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Post by mctoddridesagain on Mar 11, 2006 11:52:43 GMT
Pardon the late reply to this post, Jeez H McTodd, you know your stuff! I had this image when Wells wrote "...in the early 20th century came the great dissilusionment." that he was trying to imagine a futuristic (for the time) situation (such as when modern authors write about hover tanks, unmanned warplanes etc) I thought maybe Wells knew of the Polyphemus, and decided he liked the idea of a ram, and developed it further in his imagination. I agree, I think you're basically right, Wells did come up with something you can either think of as a hybrid warship, taking features from cruisers and battleships, or a Polyphemus Mark II (a 'super Polyphemus', as I said in an earlier post)! I think he did so for dramatic reasons, and he deliberately didn't want to create something too advanced that would seem silly, it had to be convincing. It's just that most artists tend to base their versions on existing warship types, e.g. Michael Trim (Jeff Wayne's artist) uses a typical predreadnought like 'Canopus' as his model; Alvim-Correa, working in Belgium, drew his Thunder Child as a very French looking ship, and I wanted to point out that if you take that approach you'll never find an actual, serving ship that resembles TC in every respect, so it's fruitless to ask what was the direct model for TC. So are you still in the navy, Moorkey?
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Post by Moorkey on Mar 18, 2006 9:25:18 GMT
Yep. For another year or so. I am getting married soon so I am looking for a more stable life. Have had about seven years bouncing around the world following Sea Harriers, and Harrier GR7s, basically picking up the ball when pilots drop it. I may be on T.V soon as I am on the parade for re-commissioning the oldest (and some would say best) squadron in the fleet air arm, namely 800 Naval Air Squadron, the first with ground attack harriers (thank god I am no longer on RAF squadrons!) I have also burned my mark into history by designing the de-commissioning paint scheme for the squadron commander's Sea Harrier on the old 800 (see www.airsceneuk.org.uk/hangar/2004/800nas/800.htm for pictures of 'SATAN 1')(NB That's the red one, not the blue one)) and I am the sole designer (despite what the new commander and other officers may say) of the new, RAF friendly squadron markings on our GR7 Harriers.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Mar 19, 2006 0:01:41 GMT
Blimey, nice work! Interesting page. Late March 2004, was that when that cretin Hoon was Defence Secretary?
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Post by jeffwaynefan on Mar 22, 2006 17:02:59 GMT
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Mar 22, 2006 19:59:24 GMT
Same period, but it's American... Nice link, great photos. I don't know if you, or anyone else, remember a WOTW diorama featured in Fine Scale Modeller years ago, and later put on t'internet? Can I find the link? Can I arse... Anyway, the builder scratchbuilt some Fighting Machines based on the Trim designs, and for the 'Thunder Child' used the old Lindberg/Revell kit of the USS Olympia (the ship in your link) as a basis, modifying it a lot to make her look more British. Come to think of it, I've got that kit, bought a million years ago, still in the box at my parents' house...
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Post by jeffwaynefan on Mar 23, 2006 12:57:17 GMT
I know its a Yank, I know the guy who took the photo's as I used to be a advisor for that site years ago. Here's a very nice and interesting display with more photo's of the diorama shwon by using the link: ourworlds.topcities.com/space1889/models/war.html
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Mar 23, 2006 14:54:40 GMT
I know its a Yank, I know the guy who took the photo's as I used to be a advisor for that site years ago. Tsk, now why am I not surprised? Anyway, that's the bunny! I've got the FSM it was in too, but it's at my parents, hence my desire to find the link, which I couldn't, but which you did. Cracking model.
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Post by Moorkey on Mar 26, 2006 18:58:47 GMT
Blimey, nice work! Interesting page. Late March 2004, was that when that cretin Hoon was Defence Secretary? So far as I know. (P.S The page isn't mine.) The decision to axe the SHar was made under Hoon (fool) as a 'cost-effective option' (fool).
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Post by TOMAHAWK on Apr 24, 2006 21:03:17 GMT
Well given that we are discussing and imaginery fictional "warship" I am fairly sure that the TC was a TBD
oh and probably the reason she didn't open fire with her guns in the book was probably because she had to close the range given that she only had i think a 6 pounder gun and one other thing to bear in mind ... a tripod isn't as solid or as easy to hit as another ship ( in a ship to ship encounter the gunners have time to range in on a target, fire ranging shots, adjust and fire again), also a ship is a BIG target to hit.
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Post by TOMAHAWK on Apr 24, 2006 21:05:45 GMT
oh by the look of that model ... perhaps HMS WARRIOR was used as the THUNDERCHILD in the book.......
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Post by Lensman on Apr 25, 2006 3:24:27 GMT
I seem to remember a documentary on the WW I Battle of Jutland. They said almost all the ship-to-ship shots missed; the guns far outranged their ability to hit anything accurately. So yah, it's quite reasonable the Thunder Child would have had to close the range before it could hit anything.
A torpedo boat destroyer (which was the ship in Pendragon's movie) would indeed fit part of Wells' description for the Thunder Child; it carries torpedos and it's quite fast compared to other warships. But the "ram" part of Wells' description doesn't fit at all.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Apr 25, 2006 12:28:24 GMT
Absolutely true, and gunnery had been revolutionised between the early 1900s and 1916 (to say nothing of the late 1890s). At the end of the 19th century, no naval tactician, admiral or gunnery officer expected to fight at ranges much over 2,000 yards - not a great deal further than in Nelson's day. The guns themselves could massively outrange this distance, but fire control was very primitive, and big guns were difficult to handle. It's not to be wondered at that Wells has the Thunder Child close to a short range.
At a tangent, when Wells wrote The War in the Air in 1907, the gunnery revolution hadn't yet taken place, and despite Tsushima, I think most observers still expected battles to be fought at close quarters. Thus Wells's Battle of the Atlantic, set around a decade in the future in 1917, has some absurdly close-in fighting between German and American battleships (including attempts at ramming!) which was totally outdated by the time the real 1917 came along...
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Post by jeffwaynefan on May 10, 2006 14:37:14 GMT
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Post by Poyks on May 10, 2006 21:42:42 GMT
The similarities are uncanny, and it's highlighted to me for the first time that the front mast is actually missing/destroyed on the Trim painting.
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Post by Commandingtripod on May 11, 2006 8:09:44 GMT
Ah the Miska. It might be what he used to base his drawings on you never know. Your right Poyks, I just had another look at the two and they are very, very similar. I'm surprised I never spotted that before. Gets me thinking though - Miska was a dreadnought.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on May 11, 2006 10:20:30 GMT
Mikasa was a pre-dreadnought. She was very similar to British pre-dreadnoughts of the time (hardly surprising as she was built in Britain). The line drawing is actually of a Fuji class pre-dreadnought - you can tell by the pear-shaped barbettes. Fuji was also built in the UK and thus very similar to contemprary British battleships, except in having her funnels in-line (her direct contemporaries were the Majestics, which had their funnels side by side). However, after the Majestics, all British pre-dreadnoughts up to the King Edward VIIs looked very similar, conforming to a basic pattern of twin turrets fore and aft of a central superstructure which carried a number of medium sized guns in casemates, and two funnels in-line. It was a very generic look, and so Trim's battleship need not even be directly modelled on a specific vessel to look very much like pretty well any British battleship of the time. Having said all that, if you look at HMS Canopus, below, you will see that she has a casemate gun at each corner of the superstructure, with three other guns along the side between the casemates; and on the deck below, are larger casemates sponsoned out from the sides of the hull just forward and aft of the superstructure corner casemates. This layout is uncannily similar to Trim's vessel... This beautiful model (not mine, incidentally!) shows the layout of the superstructure more clearly:
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Post by jeffwaynefan on May 11, 2006 11:22:35 GMT
Which brings me to my next question - are there any kits available of these ships?.
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Post by Commandingtripod on May 11, 2006 11:23:41 GMT
Wait McTodd you are quite right - I got my facts mixed up. Speaking of which - would it be possible to convert such a model to be the Thunder Child? ;D I think it would be.
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Post by jeffwaynefan on May 11, 2006 11:26:24 GMT
Speaking of which - would it be possible to convert such a model to be the Thunder Child? If there are kits available of the same class or similar type vessel and if your a good modeller and good at scratch building I would say "yes". I have converted models before, but it does take some time and scratch building is essential.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on May 11, 2006 12:00:07 GMT
Wait McTodd you are quite right - I got my facts mixed up. Nae worry! Speaking of which - would it be possible to convert such a model to be the Thunder Child? ;D I think it would be. Hmmmmm... Depends what scale you want to build... Bearing in mind that a typical pre-dreadnought was around 400-feet or so long, there are some damn fine resin kits in 1/700 scale (so model's hull roughly 7-inches length) by a Russian company called Combrig (aka Kombrig) - they specialise in British pre-dreadnoughts: www.steelnavy.com/CombrigPage.htmThough not a Canopus class vessel, HMS Duncan is quite similar to Trim's TC: www.steelnavy.com/CombrigDuncan.htmAs resin kits go, Combrig's prices are very good. If you're looking at a larger scale, there's not a lot. Hasegawa do a very fine 1/350 scale injection-moulded kit of IJN Mikasa, but it's pretty pricy: www.steelnavy.com/HasegawaMikasa.htmAs I said before, Mikasa was pretty much a clone of your typical British battleship of the 1900 period. Other than that, I can't think of any others - the model photo I posted earlier is of a large scale R/C working model, I think something like 1/128 or 1/96 scale. But with those you generally only get the hull and larger details such as funnels and turrets, everything else you have to scratch. And they're damn pricy.
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