Toys you can start a war with!

Today I’m going to look at two toy boats, but not just any boats. These are two big to play with in the bath. Or even to impress the kids at the local park pond. Yes, people we’re talkin’ Toys you can start a war with!

You’re looking at a 1:20 scale model of the German World War II pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. It weighs in at 318 Kg and measures 9.m in length overall. The model is so large that it can accommodate two people inside!

The owner of this impressive vessel, Mr William Terra says that it cost him £5,000 (€7000, $10,000) and six years of his life. The hull is constructed of strips of wood of between 2.54cm and 10.16cm and then covered with fiberglass. The vessel is powered by a 15hp motor located under the rear turret and capable of propelling this beast at over 15 knots! This diminutive Graf Spee even has an integrated Music system on which Mr Terra listens to Wagner (What else?).

Mr Terra has issued a standing challenge to anyone prepared to build a similar scale model of HMS Exeter so that he can recreate the Battle of the River Plate in paintball across the bay of Fundy near his home.

Now for something completely different!

QinetiQ is a British company which used to be an organization within the Ministry of Defense (DERA, the Defense Evaluation and Research Establishment) and is now one of the World’s largest defense research organisations. The photo below is one of their latest water-borne gadgets.

It is an unmanned maritime reconnaissance vehicle about the size of a jet-ski. Its apparent stealth capabilities are obvious from the shape and point to the roles of the craft listed below:

• Harbour patrol
• Battlefield reconnaissance
• Intruder investigation
• Damage assessment

Being unmanned it is capable of all this without risking the life of a pilot and crew.

The QinetiQ Sentry measures 3.5m in length and has a top speed of 50 knots which it can sustain for up to 6 hours between recharges.

It is piloted from a single PC-based console but can operate autonomously to carry out pre-programmed missions.

Just the thing for sneaking up on the Graf Spee!

Tags:

scale_model, toy_boats

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 9:01 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.