Oahu is done. All models in place, painted and tested. Malaysia will be done this week. Wake Island and Burma are in the works. And that will be Phase One.

Almost all these objects are the patient and inspired work of MPPD. Everyone wants to draw a plane. Hinch does ships like nobody. But nobody has the patience to sit and crank out the ground props that make this a believable and interesting story teller. We think these are terrific additions to an attack that will occur close to the targets and will have to match after action pictures from the actual event.

Great job. Thanks Mike. They are the perfect addition to Deuces world and Hinch's navy.

Dry docks


Water tower


Wing HQ


Hickam Barracks


Flight line with Double Hangars


Base Ops with a view of the harbor


Base Ops again


Ford Island hangars and PBY base


Ford Island Tower


Battleship Row


Navy Base


View from Pearl City


We are going to switch back to Yankee Air Pirate now so we can get Set 8 out. But first, it's 78-degrees in LA today and I am going outside.

78! It's about 15F where I am.

Join the 35 million happy unemployed Californians who were all picking up aluminum cans in the warm sun today.

I be one of them. Not too happy about it though.


Wheels

Looks really, really good. I can't believe there were that many trees there at one time.

Thanks a lot.

It's surprising isn't it Tom? I guess these days we forget just how under-developed most of the world was. I look at period photo's of locations in Australia, especially around Darwin, and am constantly amazed at how basic things were back then. Darwin especially was no more than a frontier town, with a population of just over 5,000 in 1940.

That's where the accuracy of games such as Rising Sun are so important.

I did want to ask about that. I thought the area around Pearl Harbor would be a bit more populated. The lack of civilization I chalked up to the creator's concentrating on the major features of the base (there being time later to fill in houses and other buildings NOT of military origin). Am I mistaken? Now I need to go find some photos of the area just to see!

I'm glad you asked.

Hickam had buildings standing out in the middle of undeveloped areas.





The streets were lined with trees which grow very fast in Hawaii but it was a military base and was mostly just flat ground.



We didn't put in their dock or railway...but might.

Hickam was a bomber base. Wheeler was the main fighter base. We are forced to combine them since a request to build a flat airport up on that ridge would have caused Deuces to disconnect his phone and DSL.

So we will fly named missions against aircraft at Hickam, Ewa and Ford Island. We will fly from all the Japanese carriers (I think), Hickam and Haleiwa on the North Shore.

The main targets at Hickam were the aircraft on the flight line, the Hickam Barracks, Wing Headquarters, Splinter City barracks, and the Double Hangars. There were more buildings.





Honolulu is over the rise and was forbidden to Japanese crews so it's a good excuse not to build it. Pearl City was a housing area and we have houses there.

Ford Island looked like this:



...so that's how we did it.

Here's their tower:



and their sea plane hangars:



The water tower was not a target...just a cool Depression Era public works art deco building. I thought it might give the player an idea of WHEN this war occurred. Nobody teaches history anymore by putting it in it's time. WWII was a long time ago in human terms and most people can tell by looking at architecture without knowing exactly why.



The Navy base looked like this:



and ours does too within reason. I could not get any of the modelers to do a rat or a hooker so we left those off. But you can see that it was a jungle island that had been cleared by Dole Co. to grow pineapples and S&H to grow sugar cane.

Pearl City is on the right side of the picture and other housing we have not plugged in yet on the lower left.

Since every here DOES know history you are all aware how incredible it is that the Japanese, who were veterans, did not hit the POL supplies, the sub pens, or the repair facilities. Sinking a fleet in 30 feet of water with a repair facility adjacent had its shortcomings.

But they were trying to buy a free hand in Southeast Asia for 6 months...and they got that.

Thanks, zerocinco! All of you have done a great job re-creating the bases and ships.

I'm pretty convinced! With pictures too!

Now I need to go do some modeling (different game) myself!