back then, there were 5 ships under construction. They were USS Pennsylvania, USS North Carolina, a Russian 50, a Russian 46 and a Spanish 74.  Currently, there are 6 ships under construction.  They are USS Pennsylvania, a Russian 46, a Spanish 74 (not the same one!), a French 74, USS Franklin, and a French 80.  Doesn't look like a lot of progress there either, at first. . . . 

Several of those under construction ships will be joining the fleet shortly, though.  Take a look at this picture of the workbench:

That's pretty well organized for my painting desk.

All six sailing ships are in this photo
(along with some other projects too).

The Canberra seen in the background is going to be converted to her Falklands troopship appearance for my Falklands air games that I mentioned in another post. (https://mymodelsailingships.blogspot.com/2020/05/love-in-time-of-coronavirus-part-2.html) She was in Bomb Alley for a couple of days while she offloaded troops, so had the potential to be a target.  It will also be a fun conversion, and one that isn't seen very often in the model ship world.

One good thing about these anniversary posts is that they make me go back through the Blogger log, and see which posts I started but never finished.  That's how I discovered that I have never taken any pictures of my unrated ships to put on the blog.  Expect those in the near future.

There has been one gift to myself that is useful, but I am still less than enthused about.  What is that, you ask?  Well, it's this:

Yep, an Optivisor.  Or the cheap Harbor Freight version of one, anyway.  My wife bought me a good one about 15 years ago or so, but I didn't need any such thing back then.  Wellllll, apparently I do now, and when I went looking for mine I couldn't find it.  So now I have this one.  Actually, it's not that bad. It has a fixed lens of 1.8X, and an inside fold-down lens that makes it 2.3X.  The loupe folds out of the way, and will increase magnification to either 3.7X or 4.8X when the inside lens is in place.  Of course, when using the loupe you have to get so close that it's impossible to work, but it might be useful sometime.  Best of all, it was only $4.99 at the local store.  Even if I weren't happy with it (and I am), it costs less than a set of sails from Langton.  It's definitely a reminder that anniversaries mark the passage of time though. 

In case you should go looking for them, there are no posts for the second and third anniversaries of the blog.  No good reason, other than I just didn't do them.  I promise to try and be better going forward.

Don't Cry for Me, Argentina

 The last post took its name from the Pat Benatar song, "Invincible."  It was the theme song for a 1985 movie titled "The Legend of Billy Jean" that I never saw.  Apparently, I didn't miss much.  According to IMDB.com Pat Benatar introduces the song at her concerts by saying, "This is from the worst movie ever made."  So why did I pick that song?  C'mon, the title of the song is "Invincible," and it's a post about the ship of the same name. 😏  You have to admit, it's a lot stronger association than some of the other song titles I've used here. . . . 

THIS post title is so famous that it's not even worth waiting for the next post to talk about it.  This post title is from "Evita," so clearly we're going to be looking at something Argentinian today.  I will say that this was not my first choice for a post title.  The other choice came from a very obscure (in the US, anyway) British song about the Falklands War that I heard once on the Doctor Demento show in 1982.  I thought that might be a little too obscure.  Also, I wasn't able to find a copy that would let me confirm my memory was correct.  Anyway, despite what the title might make you think, this post is not going to be about the General Belgrano.  Instead, we're going to look at HMS Invincible's hypothetical opponent, the ARA 25 de Mayo.

Like the General Belgrano, the 25 de Mayo had an interesting history.  She actually started out in the British Royal Navy as the Colossus class carrier HMS Venerable.  Launched in December 1943 and commissioned in November 1944, she saw service in the Pacific before the end of WWII.  Immediately after hostilities, she returned prisoners of war home to Canada and Australia before herself returning to the UK.  She was decommissioned in April of 1947.

In April of 1948 she was sold to the Dutch navy and renamed HNLMS Karel Doorman in honor of the Admiral killed during the Battle of the Java Sea.  She gave a solid 20 years of service to Holland, with a major rebuild from 1955-58.  This is where she got her angled flight deck, catapult, new elevators and island along with a new set of boilers.  

Before

After

A major boiler fire in April 1968 signaled her retirement, and she was sold to Argentina in October of 1968.  Renamed ARA 25 de Mayo after the National Day of Argentina, she was commissioned into her third navy on March 12, 1969.

By 1982 her flight deck had been strengthened to operate the French-built Super Étendard fighter-bombers that were coming into service with the Argentine Navy.  They weren't used on board 25 de Mayo during the war though, due to troubles launching them from the catapult.  So, she carried 8 A-4 Skyhawks, 6 Grumman S-2E Trackers (anti-submarine aircraft), 4 Sikorsky SH-3D Sea King heavy helicopters, and  one Alouette III light helicopter for her air wing.

Where do you find a model of the 25 de Mayo?  Normally I would say on Shapeways, since that is where I got mine.  For some reason though, I can't find her there anymore.  Now, I will be the first to admit that their search engine is terrible, but it looks like the model may not be available any longer.  If someone can find it on Shapeways, please let me know and I will post a direct link to it.

Since the model seems to be currently unavailable, I'll skip most of the runup about how I painted it and what decals were used.  Instead, I'll just show some pictures of the finished model.  Like Invincible, this one also has a currently empty flight deck, but that should be rectified in the near future.

The stripes are from Microscale, the numbers are from Miscellaneous Minis, and the circles are from an old Dom's Decals sheet.  It is not a perfect reproduction of the flight deck and all her markings, but I think I've captured the spirit of the old girl.

I think this might be a post-Falklands model. The aft elevator was 
removed after the war for Super Étendard operations.

Even after all those years of service and facelifts, she's still a pretty ship.  She deserved a better fate than being scrapped, but most ships do.

On a closing note, I just finished reading One Hundred Days by Admiral Sandy Woodward, the commander of the British task force.  The scenario of an airstrike from 25 de Mayo against the British carriers is still a very good "what if" scenario.  In fact, Woodward mentions that they were standing by to receive a dawn strike on 2 May.  The idea of a counter-strike from Invincible and/or Hermes is a lot shakier, however.  Indeed, Woodward never even mentions the idea in his memoir.  Instead, he expected one of the two submarines in the area (Spartan and Superb) to find and deal with the Argentinians.  As it happened, neither of them contacted the Argentine task force, and the 25 de Mayo carrier group returned to base safely.  I still think a counter-strike by the British might be a fun scenario, but I also have to acknowledge it's pretty near the realm of fantasy.

"It's a do or die situation - we will be INVINCIBLE!"

It's time to start writing about ships and song lyrics again!  I know that COVID-19 is still running rampant, especially in my part of the world.  So yes, this could clearly be called "Love in the Time of Coronavirus Part 3" or whatever.  But ya see, I want things to go back to normal.  I want to visit my friends that I haven't seen in months, and I don't care whether it's to play games or just chat.  I've come to appreciate virtual gaming applications like Roll20 and Discord; they have allowed me to get SOME gaming in.  It's still not the same as pushing real minis around a tabletop though.

Now, I can already hear what you're saying to your computer: "Yeah, well, that's the same thing we ALL want! Stop whining, you big baby."  🤔🤔🤔  OK, fair enough.  My point though, (such as it is) was simply that here things can be normal, more or less.  That means less mentioning the Coronavirus, and more talking about ships and finding a song lyric that fits the subject of my posts.

In this case though, finding an appropriate song lyric was almost ridiculously easy.  As mentioned in the "Love in the Time of Coronavirus" posts, my newest air/naval project is the Falklands War.  After painting British warships for the Cod Wars, it was a natural progression.  I mean, why not get more than one use out of your minis when you can, right?  Also, I have to admit that I love the Royal Navy ship designs from the 1960's to the 1980's.  They just look good.  Finally, the Falklands War has one of the best "what-if" scenarios of all time, and it requires almost no jiggering of real life events.  Let me explain. . .

On May 2, 1982 most of the Argentine Navy was at sea, including their aircraft carrier, the 25 de Mayo.  Their objective was to find and strike either of the Royal Navy's two aircraft carriers: HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible.  With the British at the end of a 6,000 mile supply line, the Argentinians thought that any serious damage to either carrier would force it to leave for repairs.  If the Royal Navy lost one of its carriers, that might well tip the balance of the war to Argentina.  The Invincible group  was found late on May 1, and at 0600 the next morning, the Skyhawks were ready to be launched.  Then, fate (or nature) intervened.

The Skyhawks needed 40 knots of wind over the deck to launch with a significant ordnance load.  The carrier could make 20 knots, but the South Atlantic winds refused to cooperate and stayed at 10 knots (some sources say a dead calm), making impossible to launch the strike.  So, the first carrier versus carrier combat since WWII did not happen.  Like I said, it's the perfect "what-if" scenario, and all you really need to do is make the wind a few knots faster.  The normal winds for that time of year in the South Atlantic are 15-25 knots, so it's not even an unrealistic adjustment.

For a scenario like this, you have to have a target.  I found mine thanks to www.waterline-ships.com.  Martin, the proprietor, had an assembled and painted Triton/Skytrex Invincible and I quickly snapped it up.  As usual, I decided I didn't like the old paint job and decided to repaint it.  Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the old version.  The original idea was to just repaint the flight deck, but as always, I wound up redoing the whole thing.

The problem is, I wound up repainting the flight deck more than once.  For those who don't remember, the flight deck of the Invincible looked like this:

Illustrious (front) relieves Invincible, August 1982.

Well, I thought I could paint those stripes by hand and keep them straight.  THAT necessitated a second repaint of the flight deck. So, after a lot of paint, a bit of cursing, and some payments to decal makers, my Invincible now looks like this:

The white stripes are from a company called Microscale who mostly make decals for model railroads.  The numbers are from Miscellaneous Miniatures (https://miscmini.com/).  As with any of my projects, the mistakes appear pretty obvious to me.  Some of the lines that run the length of the deck are a little bit wavy.  They don't look that bad in person, but it's pretty blatant looking here.  I think the problem is that I put those down in 1" segments, so there was more chance for them to not be straight.  Also, the lines on the sides of the main runway are too wide.  Every stinking picture I had of Invincible, I sear those stripes looked wider than the rest.  Not until I was finished and the deck was sealed did I find a close-up of the ramp that showed all the lines the same width.  Finally, the engraving on the deck was very light, and in the multiple times repainting, I lost the deck elevators under the paint!  I'm thinking about cutting some .001 plastic sheet to size and putting them in place, but just haven't done it yet.

As a closing thought, I know that big open deck looks awfully bare.  The next step will be to find some 1/1250 deck gear and aircraft to spot here and there.  Even like this, though, she'll make a good looking target for the Argentine Skyhawks I'm painting up.  Those will be in a future post, of course.

OH, one last thing now that I think about it. (Don't 🙄at me; I can practically hear it through the monitor.)  I thought that with the Coronavirus, I'd be making a lot more blog posts.  Obviously, that hasn't quite worked as planned.  The reason for that is our family has rediscovered game nights.  After dinner we play cards, or dominoes or Yahtzee.  For some reason, that's a lot more fun easier than writing blog posts!  I promise to do better in the future.

Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Before anyone wonders what song this title is related to, for this post I am changing the rules slightly.  Instead, it's a reference to a book title.  In this case, the reference is to Gabriel García Márquez's novel, Love in the Time of Cholera.   After all, nothing says we can't class the place up once in a while!

From a gaming/painting viewpoint, I'm finding this quarantine period a bit confusing.  From reading TMP, TWW, or other people's blogs, it seems like everyone is getting loads of figures painted.  Indeed, it seems to be our patriotic duty (no matter what country you're in) to sit on your backside and wield a paintbrush,  So far, this has not been my experience.  Instead, I'm finding it more interesting to play on the Internet, catch up on some reading, or even helping my wife cook.  I can hear what you're thinking out there: "Gee Brian, you're just in a slump.  It happens to everyone; it's even happened to you in the past."  Normally, I'd agree with you, but I'm not ignoring the hobby.  Instead, I'm doing something that I'm afraid is much, much worse.  What, you ask, could I possibly be doing that is so horrible?  Well, I'll tell you.

I keep catching myself looking around for new projects.

  Even though I've said many times that I don't want any new projects, the call of something shiny and different still beckons.  For example: On TMP today (4/14) there was an article saying that a set of sci-fi rules were on sale at Wargame Vault.  "Ooh," I say.  "That could be fun.  After all, they're just navies in space."  Never mind that I have several sets of space battle rules; I'm still looking at these.  I manage to talk myself out of the idea before I start looking at spaceship miniatures though.  Some might call it strength of character; I would call it sheer laziness. 😒 

OK, so not completely new projects then.  Now, I'm looking through the unpainted miniatures, along with finished projects that haven't been shown here wondering if I can expand them.  Trouble is, I've got a LOT of miniatures that aren't on this blog.  Heck, I've got miniatures I don't even have rules for.  Take these guys for example:

These are the 1/72 scale 1938 Gran Prix cars produced by Minarions Miniatures in Spain ( https://minairons.eu/en/ ).  This has always been one of my favorite periods of racing history, probably because of a book I got when I was a child.  When Lluis at Minarions announced this project, I was all over it.  In fact, I have three of his new cars somewhere in the mail waiting to arrive.  The different makes of cars are pictured below.

Auto Union Type D.  The driver in the yellow sweater is Tazio Nuvolari.

Mercedes Benz W154.  The car noses are colored to help the pit crew
distinguish the drivers.

Alfa Romeo c12/312.  Italian racing red was not a uniform shade at this time,
and could be almost maroon.

ERA. This British make was popular with private teams.  The colors are,
from L to R: Belgium, Great Britain, Siam.

A lack of rules shouldn't be a problem, because I wrote a set of stock car racing rules for Two Hour Wargames.  Called Win or Go Home, it was fun but didn't sell very well and is no longer on the THW website.  It did, however, give me some ideas and was working on other versions before it tanked.

My baby.  My poor, orphaned baby.

So, I will be modifying these, but will also be writing a rules set that uses a complete track, like the old Speed Circuit boardgame.  My rules assumed that you were part of the pack on the lead lap, so only had enough "track" to hold all the cars.  Apparently, most racing game fans prefer a game with an entire track to chase each other around.  Why two separate sets of rules, you ask?  Well, I do want to use these cars, so will use whichever set most people like.

I have some other projects too, but I don't want to turn this into some sort of long, run-on post.  You can expect to see them in another post that will be up soon.  Whats in the next one?  Well, let's just say that these other projects are a little bit closer to what you might expect from me!

Yes I Am (almost) A Pirate, Part II

So after lunch on Friday, I ran my second game of the day.  This time, it was a much more modern game of Save the Whale.  Anyone who has read the blog regularly has seen those models being painted up; now, it was time for them to be used. 

One thing that I think is important for players of the game (and readers of the blog) to understand is that it is NOT a “serious game.”  I mean, the object for one side is to kill a whale, for goodness sakes!  Instead, the game is much more fun when both sides fulfill the stereotypes that are expected of them.  Fortunately, I had a group of players that were more than ready to embrace said stereotypes.  The whalers not only wanted to harpoon a whale; they were bound and determined to do as much damage to the Greenpeace ships as possible.  My Greenpeace players were equally hardcore:  At the beginning of the game one of them said, “We don’t care about casualties and damage.  We ONLY. WANT TO. SAVE. WHALES!”  With that, I knew we were going to have a rollicking game, and we did.

There are no setup rules per se, so we just rolled random locations for everybody (including the whale) and got started.  For whatever reason, there aren’t as many pictures of this scenario as there are of the earlier one.  I didn’t even start taking pictures until several turns into the game, so this time they are going to be of more interesting moments in the game.  The Greenpeace rubber boats rapidly headed towards the factory ship, which decided to use fire hoses to keep them away.  I explained to the factory ship captain that this would give his side negative publicity points, but to his credit he didn’t care.

Damn the publicity, fire hoses away!

He was successful too.  The die next to the boat means that it can’t move for the next 4 turns.  At the same time, Solo decided to get into the action and turned their hoses on one of the harpoon boats:

"Well, if they can do it. . . "

The brown thing behind Solo is a mooring line.  Ships can drag those behind them to try and foul their opponent’s propellers, but if they roll a 1 on a D6 the line breaks and is lost.  This mooring line is probably in the Greenpeace museum, as the player kept it for the entire game, even after fouling one ship.  The harpoon ship Solo snared was  so badly fouled that with other damage it was down to only one knot of speed.  The players agreed to give him some speed back, as he was out of play otherwise.  He also tried to foul the factory ship but was unsuccessful.

"Somebody's getting a taste of this rope.  Oh, guess it's you."

The one rubber boat swamped by the factory ship wound up not mattering much, as the rest of them swarmed the factory ship and got out the spray paint.  Both of them passed their die rolls, although not on the same turn, and applied slogans to the side of the factory ship.  Fortunately for the whalers, only two slogans counted for publicity points, and the boats ran off to interfere with the harpoon ships after that.

Like fleas on a dog. . . .

"The different colors of paint make it ART, not GRAFFITI!"

The  captain of the factory ship decided to use his ship as a sort of mobile battering ram, trying to force a collision with any Greenpeace vessel he could get close to.  He was remarkably successful in this, giving damage to both protest ships and reducing Rainbow Warrior to no speed by the end of the game. 

Despite all their aggression (and attendant negative publicity) the whalers did not succeed in killing a whale, so the protesters won this game.  Given the laughter around the table for the great majority of the game, I’m going to assume that everyone had a good time.  That ended Friday for me.

On Saturday, I had a chance to play some games, so I took advantage of that.  The first one was a game called Conn, Sonar!  This is a beer and pretzels modern submarine game, and the scenario was the final battle from Hunt for Red October.  Yours truly got to drive the Alfa class sub looking to kill Red October.

1/700 scale subs are oversize, but sure look good.

 The core mechanic of the game is getting a fire control solution on your target.  Every time you are successful using passive or active sonar, you get a solution counter for your target.  Once you have three, you can fire.  You can also try to take back your markers from others by being quiet.  I had an intermittent solution on the US sub, but could get nothing on Red October, as her commander kept extra quiet by using the caterpillar drive.  Fortunately, the Dallas couldn’t fire until he was fired on.

Once I realized that I couldn’t find Red October by being stealthy, I filled the water with active sonar waves.  I finally got a solution and fired two torpedoes before I lost him again.

Things are starting to get a bit crowded.

This is where things REALLY got interesting!  Of my two torps, one did not acquire, and began a circle to the right.  The other acquired Red October but missed her.  Going past the ship, it acquired and began to track Dallas.  That fulfilled her Rules of Engagement, so now she could start shooting back.

"Sorry about accidentally starting WWIII, guys." 

My first torpedo then acquired ME, so I decided it was time to leave the area at full speed.  Dallas turned in front of Red October and fired two torpedoes that had no trouble acquiring me, given the noise I was putting out at 40+ knots.  However, my second torpedo switched from the US sub to the larger target and hit Red October.  Good news for me!  However, a target that large requires two hits to be destroyed.  Bad news for me!

"So, do you want the good news, or the bad news?"

After a turn or so of running like mad, this is my situation:

"Looks like we made someone mad."

As my quarry was only damaged, I decided to try and get out of the torpedo’s seeker heads, and head back towards the (now damaged) missile sub.  They turned tighter than me though, so I wound up taking two USN Mk-48 torpedoes in the side and one was enough to kill me.  Game over.  Being a movie game, the movie quotes were flying around throughout the game.  Among them:

“We’re going to kill a friend, Vasily.”

“Set safeties to zero.”

“You fool, you’ve killed US,” and finally

“You mean you have TWO subs missing in the North Atlantic?”

Overall, they’re a fun set of rules that let us play a game of 19 turns to conclusion in under 2 to 2 1/2 hours, which included explaining the rules.  It manages to capture the feel of submarine combat, or at least what we think it’s supposed to feel like 🤔.

The last game of the day was Check Your 6! Jet Age.  This was another movie game and was actually two scenarios in one session.  To teach everyone the basic movement and combat rules, we did a scenario from the movie Top Gun of students versus instructors.  So, it was F-14's against A-4 Skyhawks with guns but no missiles.  After everyone understood the rules, we reset the game.  This time though, it was the final battle from Top Gun.  You know the one:  “Somewhere in the Indian Ocean.  Present day.”  And yes, we even had the dreaded MiG-28's.  They have missiles and afterburners, so are a much more even fight for the Americans.  The picture below is just after the merge:

Yes, there's an F-18 in the game.  Didn't bother the players, so don't
let it bother you.

THIS time though, the forces of Somewhereastan got their teeth into the Americans invading their airspace.

That is a dead Tomcat.  Note that there's no parachutes, either.

We played a few more turns, but weren't able to complete the game, as we were running out of time.  The end of the game looked like this:

Note that the other Tomcat is smoking.  Black smoke indicates engine damage
and orange indicates afterburner use.

With one F-14 shot down and another damaged, the forces of the People's Democratic Republic of Somewhereastan immediately declared victory.  The funny thing in this game were not the movie quotes (although there were a few), but this:

Remember me?

Yes, the Broadside! token that I mentioned in the first post.  Apparently it is the official currency of Somewhereastan, as over 20 of them were used during the game with the great majority being played by the Commie pilots.  I think at one point we were accused of flying this mission straight from the strip club, due to all the tokens we used!  The money used to purchase them goes to the Battleship Texas though, so it's worth it.  After this game slot, we had our convention speaker and then retired to the traditional after convention dinner.  There were other games played during the two days, but I didn't get any pictures of them.  Whether this is due to being busy, or being lazy, I will leave up to the readers to decide.

I'm taking what they're givin' 'cause I'm workin' for a livin'

So, first things first.  The title of the last post was a line from the Dire Strait's song, "Industrial Disease."  Maybe a bit obscure for a first go, but this one should more than make up for that, at least for my US readers.

Now that the Greenpeace ships are finished, it makes sense that I need whaling ships too.  You might think that those would be hard to find.  Turns out, they are mostly quite easy.  The British company Tri-Ang Minic made a whaling factory ship named Vikingen, and a set of three harpoon ships to go with it.  Vikingen does tend towards the toy end of the spectrum, with its simplistic hull and toy masts; however, it is in 1/1200 scale and it looks close enough for game purposes.

The original ship

A model of the original

The Tri-Ang Minic model as usually found on eBay.  If you look closely, you
can see two of the plastic masts on the bow.

I wanted a more realistic paint job, so I put the model in a container with paint stripper.  It was here that I learned the funnels were plastic around a metal core.  I would need to find replacement masts and funnels too.  The paint stripper did work well though, and after a little scrubbing I had a hull that looked like this:

Fortunately for the project, there is a shop in the UK that specializes in replacement parts for ships like this.  If you need parts, or obscure models for whatever reason, I recommend http://waterline-ships.com/ .  He had everything I needed, including replicas of the harpoon ships, which are REALLY hard to find.  After putting the replacement metal masts in place, Vikingen looked like this:

I decided to put the funnels on after the ship was painted, as some of the clearances would be way too close to paint cleanly.  The biggest problem in painting was that, while there are exterior pictures of the ship, I couldn't find any pictures of what color her decks might have been.  I wound up using a picture of another factory ship model, the Sir James Clark Ross:

So, with no further ado, here is the repainted Vikingen:

While the picture and model of the prototype shows the forward and aft superstructures to be have open areas, I decided to go with just portholes instead.  I wasn't sure I could paint it in such a way as to look realistic, and I certainly wasn't about to try and start cutting holes in the model!  Given her beginnings, I think she looks pretty good.  Sharp-eyed observers will note that I didn't put the white stripe that is about halfway down the hull.  There's a reason for that, which I will explain later.

After the factory ship comes the harpoon ships.  As I mentioned earlier, these are really hard to find as originals, and come with prices to match.  Fortunately though, http://waterline-ships.com/ has got me covered there too, as he offers reproductions of them.  They come in two pieces: the hull and a funnel.  This is what they look like out of the package:

It's a bit basic, but given its background that's not really unexpected.  On the bright side, that means that they should be easy to dress up.  Another online search gave me some photos to work with for a color scheme:

Clearly, this paint job was never seriously considered.

So, the first thing my harpoon ships need are some masts.  That first picture shows a modernized vessel, so I decided to not even try to do radar domes or the radar mast on the wheelhouse.  I kept it basic, and used .20 music wire to make my masts.  Even that minimal addition made the ships look much better, but they still needed something else.  It took a while, but I finally realized that the "something else" was the walkway to the harpoon station.  I was out of plastic sheet, so cut them from a flap of a cereal box.  When placed on a base, that gave me an unpainted model that looked like this:

Looking much better . . . .

The models themselves are simple enough that there's no need for any masking, or other painting tricks.  With a fairly simple paint job, they can be done reasonably quickly, but still look pretty good.  Eventually there will be a third harpoon ship, but it's going to be painted just like these two.

I swear that the portholes don't look that bad in person.

Other than the third harpoon ship, this project is almost finished.  I still need to paint the whales, and make some markers for things like fire hoses, mooring lines, and graffiti for the side of the factory ship.  Yes, graffiti.  The protest players are able to gain bonus points by painting graffiti on the side of the factory ship.  When those little things are done, I'll put them in another, quicker post.  One thing I MUST do though, is to throw in a picture of the whale as I promised Stew I would do that.

This is the diecast whale that originally came with the factory ship.  They are not uncommon but can still be rather expensive.  Fortunately, http://waterline-ships.com/  makes replicas of this little fellow also.  He's only about 1/2 inch long, but that is still a 50 foot whale.  He is awfully generic, but there are some better whales out there from https://www.ships-and-more.de/ and I might upgrade to those later.

I would love to hear from some of my UK readers about these Tri-Ang Minic models.  There's quite a few of the factory ships left, so did anyone ever actually play with them?  I can understand the smaller ships and whales  getting lost over time; I'm more curious about whether anyone actually played with them as toys.