Current and Finished Projects > Land
The Guns of Navarone, 20mm/HO Scale
Brian da Basher:
Outstanding! The weathering on top the barrel is what really makes it for me.
That and the amazing patience it must've taken to build this wonder!
Brian da Basher
Buzzbomb:
Ayup... I do like where this is going
Story:
Hey Sports fans. I see it's been a year since I messed with this stuff.
Based on Alistair MacLean's 1957 novel The Guns of Navarone, which was inspired by the Battle of Leros during the Dodecanese Campaign of World War II.
Others claim that the inspiration came from a French battle a year later
In 1943, the Axis powers plan an assault on the island of Kheros — where 2,000 British soldiers are marooned — to display their military strength and convince neutral Turkey into joining them. Rescue by the Royal Navy is prevented by two massive radar-directed superguns on the (fictional) nearby island of Navarone. When aerial bombing efforts fail, Allied Intelligence gathers a commando unit to infiltrate Navarone and destroy the guns.
Derivative project going on as well, figured I'd keep all my excretions in one place.
Jeffry Fontaine:
Wow! Nice to see this project back on track.
Enjoyed the movie, never read the book or have forgot that I read the book. What puzzled me about the guns was the size. The first time I watch that film was when I was living in the former Panama Canal Zone shortly after the movie was released. Being too young to know what I was seeing on the screen with regards to the guns it was always a mystery and I assumed in later years that these weapons must have been massive in size. Watching the film again just recently I realized that the guns were not as massive as I had imagined. The few scenes where the shells were seen gave me the impression that they were some where around 210mm to 250mm in size. Looking at the one image you have included above showing the guns in the film it does resemble a French rail gun that was 240mm in caliber. So your adapting those HO scale rail guns for your project makes perfect sense.
Story:
Leros is a specific interest (which is why y'all will eventually see an R-Boat build), and somewhere I have an annotated map of the Italian gun positions on Leros' heights. They were mostly WWI rejects, nothing as massive (or as cinematically engaging) as the twin railroad cannons in the movie. In reality, the amount of effort to set two of those main guns in a mountaintop emplacement would be insane (not that the Nazis weren't nuts to start with).
In reality, the Italian guns never controlled any important shipping lanes which is why this project is more malleable - the items are the sort of wargaming terrain that would allow small-scale naval gamers to side-step into 20mm commando raids; Russian & Japanese (1905 Siberia), Japanese vs pre-Dreadnaught America, Commonwealth or Russians vs Germans (Baltic 1914-1917), Japanese & Commonwealth (Singapore 1941), Commonwealth vs Italians (1940 Asmara), Italians vs Germans (Leros-like 1943), ad nauseum (the more obscure, the better).
As a wargaming tool, large guns would only be a target in a 20mm game but if combined with a naval game, they'd probably be engaging targets on a different map.
Funfact: as I understand it, the tubes used to model the guns in the movie are on display at a beach in Senegal.
nb: This might help visualize *why* this thread will contain different sort of cannons.
Note that the donor kits - made by several manufacturers over the last decade or two - are out of production now
Beat up/broken/missing parts examples can be found in the usual places.
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