Help...

I've thought about doing this.   Build a plexiglass box.   The top is the water surface.    Support the sub in the box by its periscope.  It may need to be a piece of wire imbedded into the hull for strength as the periscope.   Try it on a 1:400 scale Mirage U-boat to prove the concept before going much larger.

Support the torpedo with a piece of black/blue wire or clear plastic that matches the background.    For the bubbles - try drilling a piece of plastic stock with your workshop drill.  You will get a spiral of plastic shavings.  Again, mount them on a wire out the back of the toepedo. 

Very Expensive and hard way: you need a lot of water-like transparent gel (Vallejo, for example, produce them in different colors - Atlantic water, Pacific, clear, etc). Fill the plexiglass tank with gel, put a sub and torpedo into gel on invisible threads or thinnest fishing lines (experiment with them to determine which would be truly invisible in the gel), once gel becomes more or less hardened, simply cut the threads on surface level. Use the bubbles of the gel of other color/colors, injected through long thin needle, say, through syringe, to emulate air bubbles. Then create a surface with waves and everything, using same variations of gels. While you are at it, you can play with hidden directed light sources, creating lights lightning through water onto your sub.

Mind you, I've never tried this. You'll need a couple of hundred $ just to buy all the things you need, and a lot of talent to pull this off.

Alternatively, just put two transparent correspondingly colored sheets into the plexiglass tank, one to the front side of the tank, from bottom to surface, other - as surface, horisontally. Mount sub to the horisontal sheet on an invisible thread. Create a surface on the sheet using transparent colored gels, so that sub can be seen from above. Much cheaper, but also rather hard.

EdGrune wrote:

I've thought about doing this.   Build a plexiglass box.   The top is the water surface.    Support the sub in the box by its periscope.

That's the way I'd think to start, too.  I'd get some window tint flim and use clear acrylic gek medium over ragged strips of it for the ocean "surface," I'm thinking.

I might wander down the bead aisle at the craft store for round clear beads to go on a plex or clear acrylic rod for the torp, to get a "bubble" effect.  Some cotton balls hit with a shot of hair spray or SprayFix, to make "wispier" bubble trails might not go amiss, either (which would be wanted for the sub's propellor cavitations, I'm thinking).

Such a display just begs for a "forced" perspective (even to tapering the plex sides a bit), with a wargaming scale target at the other end.

Now, for a bit more work, what about a surfaced torpedo attack, where only the conning tower is out of the water?  Get to apply a lot more wake that way, and have something not often seen with sub kits--figures at "work."  ("Cheating" a bit, I know,but there'd be a lot more "anchor" surface that way, too.)

Coolest similar display I can remember was a clear acrylic case, about 24" wide, 60" tall, and maybe 1" deep, showing a 1/1200 DD on the surface, a sub only about 3 inches under that, and the rest to show how much more ocean is out there.  Very striking.

Thanks for all the input so far, I like CapnMac82s idea about the sub partially surfaced. I'm thinking about having it in a position where it fired its torpedo and wants to get out of there quick and has right full rudder and is surfacing while the torpedo streaks off into a convoy.

David

You guys never cease to amaze me ... although if we put all of our minds into one room and got the creative juices flowing ... nahhhh, not gonna go there!

Seriously, though, I think Ed's idea sounds the most doable, but any way you try it, I hope you have half interest in a plastic supply shop. ww2modeler, regarding your last post, a sub may go right full rudder after it takes its shot, but it sure isn't going to surface right away. You don't want to attract attention to yourself, so you can get in there and maybe pickle off a few more fish before the bad guys/targets have even a vague idea of where you are.

mfsob wrote:

Seriously, though, I think Ed's idea sounds the most doable, but any way you try it, I hope you have half interest in a plastic supply shop. ww2modeler, regarding your last post, a sub may go right full rudder after it takes its shot, but it sure isn't going to surface right away. You don't want to attract attention to yourself, so you can get in there and maybe pickle off a few more fish before the bad guys/targets have even a vague idea of where you are.

That is a good point, A type IX u boat had 4 for tubes and two aft. SO maybe they were turning after firing there other 4 up front and were preparing a stern shot while running.

David

mfsob wrote:

a sub may go right full rudder after it takes its shot, but it sure isn't going to surface right away. You don't want to attract attention

Well, now we're into "operational reality"--showing the periscope up while a fish in the water is more "artistic license," really.  But, potentially worth it for the display effect, though.

Which is kind of where the "torpedo attack, surface" idea came to mind, that and holding a 1/126± sub by a bit of brass rod periscope was a tad daunting <g>.

That, and actually having that torpedo director on the bridge manned being kinda cool . . .

Thanks for the input, the idea about having the bridge manned sounds cool. It makes the sub look more "Alive", If I was going to do that, I think I would make a bigger sub than my 1/700 U-boat. Could you recomend a good kit that has aftermarket figures available.

David

THat is a good point, usually they fired 2-3-or 4 torpedos at one target depedning on impotance, on light craft they used the deck gun. So, I would need to have 4 torpedos traveling and the subdoing full rudder to get two stern shots in.

David

ww2modeler wrote:

So, I would need to have 4 torpedos traveling and the subdoing full rudder to get two stern shots in.

Now, that makes me want to go dig out the torpedo computer manual I have somewhere at the house.  But, I'm thinking it's at least a second between shots.  A second is about 60' at 35kt, so your case will start having some geometry issues to get the torp wakes curved and long enough (to not get brickbats from the critics <g>).

You probably don't want to get far enough in the turn to introduce heel (even if that would look dramatic), as, at some point the bridge torp director comes off target (unless you need a figure on the bridge shaking a fist or some such <g>).

Could ayone reccomend a large WW2 sub kit but not terribly expensive and one that has crew or has aftermarket crew. I need to have a scale to figure out the torpedo distance difference. 60ft. diference, I'm going to need a lot of water. Or, maybe I should make a small dio that has it so that you can only see the torpedo trails. It might make it less exciting, but it would save some work.

David