The Velociweiler

....and back again.... Illustrious around an hour and a half ago...

It's a re-release of a kit which was first issued around 1983-84 by Imai (?), subsequently re-released by Bandai circa the BBC repeating Thunderbirds on BBC2 in the latter part of 1991. The large circular hole in the intake baffles was for a spring-loaded projectile to be fired toy-like from the finished model. As far as I remember, the pod also has a set of steerable wheels. Works out on roughly published dimensions around 1\200, which again, as far as I remember, is etched somewhere on the inside of the hull moulding.

Hows about... A little diorama or skit made from something which came from a Kinder egg? Some of the little thingies inside look quite good. Some of the bits you find in that little container you wouldn't believe. I got a little working cable car once. A friend of mine had a loft conversion in his, and it looks great.

Hi. As a kit for the purposes I wanted it for, it was just fine. Other than the poor canopy fit that is. These days with aircraft, I'm only building for the fun of it and I don't bother with a great deal of effort - been there, done that in the past and the appetite has vanished. I just wanted a simple build-from-the-box. The Hasegawa and Monogram kits are more complex (as is, of course the Academy kit) and need more work and I didn't really want to spend the time - simplicity was more important than strict accuracy or detail. Hence it's very rare I use undercarriage any longer. Funny thing is, although the kit is what you might imagine 'bargain basement', it's very rare to find it at a price which is significantly lower than the Hasegawa or Monogram kits. So I still have a larger number of those superior F-4's because I bought them very considerably cheaper than I could find one of these Esci\Italeri Phantoms for. Incidentally, this kit is by no means, in spite of popular belief, the original kit behind the more recent 1/48 Italeri F-4S kit - which is a completely new model with no semblance to the Esci. I know the Esci kit has its critics, but at the time of its release, it was the best one available, and was more-or-less state-of-the-art at the time. (Late 70's). If you were an experienced modeller at that time, you'd have grown up with kits where the interior was a shelf with a pilot's head moulded in, or a lug in an otherwise empty shell for a moulding roughly human-shaped to sit on. It was a nice enough kit for me for my purposes, and it's too easy to see its shortcomings without taking into account the context of the time it first appeared. In shape, look, feel and build, personally I think the Monogram kit of the 'J' is a better model than the Hasegawa, but you pays yer money, you takes yer choice I suppose. Thanks for the comments all.

Two Esci\Italeri 1\48 Phantoms I finished last night. Hadn't realised the canopy fit was quite so poor, but y'live & learn... If you do have the more recent Italeri boxing and haven't got round to it yet, be very careful of the decal sheet. Soak the decals for far longer than would be the norm and take extra care in placing them. They fall apart with very little coaxing - and I used examples from three separate sheets - all were the same. Hasegawa decals for the F3 & Eagle Strike 'Phantoms Forever' Pt. 3 for the VF 191 aircraft in 1976\77. Doubt whether Walleye bombs would have been available in trials markings around then but I just wanted to do something a wee bit different instead of the usual operational schemes for the underwing ordnance. For some reason I quite like this early post-Vietnam era, can't quite place why.

Just going by memory, I think we had three official cars and two (?) Sherpa vans too when I was on the Invincible.

1. One of two yokes which raise and lower the deck lift. Seemed a good idea at the time, but they've caused no end of problems, and occasionally their failure ended in near-disaster. 2. One of the ship's cars used when the ship deploys for official business - driving senior personnel around and whatever. They're just maintaining it on the upper scupper on this occasion. Some aircrew are also so lazy they need a lift to proceed between the far ends of the flight deck.

Not really a reference photo by any means. Here's the Illustrious leaving the Solent a bit over an hour ago. Being the ship will be decommissioned next year, this will be one of the final opportunities to take this kind of phot. I took more, but they don't look much different to this one, hence no point posting them.

Should be pinned maybe?

Extremely capacious, collossal bank of documents, articles, drawings, plans and much more. Mainly US Navy. http://hnsa.org/doc/ 'Navy documents and manuals online'. Just random examples:- 'Ship's Camouflage Instructions' and the associated 'Ship's Concealment Camouflage instructions'. 'Boats of the United States Navy'. 'The submarine commander's handbook' (discussing the tactics of U-boats) U.S. Explosive Ordnance, Ordnance Pamphlet 1664, 1947, describes and illustrates United States Navy projectiles, Army and Navy rockets, pyrotechnics, grenades, land mines, bombs, and guided missiles. Ships Chemical Smoke Munitions, Description and Instructions For Use, OP 1042, 1944, describes chemical smoke systems for creating smoke screens. Missile Launchers and Related Equipment Catalog, Ordnance Pamphlet 1855, 1953, is a U.S. Navy catalog of missile launchers, rocket launchers, depth charge projectors, and related equipment. 3-inch Mount Mark 20, 21, 22 and Mods, OP 811, 1943, describes the three inch, 50 caliber gun of WW II and its revisions. Have a look. There's an awful lot there.

Photo taken 1984.

If you follow the link within the linked article itself it leads you to:- ...'Yesterday, after reports emerged that it was sinking, official sources announced that a tear in the ship’s hull had let in “significant amounts of water”. The initial flooding was apparently caused by a leak in a pipe in one of the sealed-off sections of the ship.'... There seems to be a deal of botty-covering here. We had a leak, sabotage and now it originally seemed someone wanted to tell us there was a tear in the ship's hull? That the maintenance team were expected to have the clairvoyance to detect problems in 'sealed-off sections of the ship'? I'm reminded of a very old episode of 'Only Fools and Horses' where the trio (with the original 'grandad') go illicit salmon fishing in Scotland. At one point a policeman pulls them over and asks where they're going. ...'Not salmon fishing'... Says grandad, immediately. In this case the government have gone to a deal of length to explain that it wasn't budget cuts. Any number of excuses - probably at least one fabricated, but not 'cuts'. Whilst it's undeniable that there have been severe cuts to their defences, to be fair, a competent watch team with even marginally adequate leadership should have prevented this occurrence. If there was a known 'tear in the ship's hull', then repairing that would have taken a team even with the most rudimentary equipment a couple of hours to repair it to an extent where it was watertight. There would have also been an opportunity to dry-dock for such a repair. Being that the story is going thru' several layers of translation, 'sabotage' may simply be an extreme form of translating 'neglect' or 'negligence'. I'm interested in their reference to 'soldiers' guarding the ship. That could be literal, or a mistake in describing 'Marines' or 'Naval personnel'. The significance comes as a historic result of Argentina's 'dirty war' of the 70's where there was an inter-service rivalry. Not like in Britain where the RAF and Army can't cope with the fact the Navy and Marines are better than them ( ), but in Argentina's case, the rivalry is effectively murderous in some instances - not least since the Falklands war* where the Navy were seen to have fled the field, leaving the Army and Air Force to pick up the pieces. *(...and interesting the Argentine-originated press article refers to 'Malvinas\Falklands'...) Which is where 'sabotage' comes in, since there have historically been a number of very costly instances. I've a feeling this incident may have a kind of Jutland-effect. Where the patience of the Argentine public may just boil over with the Navy, (the Royal Navy had been expected - by the public - to win any major sea battle in the same manner as Trafalgar, the Navy of the time were not forgiven for not honouring the public expectations over Jutland, leading to the scrapping of the major part of the battlefleet by 1925). Argentina are broke. If the Navy request funds to repair this ship, or to replace it, the public would rightly point out this particular ship had not gone to sea for thirteen years, and even then they couldn't be bothered to look after it. (Hence, they can't claim 'cuts'. Simply keeping the hull afloat was eminently not a phenomenon you can blame on budget or Government). There will be no appetite to spend money there, and an evolving greater justification for diminishing what they already have. There's a spooky resemblance between the photo of the Santissima Trinidad here, and the sinking hull of the Coventry in May 1982. The juxtaposition couldn't be more poignant. After all the effort and drama in sinking the Coventry, for the glory of the nation, keeping a ship of the same class in their own Navy afloat in dock was a talent beyond them.

Not sure if this is an optical illusion but have a look at the high tide line on the jetty, then look at the equivalent height adjaecent on the ship hull. There seems to be a similar (but faint) high tide mark there. If the ship is now fully sat on the bottom, then it looks like the hull becomes 90% flooded when the tide comes in. The position of the boom draped over the quarterdeck seems to confirm that?

When originally supplied they were '(externally) essentially identical to the Royal Navy's 42's at the time - differing obviously in one respect only - that they were fitted with exocet missile canisters. (Not sure if they had STWS...) From the mid-eighties, I have no idea what they might have done with the sensor fits, but of course, keeping the Sea Dart serviceable would have been only one small difficulty in among all the others. I think some of the radars were changed but I didn't really keep up with the story. The linked article is interesting. Where it says that internal doors were left open, I'd be inclined to speculate. That as the ship's onboard equipment became older and more unreliable, that power supply cables, plus other services, were run as a more-or-less permanent feature thru' the open doorways from other sources, rather than doing the professional thing of running them via the correct waterproof routes, so that the relevant doors and hatches could be closed., and the failing equipment repaired properly or replaced. When the leak commenced, no matter the reason, it would have been essentially impossible to prevent water ingress and the progress of the flooding in the time available. Just speculation, but I'd be prepared to put money on it.

If indeed the Argentines claim that then it wouldn't do them a great deal of credit. A competent set of engineers will still manage to at least keep their ship floating with locally-sourced or internationally-supplied equipments. It wouldn't take specific British equipment to give the hull proper integrity.