One of the best preserved sunken wooden vessel, the Endurance sank off the coast of Antarctica in November, 1915. It was finally discovered just a few days ago, more than three kilometers deep. The cold and low oxygen has preserved the wood; it just doesn’t look like a wood vessel that sank more than a century ago.
No sign of shoggoths. Of course, if there were, it’s not like they would have told you…
Given current events, perhaps buying model kits is not the top priority… but if it *is,* now might be the time (if it’s not already too late). In recent years, Russian and Ukrainian model kit companies have done a fine job of producing unusual subjects and high quality kits, and sometimes both at the same time… but now, it’s safe to assume that for the time being nothing will be coming out of Ukraine, and the only things coming out of Russia will be via expensive back channels.
Examples available from Amazon (remember, if you buy *anything* after going through these links, I’ll get a pittance, so if you want to support this blog, here’s a way to do it):
Ukranian company “Mikro-Mir” produced a surprising range of submarine model kits in 1/350 scale, 1/144 scale and even 1/35 scale. You can click on this link to see the wider subjects, or here are a few specific kits that might be of interest (just text links to save space; as of this typing, they are listed as available):
1/350 USS Thresher 1/350 USS George Washington 1/350 USS Skipjack 1/350 USS Nautilus 1/144 Holland class 1/35 “Turtle” 1/350 USS Growler 1/35 CSS Hunley
A Russian kit company with a really good reputation for quality is Zvezda Models, which has a wide range of armor and aircraft, military and civilian. Really far too many to link to, but here are a few of interest:
1/144 TU 160 “Blackjack” 1/72 Sukhoi SU-50 1/35 T-14 Armata 1/72 SU-57 1/350 Kursk submarine 1/2700 Imperial Star Destroyer 1/144 Beriev BE-200ES
Also Ukrainian is the company Amodel. They have a bunch of different aircraft kits, but these two might be of particular interest:
And under the circumstances, the German Revell AN-225 might be of interest, because that plane, even if at this very moment it’s intact, is almost certainly doomed. If fighting doesn’t damage/destroy it, when the Russians are eventually driven out they will either steal the plane or wreck it.
Yer got-dayum right, whoa.
Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.
Also, someone has some ‘splainin’ to do about this truly *quality* journalism on the topic:
At one moment, a massive wave smashes through the front windows of the boat, demolishing one passenger and flooding the entire cabin.
The wave was so powerful, you can hear the window break under its G-force.
Not clear the passenger was “demolished,” especially since the same article points out a lack of reported injuries. And I really kinda doubt that the wave broke the window through the gravitational field produced by the mass wave rather than, you know, the momentum of the wave.
The cargo vessel “Felicity Ace” is burning, and will likely be destroyed along with its $120 million in cargo, due to a fire that may have begun in the batteries in the electric cars its carrying. There are 4,000 cars including Porsches, Bentleys and Lamborghinis.
When you ship a car, you ship it with the fuel tanks empty. Saves weight and makes things less flammable. But an electric vehicle ships with the batteries. And whether the batteries are charged or not they weight he same; and charged or not, the lithium in those batteries remains insanely flammable. So you pack a bunch of those cars together in a ship with no way to separate them, and no good way to put out a lithium metal fire… well, there ya go.
A book I’ve been looking for for *years* and have come to assume doesn’t actually exist is one that collects diagrams of Civil War era ironclads… diagrams useful for model makers. I’ve seen books with good diagrams of sailing vessels, but it seems like the moment steam engines come into the picture, diagrams dry up. Has there been such a book? Would there be a market for such a book? And is there even adequate documentation to fill out such a book?
Something that collects diagrams of not just the Monitor and the Virginia, but the less well known vessels like the Choctaw, Essex, Keokuk, Lafayette, Mississippi, Albermarle and all the other vessels from that transitional and important era.
So a lot of “Shuttle II” stuff appeared on eBay for an exorbitant price. I’m becoming increasingly leery of plunking down excessive sums for this sort of thing… not only due to my own finances and the onrushing economic meltdown, but because doing so incentivizes sellers to slap even more exorbitant prices on things. But, I put this lot before my APR patrons/subscribers as a potential crowdfunding opportunity, and enough signed on that I went ahead and purchased the lot. It should arrive early next week.
As with all my APR crowdfunds, the cost of the item is split evenly among the funders; the more funders, the lower the price per person. Each funder will receive a complete set of high-rez (300 DPI, full color… higher rez if called for) scans of the items. Typically these crowdfunded items then get sent on to appropriate archive, library or museum, though this time I’m not quite sure where they should go.
If you would be interested in signing on, send me an email 
. There are currently enough funders that the per-funder price is ~$24 under $14; the more sign on, the lower it’ll get. If you have a price limit noticeably lower than $14, let me know in your email. This will remain open until the stuff arrives, presumably early next week. At that point it’ll be closed and the price set.
Additionally: the box shown below, loaded with blueprints/diagrams, is somewhere in the system headed my way. It was procured sight unseen; I have high hopes. This sort of thing is made possible by the APR Patrons/Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers. If you want to help preserve aerospace history and get in on these goodies, please consider subscribing.
I have high hopes that this story is accurately reported. The idea of a dinky little destroyer crewed by pissed off Poles harassing the Bismark is just too freakin’ awesome.
A scene from the 2019 Japanese movie “The Great War of Archimedes” showing the battleship Yamato getting sent to the bottom. The added subtitles really help to sell it.
US Navy nods in Arizonan.
A video of a guy messing about with a demo version of a “virtual Titanic” that let’s you wander around something like a quarter of the ship (the rest of the vessel coming later). Seems like a *spectacular* way to blow a bunch of hours.
This project dates back to at least 2016 (I posted a link to a YouTube video of theirs showing a real-time sinking of the ship back in early 2016, a lot of the website doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2017). The demo is downloadable here:
Those of you old enough to remember when James Cameron’s “Titanic” was released in 1997 (yeesh, nearly a quarter century ago) will doubtless recall how a good fraction of the public went bonkers, to the point that at least two efforts were made to produce a “Titanic II” ship designed to replicate the look and opulence of the original… but with a better hull and more lifeboats. Sadly these didn’t come to pass, but I’m pretty sure that if someone were to build a faithful replica of the Titanic, even as a land-locked hotel, people would line up around the block. Shoot, people throw money at Disney for their half-assed “Star Cruiser” Star Wars knockoff, so a Titanic “experience?” A license to print money.
As an aside, a story idea: turns out that the iceberg impact did not produce enough damage to sink the vessel. What caused it to sink was the sudden increase in weight on the ship as tens of thousands of time travellers arrived to witness the sinking.
Those people are wrong. This 1/100 scale model of the German schlachtschiff Tirpitz is loaded to the gills with lights, smoke, sound and moving parts. It’s clearly a labor love, or at least of obsession. (Note: the video is over sixteen minutes long, but it seems to crap out just before 8 minutes)
Imagine if the pizza shop robber had decided to take up building model ships rather than robbing pizza shops. He might have avoided taking a bullet to the face and becoming a laughingstock for the whole human race. I hesitate to guess what this Tirpitz model might sell for if the builder was of a mind to sell it; certainly far more than robbing restaurants would ever net.