When going big, the skies the limits.
http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/10/101270/2340041-shield.jpg
http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/2355/575653-helicarrier_super.jpg

That's almost 'generic' Alex! There's been very similar things in Armored Core, Gundam, Saint's Row 3, and the last Avengers movie. Ace Combat also had something similar in a couple of the games, and so did Secret Weapons Over Normandy, though both were much smaller and more believable. Well, ok Ace Combat's version wasn't, it had six aircraft to refuel it!

One of the Ace Combat models;

http://www.google.com/imgres?num=10&hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1600&bih=754&tbm=isch&tbnid=wzjUMvDFE2L1rM:&imgrefurl=http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php%3Fp%3D3544953&docid=4o18yOOsB7F7WM&imgurl=http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/9559/1737604776ee4686660bo.jpg&w=800&h=417&ei=RnDNULHvEqjLigKRnIGYBA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=327&sig=101621553711752765664&page=1&tbnh=145&tbnw=283&start=0&ndsp=27&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0,i:105&tx=119&ty=59

And a Russian TB-3, which actually existed;

http://www.combatreform.org/zenobombersystem.jpg

Hmm. The flying carrier has been done to death in various games, comics, etc. I thought the one in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow looked pretty good.

I guess you could dive deeper and go with a submarine with a air wing inside. There's the actual I-400 series the IJN used to haul around a trio of floatplanes. Crimson Skies had a British one. I think the thing held five or six aircraft. There might be some "designs" in some of the pen-and-paper Crimson Skies materials about it. Or for something more modern, maybe a vessel like SeaQuest.

Don't remember that in Crimson Skies, then again, that was a long time ago.

The I-400 supposedly made it to San Fransisco but had issues and couldn't launch the planes? I vaguely remember reading about it.

The sub in Crimson Skies made its appearance during the Hawaii missions. To me, the Hawaii missions were the most fun. It was after you captured the port to seize the lifting equipment you needed to recover the sunken treasure. The sub appears to retake the port.

The I-400s had a number of proposed missions attached to them. Most of those didn't get past the planning stages. I think they were to be used to attack the Panama Canal and Ulithi Atoll. Each of those failed to happen based on changing events in the war.

I thought that I had read of a I-400 being sent at the end of the war to try some last ditch attack, though it might have have been one of the smaller subs converted to carry a couple of planes. I really don't know much about the PTO.

A lot of crazy stories have been attached to the last mission of the I-400. I've read that the aircraft were carrying radiological dirty-bombs to drop on the Panama canal, biological weapons to drop on LA and San Fransisco, a meeting with a German U-Boat carrying plans for various 'wonder weapons'. The list would go on if you searched around the net long and hard enough. It can make interesting reading

I had a look in my stash over the weekend and found that the WW1 tank I have is the Emhar Mk.IV Female. Nice kit but these lacked the rear wheels I want to mount my power supply. Luckily Airfix make a decent Mk.1 complete with those so I'll have a look around for one after the christmas hols.

Alex, guess you're talking about another Crimson Skies title? Don't remember anything about Hawaii.

Stephen, the U-boat meeting actually happened, well got started at least. I THINK (though I'm not very confident on this) it was U-458, which was sunk along the coast of one the Nordic countries which had either prototypes or at least documentation on jet engines as well as radio-active material. There are also high concentrations of mercury for some reason, thus making any salvage attempts impossible.

When did we switch to aeronautical subjects?

Don't really remember Jeremy! They're all 'what-ifs' though so we're not completely off-topic.

That was Crimson Skies, the PC game. I've never played the XBox version. I always preferred the Hawaii missions because they were more about dogfighting and the backstory was more appealing.

I remember seeing something about secret U-Boat shipments from Germany to Japan. Materials for a dirty bomb and even a disassembled Me262.

By the way, I'm assembling individual tracks on my Panzyusha. I hope to get a batch of WIP pictures up tomorrow.

The Third Multi-verse to the Left

The year is 1947, in the third multi-verse to the left, and German had not won the war! But just two years after the end of hostilities, the Soviet Union is starting to flex it's muscles in the recently liberated Europe. The other liberating nations decide they need to stand up to “Uncle Joe” and liberate Eastern Europe from it's new reign of terror. The idea is very laudable, but is their military equipment up to it?

In the United Kingdom production of the new Centurion was under way along with the new 20-pounder anti-tank gun. But there were unexpected problems with fitting the new gun to the new tank, so a interim solution was sort. The ROF Nottingham was tasked with solving the problem and set a new design team, basing it at Trent Bridge, in time for the first test match against South Africa. After looking at mounting the gun of an existing in service vehicle, it was felt that rather than take vehicles out of service and modify them, it would be better to refurbish and modify some of the large stockpile of captured equipment. So after many long hours of in depth study, in their offices at what is now the Trent Bridge Inn., the A48 (FV 355) was born. An ex-German AFV fitted with a 20-pdr gun and modified to suit the needs (or should be idiosyncrasies ) of the British Army and designed by a team who had slightly more than a passing interest in the game of cricket and brown ale

[u]Note:[/u]
For those reading this who do not understand the game of cricket, I am sorry. But to explain the game would take longer than the time allotted to this campaign

with feet firmly planted on the ground
David

Right, I've had a bit of an accident today. My car ended up up-side-down in a field. I'm fine but I'll be dropping all campaigns. I'll also need to find someone to take over my 'Replacement!' campaign.

I'll still pop in on a couple campaigns but as far as I know right now I haven't got money to be spending on plastic tanks.

Panzyusha progress picture time. I'll post the back-story later tonight or maybe tomorrow. In short, this is a marrying of a Katyusha launcher with a Panzer 4 chassis. I tend to name most of my builds and this one is named "Clara".

I started with the launcher. I did the basic construction for the tubular frame and began test fitting it to get an idea of how I was going to do this. The kit's turret wasn't going to work and mounting it to a turretless panzer would be too easy. So I borrowed the turret from Dragon's old Schwere Panzerspahwagen #6072 (armored rail car).



I did a basic assembly of the turret. I had to place styrene strips on the back to help support the armored flap hinges. I decided to leave the rear gun port empty (see below). The insert is the turret. The main picture is the semi-completed turret/launcher assembly.



Traversing the launcher would be taken care of by the rotating of the turret. Elevating the launcher would require a second mechanism. Using somethign similar to the kit's mechanish would not work. I decided to add a mechanish to the turret rear. I used the Katyusha's mount from the kit and scratch built a box. I figured the box would hold a motor and chain drive system to raise the launcher. I borrowed a transfer case from the spare and used it as a housing for the chain drive and bearings for the shaft.



Here's the katyusha launch rails. They required a bit more cleanup than I had expected. And a few of them were warped. I hand painted them before assembly. I assembled them two rails at a time, adjusting them as needed to fix the warpage. I put them together and pressed them together using weight nuts and popscicle sticks. It worked pretty well.



I painted the launcer and mount.


It's behinng to come together. The figure is just for scale.


And now the tracks. I changed out the kit's drive sprocket and idlers with the ones in the track set. The track set's drive sprocket looks alot better. I went with the late style idlers. The tracks are okay. I bought them back in the 90s so they are what they are.


That's where I am right now. I have the turret painted and assembled. I thought I had a picture of it but it wasn't on the camera. I'll get that in the next batch of pictures.

I'm going to try to get the back-story together tonight and finish the track assembly.

Alex: Nice work. Your launcher is coming along nicely.

I've started on my build. Backstory will follow after I figure out the details, but I'm thinking the third battle for Stalingrad. The kit is from Paulo Parente's Dust series/game, although I don't know that story line and will not be trying to tie into it. Instead I will make up my own story line.







Happy Modeling, -zon

Very nice work Alex and Zon

Thanks all.

Zon, I love me some walkers. Some day, I'm going to get around to making one of my own. End of Days 3 maybe.

Christopher, Sorry to hear about your accident. Hopefully things will get back straight for you.

Good works Alex & Zon....

Back-story time.

The German military was known for putting captured enemy equipment to work. The Panzer-Rakete "Carla" took advantage of the capture of numerous Katyusha Rocket systems from the Soviet Forces. After some coaxing, German Command adopted the Katyusha design and ordered its production. The Soviet design was cheaper to make and required less resources and labor.

The German Army was not just content with repainting the captured vehicles. They decided to remove the launchers from their Studebaker trucks. The trucks could be used elsewhere.

Initially, the design was to mount them on Panzer IV's turret, similar to the American Calliope, allowing the tank to retain its main gun. The need to cross-train tank gunners as rocket artilleryman made the idea unfeasible. These tank gunners would be better served in tanks.

The program were given a number of worn out Panzer IVs, many of which were missing their turrets. The first test vehicles simply mounted the launchers to the turretless tanks. After trials, it was decided to fabricate a turret to mount the launcher to.

Given the Panzer IV's drivetrain, each vehicle was given an ammunition trailer to transport additional rockets. This relieved stress on the logistics needs and allowed for multiple volleys worth of rockets to be on hand for each launcher.

The rockets were nearly exact copies of the Soviet designs. Internally, the German version utilized differing propellants and explosive compounds. The simplicity of the design was easier and less expensive to produce than the Nebelwerfer designs. There were tests of specialty warheads, including gas, incendiary, and antipersonnel warheads. High explosive rockets were the typical type used.

The finished Carlas, as they were nicknamed, were organized into three battalions. Each battalions had three batteries of five Carlas, a company of mechanized infantry, an organic armored car and motorcycle recon company, and a platoon of Panzer IV as part of the HQ unit.

The Carlas saw action primarily along the Eastern Front. However, it is known that several examples were captured by Canadian forces in France. At least one battery was seen operating in Northern Italy late in the war.

Chris and Hakan: thanks for the encouragement

Alex: Thanks for the comment and nice work on your back story. One question I have regarding Carla is the elevation mechanism. Will the one at the rear be enough or will it need something up front too?

Happy Modeling, -zon

Zon, The top of the turret is really cluttered. I actually had to leave off some of the launcher framework so the turret hatch could be accessed. Using the threaded shaft to raise and lower the launcher caused similar problems.

The shaft the elevation mechanism is attached to is a weak point. I figure after a while it would wrench and break the shaft. Probably wouldn't work to try to keep it elevated for any length of time. I was thinking about adding a counter-weight. More likely, I'll just add a brace bar to each side that will fold down once the launcher is at a desired elevation to bear the weight of the launcher. If that doesn't work out I have a couple of other plans like beefing up the shaft or even trying to make somethign like a tension spring for a garage door.

I got the tracks on last night. I finished assembling the rockets about five minutes ago.

Alex, surprised you didn't add any dates to your back story. Very well thought out non-the-less! Are you going to be building/sourcing the ammo-limber as well?

Christopher, I had a pretty lengthy back story to begin with, including unit designations and operational histories. The underlying idea was that the Nazis took what should have been an easy adoption of a weapon and just overly bogged it down by being too fancy. It just looked too cluttered so I scaled it back. Sometimes less is more.

I'm building the ammo limber myself using a trailer chassis from a Tamiya 2cm flakverling I had in the spares. I figure something basic, just enough to carry enough rockets for a reload. Maybe add some additional pioneer tools to the sides. I might start work on that tonight.

This one is coming together pretty quickly, much more quickly than I had expected. I might try to do a second project. Mayb ea US made version of a T-34 or a German hovercraft Hanomag. I've got an old Panzerwurfer Maultier body that would work well as a base kit. I'll have to wait until around mid-year to see what my schedule is like.

Alex, as far as pioneer tools go, maybe some PSP or Marsdon matting? Wouldn't want the Panzyusha to sink in the soft Russian ground!.

The matting is a good idea. There should be plenty of room. I figure I'd add an extra shovel and ax at the least. To be honest, I could probably mount both of those on the panzer without any real problems. The shovel could easily go in the place of the cleaning rod. I'm sure I can get the ax on there too. Maybe an extra tire for the trailer.

A ladder if you're feeling like playing with popsicle sticks? Unless you've got another way for your crew to load up more rockets...

EDIT: Just found this if anyone needs some inspiration;

http://modelerssocialclub.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=postww&action=display&thread=495