Yuma

The US Army Proving Grounds Museum at Yuma, Arizona.

They even have a special floormat!

CPT America kind of let himself go in the later years...

Whenever I plan a trip for business or pleasure, I always go online and try to check out the museums and the hobby shops.  I got two excellent ideas for hobby projects from this visit.  One was the overland train shown yesterday.  I may give building one a go, if I can find some good wheels.

The museum is only about 200 miles from San Diego and the roads are all paved and in good shape.  Here's another museum piece...

Yuma Proving Grounds US Army

My good friend, COL Jim and I recently visited the US Army Museum at the Yuma Proving Grounds, in Yuma, Arizona.

One of the first items is this large, bus like, vehicle parked out front.

It's the US Army Overland Train.  It's like a train, but it's on land, using big rubber wheels rather than train rails and tracks.

This "locomotive" pulled a host of trailers, like flatcars, across the desert.

Nobody makes a model of this vehicle as far as I know, but my brain has been working overtime trying to figure out where I can get some wheels like these...

As the plaque says, the vehicle was 565 feet long and weighed 400 tons.

It is a very impressive beast.  The orange color is for the testing, production models would be Army color, OD green or later camouflage.

As I said, it's a big vehicle!

Space Rocket

As part of my Super Heroes project I need a rocket for the Fantastic Four.

I did not want anything complicated or expensive so a quick trip to Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon solved the problem.  This bag of space men with a rocket had just what I was looking for.

The spaceman in this picture looks like he is firing a laser off his arm!

These figures are from Imex sold as part of their Billy V Toys line.  I doubt Imex actually makes them probably just markets them.

Not a bad collection of figures.  With the coupon the missile was only about $4.50.

Not sure what to do with the spacemen, too small or too large for me at about 40mm size.

4.7 Inch Gun

My work on the 1938 US Army continues with this piece of artillery I just got.  I classify it by the breech and call it the ring gun.

Wooden wheels are removed and the gun has been stripped of paint.

The wheels will be replaced with spoked wheels, like these.

Then the slush cast gun is repainted in gray, with red wheels and black barrel with brass breech.

Here a HaT 1/72nd scale US Army WWI French 75 crew man the gun and use the limber from the same set.

In the century between the ACW and WWII the US Army did use gray chassis, red wheels and black barrels but sometimes in various combinations with other colors.  Wooden spoked wheels mean the gun is towed by horses usually or very slow tractors.  Wooden wheels can't go very fast because they don't have any suspension and can't bounce well, pulling them with a fast truck will flip the gun."

 

 

The US Army used horse drawn guns until at least 1943.  Here are the three types, the ring breech, the sight breech and the square block breech as I call them. I consider these to be 4.7 inch guns and I am working to achieve three batteries of four guns each.  For wargame use I will consider them to be 120mm guns since 4.7 inches is 119.38 mm.  The longest barrel will have the longest range and the shortest the shortest range.