Update on the detailing of the PT boat
What a lot I learn as I do things - I knew vaguely that the Bofors (40mm) fired "clips" of 5 rounds, and that these are dumped into the holder above the breech.
Now thinking about that - say they fire at one round per second (almost certainly faster) then the clip is used up in 5 sec or less - so someone has to drop in new one, or it all goes quiet
It can't be the two gun crew, so it must be a loader or two standing behind or beside the gun and reaching over the rails at behind the breech. They would have to keep their piggies (and all other bits) well out of the way of recoil, etc!
I have some pics of the story so far with guns, torpedoes getting made
Torpedoes are rolled tubes of laminating film with foam fronts and balsa sterns. Not my most glorious modelling success, but very light and not too bad for stand-way-off scale
pics follow - they are (slowly) uploading into p/bucket so can't do anything till that has finished
THe Higgins exhausts have been fiitted and painted - they DO look like exhausts - just not the right shape for Higgins boats - sorry, Andy
. Anyway a new and useful technique learned!
In the course of doing the mouldings I tested out a drum of about 10gall (imperial) of polyester resin which I was given many years ago, and was bought in the 1970s. Still works!
pics when they have loaded
andrew