Random photo montage of enjoyment......

!!!

I think the Panther was much prettier than the Tiger. That thing is in beautiful shape!

Turns out...it was both.

Holy fuckballs! Is that an actual 88?

Looks like it. The barrel looks a little short, but it could be the angle of the photograph or the gun could be out of battery (in a full or near-full recoil position) due to low or no fluid in the recuperator.

And it's got kill bands on the barrel.

It wasn't always. This is how it looked when the guy bought it from a British scrap yard.

I love this thread.

The lead C-47 on D-Day was found in a Wisconsin boneyard, soon to be scrapped. The CAF wants her to fly again!

Got the CAF on Facebook. They're keeping us updated.

The Confederate Air Force? Their Civil War air power contribution was so meager it might as well have been nonexistent!

Being a purist, I'm not super keen on colorized photographs or films, but these images look very good.

The death of the ex-USS Howarth, DD-592.

Almost took the tug down with her!

If these damn SUV's get any bigger a tank isn't going to cut it!

It really was in his basement.

INDIAN OCEAN (July 16th, 2015) Quartermasters prepare to raise the national ensign aboard the amphibious dock landing ship USS Ashland (LSD 48) during a maneuvering exercise between the Royal Australian Navy and the U.S. Navy. Ashland is in the Indian Ocean participating in Talisman Sabre 2015, a bilateral exercise intended to train Australian and U.S. forces in planning and conducting combined task force operations. (U.S. Navy photo/Released)

Piece o' cake.

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, USN, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, USN, President Harry S. Truman, and Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, USN (left to right) On the bridge of USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42), flagship of the Eighth Fleet, during maneuvers off the Virginia Capes, 24 April 1946.

This model outguns anything @Forbin has made.

Real Guns: 1937 Remote Controlled Battleship

Ahh, the good old days. Back when syphilis was incurable and warmth was a luxury for the rich, ordinary folks didn't have an easy way to live out their long held fantasies. Today, if you are obsessed with battleships, you can download some app to your phone (World of Warships is supposed to be fantastic) and sink enemy ships at your hearts content. Back in the day, you'd have to weld together 360 lbs of scrap metal, wire up some vacuum tube based remote control, and mount actual .38 caliber guns to the deck. Death was a bit more permanent, even in a game back then, but kids were tougher and if you had cancer you were told to walk it off. Find this 1937 Remote Controlled Battleship offered for $3,750 in Escondido, CA via craiglist.



According to the seller, this USS CALIFORNIA replica was built in the early days of civilian RC modeling. She tips the scales at 0.18 tons and was built by a Howard E. Bixby of Glendale, CA. You can find a PDF scan of a Radio-Craft magazine from the 1940s with Mr Bixby and his fleet here.



If you ever wonder what keeps an ATF agent up at night -- this is it. Totally unregistered and awesome collection of .38 and .22 caliber functioning firearms attached to a remote control boat. Forget about drones taking pictures of you in your underpants, this is a boat that can float around the local duck pond and kill your entire family.



There is probably enough mercury, lead, and arsenic in this remote control module to qualify as a Superfund site. But you should be a man, and walk off that lead poisoning.

Okay, I kind of want that battleship. But has anybody ever built a similar scale aircraft carrier with RC planes that can land and launch from it?

Of course I can't find it now, but I saw a news story from California last year or the year before where someone had built a big r/c carrier and was launching and landing r/c aircraft on it.

I found the link to that battleship story in a thread about model ship warfare. One of the posters said that people will build aircraft carriers to fight the other ships but because the scale is so small, the aircraft aren't radio controlled. Instead, they build tiny catapults and "hurl" the little airplanes into the ships with guns (compressed air bb-type contraptions) kamikaze-style.

>EDIT<

This isn't the ship I saw the story about, but it's pretty cool. They aren't in the same scale, but it's pretty neat. I like how the catapult track has "steam" coming out of it, just like the full sized ones do.

USS Bennington CV-20 at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard,

A Russian Navy Victor I class nuclear attack submarine on her way to scrapping.

The giant Typhoon class SSBN being broken up.

The Ukrainian Cruiser Ukrayina, formerly Admiral Lobov. She was left 95% complete after the collapse of the Soviet Union, then subsequently became Ukrainian property. Only $30 million will complete the thing.

The Observer, formerly the Front Royal #360, USMC, formerly Esso Shreveport, laid up in Port Said, Egypt. She was detained in the suez during the 1967 Six Day War, and subsequently abandoned. She's been a grain storage vessel ever since.

Some of those end-of-the-war German jet projects brought to life in giant scale R/C models:
http://www.modelairplanenews.com/blog/2015/10/01/one-of-a-kind-messerschmitt/
http://worldwarwings.com/this-rc-me-p-1111-is-out-of-this-world

I miss the Navy of my youth.

USS America, CVA-66, and USS Ranger, CV-61.

USS Joseph Strauss, DDG-16.

USS Long Beach, CGN-9

USS New Jersey, BB-62.

USS Midway, CV-41.

USS David Ray, DD-971.


USS Darter, SS-576.

What's the hatch from, boss?

Sixteen inch thick, 6000lb, conning tower hatch from USS South Dakota.

Looks like it might be bullet proof.