Back to college for RockyMountainNavy Jr. means road trip, and that now also means a visit to a RockyMountainNavy favorite hobby shop: Frontline Model Kits & Hobbies in Staunton, VA. We have taken to using Christian’s store as our “coffee break” on the drive back from Blacksburg. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s great to be able to actually walk into a hobby shop and look at the many plastic model kits.
My latest acquisition is a Bronco Models “V-1 Fieseler FI 103 RE-3 Flying Bomb (Trainer)” in 1/35 scale. What an interesting aircraft; a two-seater manned V-1 flying bomb supposedly not designed for suicide missions but for the pilot to bail out. Sure….
RockyMountainNavy T also scored several new kits. Christian took on a lot of 248 models from a now sadly deceased builder who loved World War II armor in 1/35 scale. The problem is he started every one of those 248 kits…and didn’t get past maybe the first or second steps. Christian sells the individual unfinished kits for $7 “as is” and Final Sale. RMN T took a chance on a German E25 and Sturmtiger. They looked alright in the store, but once we got home he did a thoA thorough inventory of parts. Both are complete kits! He is going to carefully disassemble them a bit, touch up edges and the like, and intends to finish them this winter.
Feature image courtesy RMN
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Rocky Mountain Navy Gamer 
A long time ago I wrote an article on the Japanese kaiten (manned suicide torpedo) program. For all the effort and lives expended, the program was an unmitigated failure, characteristic of the desperate state of mind the Imperial Japanese Navy towards the end of the war. In all, the Japanese lost eight submarines and almost 900 lives in the program, while the U.S. Navy lost two ships — the fleet oiler Mississinewa, on the first sortie and the destroyer escort Underhill on the last. After the war, a US Navy officer remarked that the Japanese got much better results with their torpedoes before they started putting people inside them.
I suppose, though, a manned V-1 might be more accurate than just relying on the craft running out of gas before diving and hitting the target. At least you could rely on it hitting the city it was aimed at. And you could give the pilot a pistol to fire at the Spitfire approaching it to flip it over and make it crash…