Well folks, I have safely returned from my trip to California. The WWCC met for its first battle of the year, and what a battle it was. I'll just start with some videos from the scene: Onboard Mikasa, sortie #2 View: https://youtu.be/U4hg3DlS0aY Sinking Titan #1 View: https://youtu.be/kabFZb8jk-o Sinking Titan #2 View: https://youtu.be/oYc0ApL_qSg First, the big news. The battleship Mikasa has been launched and combat-tested. She only had a few minor issues to resolve, and by the second day she was a force to be reckoned with. I will go into more detail about her performance in the Mikasa build thread, but the important news is that the Admiralty has approved construction of at least two more predreadnoughts with the same hull: Asahi and Majestic. It's a good thing Japanese admirals don't command from the armored bridge, because it got hit several times during the event. The flying bridge, however, was fine. Next up: MORE Battle Damage. Several truly enormous battleships sank during the event, and I figured I should show what happened. USS Montana had a catastrophic armor failure underneath A turret, which overwhelmed the ship's pumps after what I believe was a ship's wake or an inopportune roll put it underwater. See the sink video above. Here we have the Giussano, drying out after it sank. This one was also due to balsa failure. Notice the one waterline hit, how more balsa folded in aft of the hole. At full flood, that proved more than the cruiser could handle. HMS Prince of Wales here proved much more survivable. If anybody ever asks "can it fit?" my answer is ALWAYS yes. It's called a Honda FIT for a reason. I don't know quite how it happened, but I drove down to California with two battleships and full support gear for a week of operations. Within two days, the fleet grew. I drove home with eight combat warships, including four 1:72 scale destroyers and two large WWII battleships. This is what it looked like as I left the pond: And here it is an hour after I returned. Completely back to normal, ready for routine grocery shopping.
That was a great weekend. Thanks for making the trip! The big takeaway for me is that I need to learn from the Fast Gun guys about pumps! My wimpy pumps are no match for what you were running on the Mikasa.
Thank you for coming down here and sharing your latest project and posting the videos, that was some great combat..
