Dry Dock

I took these photos yesterday of my carrier fleet. During my last visit to Glenn, I mentioned my carriers, and said I would do a post on them. My purchase of large toy aircraft carriers started in around 2003 or 2004, when the Countdown chain of supermarkets brought in a range of large toys for sale at around the $100 price point. These toys were largely of the large truck/ fire engine variety - but there were also aircraft carriers. taking my inspiration from a couple of articles/pictorials that had appeared in Wargames Illustrated using large cartoon scale scale ships I purchased two - and the second one took some doing to find!

The fleet of six sitting in drydock - my driveway!

 These first two purchases are the largest of the carriers and have a rather nice black flight deck. Naturally, they came with an air wing, electric sounds and lights and can move well, albeit slowly. Racing them has also proved to be a surprising popular activity.....

I have placed  a 1/72 Esci figure for comparison purposes on the flight deck.

The other four ships of the fleet were all purchased during the New Years sales in around 2006. They were significantly cheaper - and of lesser quality - than the earlier larger units. I plan to convert two of these carriers into amphibious warfare ships, while ideas for the smaller pair range from replacing the angled flight deck with a straight thru one and using them as generic WW2 style escort type carriers,  or making them amphibious platforms, or even using them as carriers.

The holes in the flight decks of the closest two carriers are where I removed a large and silly looking missile turntable.

Third carrier up from the bottom has an AAVP-7 on deck.

Close up of the AAVP-7 on the deck. In is a 1/72 die cast model from the  Combat Tanks Collection.

The third and forth carriers (counting from the bottom) in this picture are the two destined at this stage to be used as amphibious warfare platforms. While these ships are all grossly oversized to be used in a standard CD3 game, the idea was to use these ships as an off board assembly area for players to organise their forces. They are planned to be used in a large moderns amphibious game I hope to run - similar to the large Tarawa game I ran at the UCSA many years ago.

As I slowly gear up for this I will post information in this  blog - but I can't imagine anything happening soon! - This project has been brewing away for some time and progress has been some what glacial in nature! That being said, most of the major purchases for the game have already been made - I just have to do some painting and assembly work!