Hi gang. Sorry about no post last week but I had a busy day househunting up in New Hampshire so couldn’t get around to it. Right now I am very close to getting a deal done for a place in Nashua. Just some minor points to clear up and get the seller to commit. Wish me luck.
Another reason there was no post last week was that I had nothing new to report. Wasn’t working on anything. Since then I have completed two. One is the Elephant which I previewed two weeks ago. It was basically the same build as the Ferdinand so nothing much to say about it.
Different color scheme and turrent slightly different but other than that, the same vehicle. Since I had nothing to do I revisited one I had put aside for missing parts and decided to just move ahead with it to finish it off. The build was another tough one with getting the connects to stay in place when adding on something else later in the build. Quite frustrating but I finished it off. Not one of my usual vehicles but still of WWII vintage.
Choo-Choo! This is the DR BR 52 Steam Locomotive used during the war by the Germans. I didn’t put it on the tracks because they are elsewhere with some flatcars on them which will show up in previous builds in the future. Speaking of previous builds…
Previous Builds.
The Type VIIC was the workhorse of the German U-boat force, with 568 commissioned from 1940 to 1945. The first VIIC boat commissioned was the U-93 in 1940. The Type VIIC was an effective fighting machine and was seen almost everywhere U-boats operated, although its range of only 8,500 nautical miles was not as great as that of the larger Type IX (11,000 nautical miles), severely limiting the time it could spend in the far reaches of the western and southern Atlantic without refueling from a tender or U-boat tanker. The VIIC came into service toward the end of the “First Happy Time” near the beginning of the war and was still the most numerous type in service when Allied anti-submarine efforts finally defeated the U-boat campaign in late 1943 and 1944.
Type VIIC differed from the VIIB only in the addition of an active sonar and a few minor mechanical improvements, making them 2 feet longer and 8 tons heavier. Speed and range were essentially the same. Many of these boats were fitted with snorkels in 1944 and 1945.
They had the same torpedo tube arrangement as their predecessors, except for U-72, U-78, U-80, U-554, and U-555, which had only two bow tubes, and for U-203, U-331, U-351, U-401, U-431, and U-651, which had no stern tube.
On the surface the boats (except for U-88, U-90 and U-132 to U-136 which used MAN M6V40/46s) were propelled by two supercharged Germaniawerft, 6 cylinder, 4-stroke M6V 40/46 diesels totaling 2,800 to 3,200 PS (2,100 to 2,400 kW; 2,800 to 3,200 shp) at 470 to 490 rpm.
For submerged propulsion, several different electric motors were used. Early models used the VIIB configuration of two AEG GU 460/8-276 electric motors, totaling 750 PS (550 kW; 740 shp) with a max rpm of 296, while newer boats used two BBC GG UB 720/8, Garbe, Lahmeyer & Co. RP 137/c or Siemens-Schuckert-Werke (SSW) GU 343/38-8 electric motors with the same power output as the AEG motors.
Perhaps the most famous VIIC boat was U-96, featured in the movie Das Boot.
Premature congratulations for Nashua, NH!
I lived and worked for a year in Hampton Beach. The work sucked the life out of me. Don’t ask. Great locale. The ABC liquor stores are run by the state. I think that is a weird function of government.
What Walrus Is Building Next:
Caption this: Yer basic can o’ whup ass!!
Weren’t you going to change your avatar? Did it not work? The world awaits.
Churchill considered the U-boat menace the very greatest threat to Great Britain — far more than the bombing or even invasion — and strove mightily to get everyone else in the Cabinet and the U.S. to recognize it for what it was. The starvation of Britain was no joke. He required daily reports on tonnage of Allied shipping lost, and of U-boats produced vs. sunk. When the tide turned, as he wrote in his autobiography, he knew the war would be won.
Hitler, on his side, had generals complaining about how much steel went to the creation of each U-boat, and how many tanks they could have had created instead. Opportunity costs. Likewise, the German navy complained that they could build more battleships with all the steel going to U-boats. Oh well.
Well it is official, offer was accepted. Closing datre TBD but mostly like around the end of April. Full moving in most likely be May 31st.
The Missouri not yet. I have a preorder in for a Sturmtiger and the Japanese Carrier Akagi which are due out early next month. Don’t know how much downtime I will really have because I have to start packing and throwing stuff out.
Congratulations!
Thanks. My posts may become some what irregular as I have a lot of cleaning out, packing and other stuff to get done. Not to mention going dark getting set up in the new digs.