Damage Control

broderic on August 5, 2011

I am currently two months into reading Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. It’s taken me this long not because its a particularly thick book, but because I’ve only read it off and on a few pages one night, then a chapter the next. Everytime I read it, I’m hooked. It’s a gripping account of the last good days of the Imperial Japanese Kido Butai their carrier division strike force as it meets its end at Midway. At the rate I’m reading this book, I’ll be done by September.

In reading this book, it’s made me more curious about naval ships and especially about their damage control activities. It’s kind of coupled to my work as well as I’m doing things with automated systems on board a ship. Stupid as it is working for IniTech has me very close to a few things that I am interested in. Boats, man, boats. I like ’em.

Now, all this makes me wonder if I should be building the Kido Butai instead of the IJN battleships. I should build out the Akagi or Soryu rather than the Nagato. Scratch that. Nagato is awesome.

Link of the Day [12.27.08]

broderic on December 27, 2008

Okay. Here’s one of the things I got for Christmas. It’s the IJN Haruna from Hasegawa in 1/700 scale. It’s a full hull model which I don’t have any experience at doing. The last full hull model I attempted was my brother’s Bismark and that burned down in flames.

She’s a very interesting ship. She’s sister to the Kongo, whose name lives on in the JMSDF Kongo DDG-173, a modern day Aegis guided missile destroyer. This is another class of ships I want to build.

http://www.battlesforguadalcanal.com/ships/haruna/haruna.html

Link of the Day [11.22.08]

broderic on November 22, 2008

I’m in the middle of crafting my model of the IJN Yamato. I’m hitting a decent stride spending about an hour a night pulling the pieces off of the sprues, hitting them with some primer, and then painting them. I’m learning the ins and outs of this fine scale modeling thing and have found out some things.

First, put the pieces as you get them off the sprue in a easy to find place. I would usually put them on a sliver of masking tape. The small ones are easy to lose. I’ve already lost some. The small ones are also very fragile. I’ve broken a few pieces already.

Next, you don’t have to follow the directions exactly. I really want to get the big parts connected, but unfortunately, there are too many small parts to do before I get to the big pieces. I just jump to their usage.

Anyway, I’m further along in this endeavor, but not enough to see some well done progress. Here’s an awesome site about the Imperial Japanese Navy. I’m using this post as another of my infamous bookmarking sites.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/