I love this little Wombat style craft by Glico recently seen on Yahoo Japan. It adheres well to the Wombat design by Mike Trim done for the Thunderbirds' Duchess Assisgment. It was sold at Bonhams:
There is an amazing scratchbiult model of the Thunderbirds Wombat at the fantastic modelling site of Keith McNeill. Anyone got any wombat collectibles?
The little cat cartoon character is Doraemon, nothing to do with the Wombat. One of my fave non official vehicles!
ReplyDeleteNever heard of Doraemon Bill. The Japanese love to mash things up don't they!
ReplyDeleteAs a child I was baffled as to the purpose of the Carrier Craft. The only use I could think of was for situations where a fighter jet was crippled and couldn't land - the equivalent of the Elevator Cars from Trapped in the Sky.
ReplyDeleteI eventually discovered that in the 60's there was planned a real world equivalent of the Carrier Craft and its purpose was not so much to land jets, as to get them off the ground - providing VTOL to fighters without having to load them up with complicated engines.
You can see a YouTube mockup of the real world VTOL take-off Platform at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...Y&noredirect=1
Those three big fans on the Carrier Craft body now make sense. I still have no idea why the Duchess Assignment showed the inverse of what the Carrier Craft was good for, or why having the jet pilot eject was part of the demonstration. And just why was The Hood lurking in the background with the Air Ministry spectators?
Let's try that URL again:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=07N6qy3xhlY&noredirect=1
Fascinating Xerxes. Looking at Mike Trim's design it does look like a flying aircraft carrier. It would have made a great JR21 toy like the Stingray Submarine Aircraft carrier. I suppose the modern version is the Heli-carrier in Avengers Assemble do you think?
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