Jacques Cousteau: The Ocean World

Scale Model Tugs & Trawlers

Basics of Plastic Ship Building Book

Ship Model Builders Handbooks

The Jacques Cousteau Calypso Ship Model Kit

• Warship Bone yards - Just as the U.S. Air Force sends obsolete warbirds to the Arizona desert for storage and disassembly, the U.S. Navy maintains a number of harbors for its obsolete vessels. This collection gives enthusiasts an admiral's tour of the naval storage harbors in Philadelphia, Norfolk, Pearl Harbor, and Bremerton, Washington, as well as the once-proud fighting vessels awaiting reassignment, sale, or the cutting torch. Author Kermit Bonner takes readers through the entire disassembly process from start to finish, describing in detail how these surplus cruisers, submarines, destroyers, and aircraft carriers are scrapped, including more complex processes involving nuclear submarines.
• Forgotten Fleet: The Mothball Navy - A handsomely illustrated history of the U.S. Navy's mothball fleet, this book takes a rare look at the so-called fleet behind the fleet, from the end of World War II to the present. Through brief ship histories and photographs of the ships and shipyards where they were laid up, the author tells the story of how these warships were paid off and preserved, how some were reactivated, and how most left the reserve fleet to be broken up. Additional photos of the ships in action remind readers that forgotten though they were while in mothballs, many had made their marks on history."
• Wooden Ships and Iron Men: The U.S. Navy's Ocean Minesweepers, 1953-1994 - From 1953-1994, sixty-five U.S. Navy ocean minesweepers (MSOs) swept mines; searched the sea floor for downed aircraft, sunken ships, and lost munitions; showed the flag¿ throughout the world, even sailing up the Congo and Mekong Rivers, calling at dozens of the world's seaports; and carried out patrols and special tasks off strife-torn or hostile countries. Some participated in the 1962 nuclear test program in the Pacific and in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs. Others, as part of a U.S. armada of military and civilian research ships at Palomares, located a nuclear bomb lost on the sea floor off Spain as a result of a midair collision between two U.S. Air Force aircraft. Iron men in wooden ships were with the Fleet in hotspots around the world, including Lebanon and the Quemoy-Matsu Islands of Taiwan in 1958; the Dominican Republic in 1961 and 1965; and the Cuban Missile Crisis and Haiti in 1962. During the Vietnam War, minesweepers participated in Operation Market Time, to prevent the infiltration of North Vietnamese soldiers and munitions into South Vietnam. Leader received the Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary heroism in Operation Sea Lords; Endurance engaged in close gun action with and helped destroy an enemy armed coastal freighter in a sea battle; and MSOs cleared mines in Haiphong Harbor, which aided in the negotiations in progress for the return of U.S. prisoners of war. During the twilight of their service in the late 1980s and early 1990s, aging sweeps cleared Iranian and Iraqi laid mines in the Persian Gulf.
• Minesweepers of the Royal Canadian Navy 1938-1945 - The minesweepers of the Royal Canadian Navy toiled in comparative obscurity, unlike their more celebrated cousins, the corvettes and frigates. In devoting a book to minesweepers, Ken Macpherson makes amends for what he considers a long ignored oversight.