Jan 112012
 

Some time back I picked up a copy of a Boy Scout booklet on making models. It was printed I think sometime in the 1980’s or later, but was originally printed in 1964. Contained within were a number of rather tiny black and white futuristic automobile, ship, aircraft and spacecraft artists concepts. Sadly, there were no notations as to who created the artwork. Several of the pieces I recognize as having been created for Real Projects by Real Companies or Real Government Organizations, so I assume that at least most of the ones I *don’t* recognize were also “real” projects, as opposed to, say, artwork created for Mechanix Illustrated.

That said, a few of the illustrations are odd… and this one is downright goofy. What’s shown is a small boat, looks like a patrol craft of some type, with a keel many times larger than the boat itself. The best I can figure is that either the designers were early adopters of LSD, or the idea was to have a deceptively small and non-scary looking vessel with far more offensive capability than might be suspected.

The keel has a large “box” on the very bottom, probably part of the ballast system. I’d like to think there was a nuclear powerplant in there; otherwise, that itty-bitty boat on the surface will be belching out a hell of a lot more smoke and heat than it should.  About halfway down the keel is the propulsion system, consisting of Voith Schneider propellers… unusual and complex, but capable of considerable maneuverability.

Further down are a number of torpedo tubes, and below them is a set of deployable wings. I suppose the wings would be used to maintain the proper depth; there appear to perhaps be secondary propulsion units on the wings.

I cannot claim with any certainty that this was an American design… but I’d imagine that the Boy Scouts of America would probably make some effort to avoid dirty furrin designs.

Why is the keel is so gigantic? How many bays could it actually sail into, how many docks could it actually sidle up to? The keel is also pretty wide. Would it be wide enough to store Polaris missiles? Was this meant to be a stealthy sea launched ballistic missile system? Hardly stealthier than a submarine, but I can’t otherwise explain the massive size and volume of the keel.

 Posted by at 7:32 pm