Strelets US Navy 1/72nd Scale

The set includes a water cooled .50 caliber anti-aircraft machine gun.

 These massive .50 caliber machine guns were used by the Army and Navy, both on land and on ships.

The crew was mostly composed of men who would handle the large ammo boxes.

It takes a lot of firepower to bring down enemy planes.

This set from Strelets gives several crewmen for the gun and an aircraft ground crewman with fire extinguisher.

US Navy

I have wanted these figures for as long as I have collected 1/72nd scale figures.

US Navy figures for WWII from Strelets.

Sailor with his sea bag.

Every sailor had one to carry all his personal belonging inside.

The US Navy fought may battles in WWII on the water and on land.  At Bataan they formed a Naval Battalion and fought as infantry.

Boxes and Straws

My outdoor storage box becomes a ships deck.

Gunners serve the gun, closeup it just looks foggy, taking the photo through the side of the box.

Tim Mee 60mm sailors with clips of ammo.

The view from the business end of the gun.

Eventually these will get painted, I may leave one side unpainted to allow viewing the interior.

Additional PT Boats

Here you can see the torpedoes with their propeller blades. I also added an additional life raft and moved the original one to the center of the boat.

With a 40mm, 37mm, 20mm, guns and depth charges and torpedoes along with four fifty caliber machine guns, these were heavily armed boats for being only about 70 feet long.

The original .50 caliber machine gun turrets were retained as excellent for both air targets and barge traffic.

Here is a close up of the forward life raft. Rafts were solid, often balsa wood, so they did not have to be inflated and would still work if they were hit by shrapnel.

The older style PT boats and these new ones both served in the Pacific until the end of the war. My long term plan is to make a couple more of the older type, but not anytime soon.

PT Upgrade

Despite being 40 years old, the Revell PT-109 in 1/72nd scale is a good kit.

I made this one into the late war version. Here in front is a 37mm AA gun, ammo locker to the left and a 20mm gun to the right. Torpedo tubes were removed and ariel torpedoes were used instead. Usually they only carried two torpedoes, there were few Japanese targets worthy of a torpedo that the PTs would have to confront. I used a couple of fuel tanks with a little modification as the ariel torpedoes.

I got a couple books on PT boats and it seems they used all kinds of guns mid to late war. They went from fleet units to sink large Japanese ships to barge busting, often at night.

It's a bit fuzzy, but that's a 40mm Bofors gun on the back. It's a metal kit from HR Models in 1/72nd scale.

I added a few depth charges to the boat as well. Japanese submarines often tried to sneak in and resupply isolated garrisons.

PT 109

For about 50 years Revell made a 1/72nd scale model of the PT 109.

It was not actually PT 109, but rather just a generic patrol torpedo boat. It is a good kit, even now.

It is an early war PT boat, the type used all over the Pacific war, from the first days of the conflict.

I waterlined the model and glued a sheet of styrene to the bottom.

The model is about a foot long, and comes with a decent few crew figures.