USS Intrepid

I was fortunate enough to visit New York a couple of  years ago, accompanying my wife who was on a work trip  While she was off setting the world right, I had an opportunity to look around and one of my must-do things was a trip to the USS Intrepid moored on the Hudson River.

I had seen it from the river before, but nothing had quite prepared me for how absolutely huge it was close up. I have tried to capture some if its immensity.

It is like standing next to a block of flats.

Here is Intrepid in full WW2 mode. She was built in 1944 and served in WW2, Korea and Vietnam.

The hangar deck, which stretched faaaaar into the distance.

A Dauntless(?) TBD. I spent hours and hours flying one of these in the old Microprose flight sim, Pacific Air War.

Something more modern.

Flying Banana!

The superstructure, with a Harrier in the foreground.

The deck was packed with various aircraft.

US jets.

A collection of helicopters.

A beautiful Harrier.

Various inside bits.

The Flag Bridge.

Quite an impressive view from the top of the Bridge.

Nice view of the wood decked aircraft elevator.

Phantom.

Two MIGs with great colour schemes.

Close up of the elevator.

Concorde!

On the rear of the main deck was a large hangar containing various bits of spacecraft, including pride of place to the USS Enterprise. A big old bird.

And a rather smaller Soyuz capsule.

The forward anchor deck, also suitably immense.

A couple of views back down the starboard side from the AA gun pits back towards the Hudson.

A finally, someone had built this amazing Lego model of a WW2 era Intrepid with its decks fully loaded with aircraft.

That was just great, and like the USS Growler, recommended for anyone visiting New York.

Zvezda 1/144th Henschel 126B

My attempts to buy every single model Zvezda have ever produced continue. I wanted some sort of spotter/liaison plane for the Germans. Really I was after a Storch, but they were out of stock so instead I picked up a more unusual Henschel 126B.

It is a delightful plane, it really has an interwar look going for it. It is also a big old bird with a massive fixed undercarriage.

Struts are never my favourite thing, but this went together even easier than the Po-2. I snap fitted the wings in place then glued them once they were lined up. As it has a semi open cockpit I didn't paint the canopy in this time, but instead left it clear plastic and fitted it after the other painting. It was a bit fiddly to fit under the wing but I cut off the locating lugs beforehand which made it much easier.

You can see the open gunners position here. It is a shame there aren't any crew supplied, but I suppose I could add one made up from a spare tank commander at some point. I did this in early war splinter camo as the wings and ailerons are so big and it sets them off nicely.

Usual plain underside, although I did the yellow bits for some contrast.

Here it is off spotting the dining table. The decals are straight from the kit, and not very subtle! As usual with Zvezda, they don't supply tail swastikas, but I'm not too bothered. A really nice model and highly recommended.

Chaeronea 338

Tim has jumped forwards in time a bit now away form the Peleponnesian Wars to the rise of some place called 'Macedonia'. Here King Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the as yet not very well known, face off against the Athens and Thebes. The Macedonian Army was notable for its development of combined arms tactics centered around its pike phalanxes supported by an amazing tactical innovation - proper cavalry.

Philip, Alexander and Parmenion fought the Athenians and Thebans outside Chaeronea in 338, in one of the larger battles of the ancient world.

As ever, we played this using CnC Ancients on Hexon terrain with Tims 25mm toys. Diego and I took the Athenians and Thebans respectively, while John ad Graham took the Macedonians.

View from the Theban right. The chaps closest to the camera are the mighty Theban Sacred Band.

Our centre, with various hoplites and auxiliaries.

The Athenian left advances after a brief exchange of missile fire.

The entire Macedonian phalanx rolls forwards in response with a Line Command card. Oops!

The ensuing melee is really horrible with heavy losses all over the place.

Philip himself plunges into the Greek line with a group of pikemen.

The Athenian hoplites push back, managing to rout some of the Macedonians.

Alexander chose this moment to lead his Companions into the ragged Greek lines, the heavily armoured cavalry crashed into some of the disordered hoplites. Things weren't looking too good.

As the Macedonians overran a number of units, things were looking bad. Luckily, we just managed to hang on, despite heavy losses.

Our final throw of the dice was this desperate attack on some Macedonian light troops. The Macedonians evaded, so we only had one chance.... 

And we got lucky. That one green spot inflicted a hit on them as they pulled back.

And as they were weakened anyway, it was enough to rout them.

In the end the Greks were victorious, but it was a harder fought thing than the banner total indicates as next turn Alexander was poised to obliterate a number of weakened hoplite units.

So, another nail biting game, albeit with an ahistorical result. Well, Philip will just have to think again.