An impulse bargain buy

On the way back from seeing my father, my wife and I paid a flying visit to a retail park in Essex. Whilst my wife visited various clothes stores, I spent my time wandering around a branch of a large shop that specialises in selling all sorts of inexpensive homeware, craft materials, and toys. I had visited other branches of this chain before ... and in the past it proved to be a rich source of bits and pieces that have had wargaming uses.

Today my eye was caught by a toy aircraft carrier that was on sale for £3.00! I thought about buying it for about five seconds ... and then I bought it. However, having got this impulse bargain buy home, I wondered what to 'do' with it. As it is, the model is a passable representation of a 1:300th-scale US Aircraft Carrier, but I don't have any other ship models in that scale.

The model aircraft carrier both in and out of its packaging. It came with three 1:330th-scale jet aricraft and two helicopters. The 1:100th-scale Harrier has been included to give some indication of the actual size of the model.

I found the answer to my problem in Norman Friedman's U.S. AIRCRAFT CARRIERS (published in 1983 [ISBN 0 87021 739 9]). The book contains a section devoted to the attempts by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt to persuade the United States Navy to build a class of small anti-submarine warfare aircraft carriers. They were called Sea Control Ships, and were intended to perform the duties carried out by Escort Carrier during World War II. They looked like this:

Zumwalt was unsuccessful, and the design was not pursued in the United States Navy. However, the Spanish Navy wanted to replace its old ex-United States Light Aircraft Carrier, and they built a version of the Sea Control Ship, SPS Principe de Asturias (R11).

SPS Principe de Asturias.

When the Thai Navy decided that it needed to add mobile airpower to its fleet, they bought a smaller version of the SPS Principe de Asturias from the Spanish. This ship - HTMS Chakri Naruebet - is the smallest aircraft carrier operated by any navy in the world.

HTMS Chakri Naruebet.

I have decided that I will alter the model aircraft carrier I have bought so that it is a Sea Control Ship (or modern Escort Carrier) from which my 1:100th-scale Harriers can fly off in support of my 15mm-scale modern armies.