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Anthony Alvear
67 articles

Progress USS Indianapolis 1945 – trumpeter 1/350 (part II)

July 4, 2017 · in Ships · · 21 · 2.2K

I'm still working on them...

Plastruct Improvements styrene sheet, Rod,strip…, Generic PE raillings from Flyhawk, Gold Medal models Ladders, metal chains, PE set, antennas from Gold Medals Models, Barrels 203mm and 127mm from Master Models, Flyhawk 40MM Quad Bofors Gun Mount, Brass pipe 0,3mm-0,4mm-0,5mm, 0.8mm improvements….etc.

Thank you for watching guys.

Reader reactions:
7  Awesome

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21 responses

  1. Coming along really well, my friend...gonna be a beauty, I'll bet. 🙂

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    said on July 4, 2017

    Looking good Anthony.

  3. thanks Mr, Conway.

  4. Coming along nicely, Anthony. I builit the Academy Premium Edition of this ship, which included a mountain of etch. Hard work.

    I used 0.060 fly line for the rigging and it looked the right scale to me, but fiddley.

    Will be watching your progress!

    • Thank you Rob, the kit academy premiun is magnificent, for the riggind use invisible thead nylon 0.004mm, which has worked very well,

      regards and thanks for watching.

  5. “Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.

    Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’ by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away.

    Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces.
    You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist.

    At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

    Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”

  6. if anyone doesn't know, the quote previous was from one of the best movie scenes ever, Quint (the old sea dog) explaining in the film 'Jaws' why he'll never, ever again put on a life jacket. His speech about surviving the Indianapolis sinking is mesmerising.

  7. Anthony, I will be following this build all the way.

  8. Oh, I've heard that one before...

  9. I look forward to seeing her finished, Anthony. You have done an amazing job with all the extras and improvements- very clean, detailed, and professional. She's a stunning ship already.

  10. Looks good Anthony!
    Be careful when you rig the ship, so that you don't bend those thin wimpy masts and yardarms.

    • I will be very careful with them, thank you for your words Ulf ... I saw your work from the RN Saetta, publication of the Modell fan of June of this year, extraordinary work, I hope you post here.

      Greetings.

      • Thank you Anthony. Yes, I will post an article about the Saetta here, but there is an article about her in FineScaleModeler coming up, so I have to wait for that one to be published first.

  11. Beautifully done! I look forward to your completion. I live in Indianapolis, so you can imagine why this is especially interesting to me. The quote from "Jaws" IS the best scene from the movie, as David said.
    Sad but true. History isn't always wonderful.

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