Posted on 03/14/2006 5:07:14 PM PST by SandRat
Wasn't there an aircraft carrier back in the 50s/60s named USS Bonhomme Richard, affectionately known by her crew as the "Bonnie Dick?" I seem to remember that around Olongapo in 1961. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Now that you mention it....but I can't confirm it.
I had the Revell model around 1960 or so.
I remember that Revell model. She blowed up real good.
The first book I ever remember reading cover to cover as a kid was a biography of John Paul Jones (not the bass player!)
Sounds like the lamentable demise of the Graf Spee. I had a motorized model of the formidable German pocket battleship. When it came time to mothball her, one night, I pried the deck open with a pocket knife, filled her to the gunnel's with calcium carbide, replaced the deck and covered it with flammable plastic cement. [See where this is going?
Solemnly we took her down Springfield Pond, in Springfield Park in Springfield Gardens, Queens. A flip of the switch and her mighty screws sprung to life one last time. A strike of a match set the plastic cement afire as she made for the center of the pond, her majestic wake glimmering in the dim park lights. As the fire did its grim and mute work, she began shipping water, the water reacting with a full load of calcium carbide to produce ethylene gas, which ignited by the flaming deck made a column of flame five feet high on the still wintry pond.
Have we had this conversation before? My personal best (along with my brother) was our third Fletcher-class Revell destroyer. We built M-80's into the hull during construction . . . the resulting explosion sent burning plastic and petrol onto our roof. My brother says that when he looked over at my dad expecting the worst (I was hosing the roof), he saw him laughing.
" The first book I ever remember reading cover to cover as a kid was a biography of John Paul Jones (not the bass player!)"
Same here! I wish I could remember the name of it. I ended up in the U.S. Navy in part due to that book.
Just like the real Bismark, my model was more difficult to sink than I realized. She was holed many times before a BB tore through her port hull near the waterline and exited her starboard side below the waterline.
Had we known the lyrics, we might have then sung Ich Hatten Einen Kameraden. (German equivalent to Taps).
I wish I could remember the name as well. It inspired me to build my own boat.. which promptly sank in a local pond. I ended up in the Air Force in part due to that!
Lol!
No, but my brother did attach a long string to 12 OZ can of petrol (or as we call it "gasoline") and placed it on a burning grill located in the space between our house and our neighbor's. He yanked on the string pouring the contents onto the burning coals. When no great fuel air bomb fireball ensued he ambled over investigate. Fortunately for him (though maybe not for his future wives) a MOAB sized fireball erupted while he was still about ten feet away.
Our neighbor's wife, who was innocently sunning herself in her yard, across a low fence must have felt the frission shared by Hiroshima survivors. Visibly shaken and trembling, she retreated to safety of her house, loudly espousing her clinical assessment of my brother's, parents' and whole family's mental health.
I used "petrol" because I thought simply calling it "gas" was too vague. The only bona-fide mushroom cloud I have ever created was in my high school AP Chem class.
Upon further review of my memory, it was Stephen Decatur and this book (there was one on JPJ as well):
http://www.seriesbooks.com/stephendecatur.htm
Springfield Gardens??? I grew up in Fresh Meadows, but my Grandparents lived in St. Albans, near the Jamaica water works, on 193rd St.!
LC
Connecticut ping!
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