I never did the BB gun thing, or firecrackers for that matter. I usually broke the crap out of my models by playing with them.
By the way Jeff…You act like you wrote the book AND the article on the Fletchers!
Ric
I have the Blue Devil and I’m gonna have a go at it. I read that fella’s book, what his name… Oh, yeah…Herne and viewed his web tutorial before i even considered buying it. Lot’s of good info and lot’s of work ahead of me.
So, Jeff, er excuse me, Mr. Herne… If I go crazy sometime in the next few year building and reworking this hunk of plastic, I’m sending my pet goldfish after you!!!
Thanks for the inspiration!!!
By the way Jeff…You act like you wrote the book AND the article on the Fletchers!
You can’t prove a thing, I wasn’t even in the Navy yard at the time…err…
My grandfather served on the Cushing (DD-797), so I’ve always had a fondness for Fletchers. When I wrote the book in '96-'97, I realized that I had compiled all the of the information I needed to fix the Lindbergh kit, which had been sitting on my shelf for some time. When you immerse yourself in writing a book, you learn alot about the technical side of the ships, their fits, design doctrines, etc…but when you couple that with trying to correct a model, and not trusting the accuracy of anything in the kit, you learn about the visual aspects of the ships as well.
So while I will never venture to say that I’ve done anything definitive in the Fletcher-history world, I can say that I’ve done my fair share of research. Does that make me an expert? No way…but I certainly have enough resources at my disposal to answer most questions about the class, at least until 1945. After that, forget it, I’m clueless.
A couple of other things…I’ve never been intimidated by goldfish…trout, salmon, walleye, and the occasional bass, yes, goldfish, no. And Mister Herne is my father…
Have a good weekend !
Jeff
You wont believe this, I was hosting a yard sale today at Graceland, (err Rhinelander, yeah Rhinelander) and this elderly gentleman walks up looking at my Revell USS Ward I had for sale. He then tells me he served on the Fletcher back in WWII. We chatted for a little while till his wife dragged him off. Really nice to meet a vet and just yack for awhile.
Ric
Hope you don’t mind me asking this, but (to Modelingmonkey) - are you intending to build the kit? If not, I might be interested
in buying it.
No problems at all if you do want to build it, I just couldn’t bear the thought of it being blown up with firecrackers 
(I don’t think I could EVER do that to a model I built - old/unwanted models, such as the ones I built years ago before I’d heard of things like acrylic paint, filler putty and masking tape (or even sandpaper and retouching paintwork for that matter) usually end up being either broken up for spares, used for testing paint schemes, donated to friends, or sold on eBay as a “scrapyard” lot in the hope that someone else will be able to restore them or use them for spare parts)
Drawde
There are 2 Blue Devils on Ebay ending today or tomorrow at $22 and change.
They don’t show up on any searches so I assume that they don’t ship to the UK/Europe. (either that or they’ve ended now).
There’s one for sale in Belgium, but it has a starting bid of around £35, excluding postage.
Hey, it was the 4th of July here, and I still have several large fire-crackers and a monsterous 1000-cracker “land mine”. Ka-Boom
Hey, it was the 4th of July here, and I still have several large fire-crackers and a monsterous 1000-cracker “land mine”. Ka-Boom[}:)]
Stupid internet connection. But, no, I don’t even blow up my old models; you know, the ones we all have: no paint, no decals, seam lines a cm high. Suddenly I have a strong to desire to get out the fire-crackers.
What I meant was, would you be interested in selling the kit? If so, I’d definitely be interested in buying
it (not sure how much the shipping cost to the UK would be, though)
I know, that’s just me being sarcastic. I don’t think I’ll be selling it; for a while anyway. By the way, I get my sarcasm from Monty Python.