Civil War rc combat

Has anyone looked into building and fighting with ships from the Civil War?

 

I remember hearing someplace that there was a group of guys who made a format and built ironclads in 1:48th scale years ago.

And that is about all I heard. heh.

 

I happen to know a guy, Dan, in California who was very interested. Way back in the day, he actually had a group of guys across the states that built boats, and I heard one of them attended a Fast Gun national event. Don't think they actually got together for a battle before he left the hobby. He rejoined in the early 2000's, but hasn't been able to get much interest. He's got a really cool model of the Cairo (non-combat, I think), and was working on a Monitor (for combat) at one point.

 

That didn't help 1/96 Battlestations

 

Terry McKinzie and I were thinking about doing combat ironclads. He actually started building a Monitor and Virginia as "demonstrators" that we could use to drum up interest. We looked at a bunch of ironclads, I collected stats on all that we could. Then we tried to determine what scale to build. The problem is that Ironclads ran such a wide range of sizes, from 143 ft long (CSS Manassas) to 418 ft (HMS Warrior). Trying to find a scale that would allow the smallest to be a reasonable size without the Warrior needing a boat launchramp & custom trailer was tough. We started with 1/60, but it seems really tight to build the smaller guys.
Due to funding and time constraints, the project has been put on hold. We're concentrating on getting our fast-gun boats ready for the 2012 season.

 

Rallph Coles had 2 monitor hull built of different scales. I can't rememeber the scales but one of them was about the size of a Sodak but much wider. He had a movable turret in the smaller Monitor I think. I think I still have a photo of it kicking around. I will try and locate it this weekend and post it .

 

Still have Choctaw sitting on the shelf from the earlier attempt to recreate Civil War Combat and I still have all of the newsletters of that club. Never tried combat with her since only one other 1:48th ship on this portion of the east coast.

 

Now that I think of it, wasn't the one club going to use paintballs instead of BBs/ball bearings?

 

It's a bit dusty, but I managed to dig it out this morning! It is 77 inches long! It is really all black like the sides of the side wheel covers, but the rest is really disty.

 

Ralph Coles has hull molds for several 1/72 scale ACW ironclads: CSS Tennessee, CSS Virginia (aka Merrimac), USS Monitor, USS Dictator (a real beaut and quite large), and either Passaic or Canonicus Class monitors. Unfortunately he's never set up a website to market them and is averse to posting on any forums.
The Monitor is quite small and would be a challenge to build, but the other hulls are big enough for a cannon or two and Virginia could mount a battery of guns. Dictator is quite large at around 50" long.
Bob

 

The other issues we ran into while trying to plan ironclad combat:
1) Speed / manueverability. Ain't none. Top speed on some of these monsters was 4 kts! Trying to get a "scale speed" means any kind of breeze pushes you downwind. Going for higher speed means many of them (cough cough Monitors!) sink themselves.
2) Combat realism. During the planning, I pointed out that for realism, we should equip them with bb-guns, then not only not cut windows, but put 1/4" thick plating on the sides! The only really effective (read sink the other) weapon these ships had was ramming. And about that, see #1 above.

 

Here's my boat. The USS Hunchback, a converted NY City sidewheel ferry.

 

She's cool! nice photo!
Nikki

 

IIRC that was something considered in a discussion a while ago. Due to the hull shapes of some of the ships, it would be literally impossible to sink them since their turtleback decks extend down to the waterline and their underwater hulls have no target area above 45 degrees. Taking 1:16 scale RC tank airsoft guns and loading them with paintballs was considered a possible alternative. I think I'll stick with Age of Sail combat, though. At the very least you won't have some ships rendered impenetrable due to their hull shapes.

 

One of the big problems that I had with CWC was it was just about impossible to get a waterline or under the waterline hit on many of the ships such as my Choctaw or the one pictured by Steve T above. So..... the superstructure would take all of the damage and that was not that easy to rebuild.

 

Funny how ships that were designed to be impenetrable from round shot fired at close ranges would have the same characteristics at our scales.