I looked a lot at the genre and some of the amazing production design work done and gathered reference/inspiration, as well as submarines, space ships, inspiration “set” blog

I even went on a field trip to see one of the last WW2 battleships, the USS Iowa

I knew a few things I needed a few scenes; workshop, OP room, hallway, control room… and I had to find a way to work in a limited space, part by part, and using any thing I had on hand.

The first step was to start moving unrelated items away and create the walls I had, I knew I needed textured panels and a basecoat, so after a trip to the hardware store I added peg board panels and started covering everything with a dark grey. I figured this would work well for shining a light through to create a sense of depth.

Slowly it spread to the whole room…

As the KRAWLR is a scrap collector, It makes sense that the whole thing would contain bins of parts, so I gathered a rack of milk crates and enough robot parts to fill them, along with many of my sculpting supplies and materials

The peg board also gives me a good way of storing props

I found a bunch of sheets of plastic grid from a remodeling office building, which provided a good texture for the ceiling, after I hit it with a bit of paint for weathering.

And this hanging lamp was donated by my friend Webster Colcord who’s wife worked for a lighting company

I extended some supports to add ceiling panels across the room, and hung sump tubing.

I mounted a partly disassembled fan into some packing foam on the ceiling for a vent. The best part it, it still works!

They were huge
Displacement: 65,027 tonnes (64,000 long tons) standard
71,659 tonnes (70,527 long tons) (full load)
Length:     256 m (839 ft 11 in) (waterline)
263 m (862 ft 10 in) (overall)
Beam:     38.9 m (127 ft 7 in)
Draft:     11 m (36 ft 1 in)

In scale this is larger than any other warship that saw the light of day until the US Super Carrier Forrestal came down the ways in 1955, and even then the Yamato was still heavier in standard displacement (the USS Forrestal’s standard design displacement was a mere 59,650 tons) what a goof!

These ships were amazingly armored, more so than any ship before or since.
This included
650 mm (26 in) on face of main turrets (YES, 26-inches!)
410 mm (16 in) side armour belt
200 mm (7.9 in) central(75%) armoured deck
226.5 mm (8.92 in) outer(25%) armoured deck

As point of reference the second place winner for the most armor carried was on the USS Iowa class battlewagons, which had some 19.7-inches on turret faces and a 12-inch belt.

These ships could put up some lead, carrying an amazing 205 pieces of artillery from the giant 18.1-inch main guns (the largest in the world) to a huge array of AAA weapons.
This included (in 1945)
9 × 46 cm (18.1 in) (3×3)
6 × 155 mm (6.1 in) (2×3)
24 × 127 mm (5.0 in)
162 × 25 mm (0.98 in) Anti-Aircraft (52×3, 6×1)
4 × 13.2 mm (0.52 in) AA (2×2)

ultimately they were not capable of winning the war by themselves and when presented with air attacks from literally hundreds of American Helldivers and Avengers, they succumbed.

Musashi sank after being hit with 17 torpedoes and 19 bombs during the Battle of the Philippine Sea

Yamato herself exploded dramatically, the yin to the USS Arizona’s Yang after Yamato was hit by at least eleven torpedoes and eight bombs. The mushroom cloud from her explosion was seen 100-miles away.

However the Yamato is far from forgotten in Japan. A huge scale model of the ship, more than 80-feet long (the actual size of a WWII PT-boat!) is on display and The Space Battleship Yamato is one of the most popular manga (comic books), tv shows and movie series in that country in the past dozen years.

Everything goes full circle I guess.

Happy December 8th

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I’ve just been rummaging through some intriguing collectables, some of which will be appearing in future blogs. But in this blog I couldn’t resist showing you this set of WW2 battleship and submarine cards. It looks like an average set at first glance but it hides a tantalising secret. It’s an error set. No, you won’t find any rare printing errors like those found on stamps. In fact, this is a very accurate set and that’s what the problem is.

Hitler thought it was so detailed that he secretly bought up huge quantities of it, pushing its price way above the normal market value and raising the alarm amongst British card dealers. Of course Hitler hadn’t bought them because he’d taken up card collecting, he intended to give these handy and compact cards to his u-boat personnel so that they could identify and destroy British battleships featured. As well as the pictures showing a true likeness, the backs reveal important information such as the weight, speed and even the number of guns on the ships. This would be very useful for those launching the weapons of mass destruction.

This was a huge own goal and a classic example of a cigarette card set slipping through the censorship net. As well as putting the lives of British sailors at risk it also endangered those of our allies, since it features naval craft from the USA, France and Russia.

This set won’t break any records at auction, but it is a great example of how accurate and historically important these miniature cards can be. Maybe your great grandfather or uncle served on one of the battleships or submarines that appear in this set. Please feel free to comment and share your war bedtime stories. I’ve included a list the naval craft that appear in this set.

John Player & Sons, Modern Naval Craft, 1939 (50 cards)

Includes:HMS Nelson,HMS Warspite,HMS Revenge,HMS Hood,HMS Repulse,HMS Exeter,HMS Norfolk,HMS Southampton,HMS Curlew,HMS Adventure,HMS Greenville,HMS Afridi,HMS Severn,HMS Narwhal,HMS Sunfish,HMS Ark Royal,HM Torpedo Boat 102,Dunkerque,Algerie,La Galissonniere, Mogador,Surcouf,Bearn,Admiral Graf Spee,Nurnberg,Georg Thiele,U16,Conte DI Cavour,Bolzano,Giuseppe Garibadi,Libeccio,Giuseppe Finzi,Nagato,ISE,Atago,Kumano,Samidare,I21,Akagi,California,Colorado,Quincy,Broo­klyn,Gridley,Perch,Oahu,Enterprise,Saratoga, Leningrad,Revolutioner

If you would like to find out more about the WW2 battleship and submarine cigarette cards featured in this blog please click here.

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope you found it interesting!