Sort of re-found this, going thru Dad's stuff. This is Dad in 1945, Ie Shima, Southwest Pacific. He and a buddy salvaged a wrecked Japanese military powerboat, fixed it up, and used it to putter around between Ie Shima and Okinawa. After using it for weeks, they happened to discover that it was actually a kamikaze boat, and had a live 1,000 pound bomb in the bow! The davit they'd been tying the boat to the dock with was the trigger! I don't know for sure if this photo was taken on that boat, though. His guardian angel worked REAL hard for those few years.
The Imperial German Navy's SMS Derfflinger, what I would consider the worlds first fast Battleship. HMS Emperor of India, An Iron Duke class Battleship. A pair of my favorite Cold War Soviet Bomber, the Tupolev Tu-16 Badger. These are in the service of the Egyptian AF. The Civil War Monitor USS Canonicus, on display for the Jamestown Exhibition, 1907. She was the last surviving Civil War Monitor. Father Guido Sarducci.
I'll take another walk and try to get a picture later this week, but on our Saturday afternoon walk a few blocks over, some guy had his garage open. Left side: a Jeep CJ. right side: totally filled up with some kind of tracked amphibious LAV! All I could see was the nose sticking out from a pile of junk. Will recon later.
South Korean Army K1 and T80U. The K1-series resemble the M1-series, but are considerably smaller. An identifying feature is that the K1 has only six roadwheels per side compared to seven on the Abrams. Russia gave South Korea 35 T-80Us to pay off debts from the Soviet era.
To my untrained eye she seems to be in wonderful shape. About the only thing that stood out to me as being neglected were missing and/or shabby looking 20mm cannons. Other than that, everything looked great to me. The museum is nice too.
That's good to hear. A number of museum ships are in danger of closing. USS Olympia, Dewey's flagship at Manila Bay, is a horse hair away from being either scrapped, or sunk as a reef. The Clamagore(submarine) and the Yorktown(carrier) are also in the same boat, but they're in a terrible location(backwaters of Charleston harbor), and Patriots Point is a horribly run corporation. I'm glad North Carolina is in good shape.
I found these the other day, quite interesting. It's the French battleship Paris in 1940, after her seizure by Great Britain in Portsmouth. Notice the Union Jack flying from the jack staff. Here's the Paris serving as a base ship for minesweepers in 1955, just before her scrapping. This is the Italian light cruiser Bari, formerly the German cruiser Pillau, in the Bosporus between the wars. The Italian armored cruiser Pisa. And, finally, 3 Chinese Type 033 "Romeo" class diesel electric subs in Egyptian service. These boats were modernized with new bow mounted sonar, and the ability to fire sub Harpoon.
Moar? The French Battleship Lorraine, in port postwar. She was the only active pre war battleship in French service at the end of the war. The French battleship Courbet, after her seizure by British forces. She would serve as a base ship for patrol craft and an AA guard Ship before being stripped of her engines and used as a breakwater for the artificial "Mullberry" harbors constructed for the invasion of France. She did well as an artillery shell magnet.
Been dragging my feet building models this year, but I managed to finish an old 1/48 Tamiya Focke Wulf kit that I bought in 1994. This is the Fw-190F-8 version, optimized for ground attack. Those are unguided rockets under the wings.
The Spanish heavy cruiser Canarias. The Swedish cruiser Tre Kronor. The US cruiser USS Galveston CG-3. The Chilean cruiser Chacabuco, ex USS Nashville Cl-43.