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New Zealand Big Guns in 1/144 Owen and Mark Booth of Alexandra NZ have been building 1/144 scale Big Gun ships for the last few years. They have 4 ships operational now. The HMNZS Achilles, HMS King George V, DKM Scharnhorst, and DKM Graf Spee. They also have a USS Iowa (not yet armed). Owen first had a play around with model warship combat in the 1970's and continued with the idea after his son Mark saw an article on the hobby in a modeling magazine some years ago. He then contacted Bill Kirwin in Australia and obtained a copy of the rules and other information and they have since forged their own way ahead making everthing from scratch or modifying parts to suit. Now that we have contact with them, we hope to bring you some more information on the progress down their end of the country. See the contacts page for contact details. Owen and Mark sent me a letter and some colour photocopies photos. The photos below are scans of these copies so the quality is not that good. But you can see they do nice work! |
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Owen's 2 ships HMNS Achilles (left) and HMS KGV |
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Mark working on his semi completed Graf Spee. Spuerstructure has been completed and internal fit out yet to be done. |
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From front to back. USS Iowa (not a combat model and the scale long forgotten) HMZNS Achilles, HMS KGV, DMK Scharnhorst, and DKM Graf Spee. |
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Inside the HMNZS Achilles (left) and HMS KGV |
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Again the HMZNS Achilles, HMS KGV, DMK Scharnhorst, and DKM Graf Spee. |
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Inside the Scharnhorst. The white tubes either side of the ship are PVC accumulator tanks. These were filled with compressed air at shore to approx. 80psi and used to fire the guns. They are in the process of converting all their ships to run off CO2. |
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