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| By Joseph C. Brown |
Stovepipe Fighter |
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Scale: Not Stated The Snouts invaded Earth, and the United States built an Orion-style space warship named Michael. They equipped it with a wide variety of weapon, all six of the shuttle craft fleet, and Stovepipes. Stovepipe fighters consisted of one of the main cannon (rifles with a 16 inch bore!) of an Iowa class battleship attached to a solid fuel rocket. It was given an autoloader and just enough cockpit to steer with. The numbers built were not discussed in the novel, but, since there were 4 Iowa class ships in commission at that time, and there are 3 of the 16 inch cannon per turret, and 3 turrets per ship - 36 Stovepipes were possible (actually, 35 - USS Wisconsin is missing a gun that blew up some years ago- Ed). And needed, as their attrition rate was simply horrible in the closing chapters of the book! But the surviving ones were effective; the alien commander was heard ordering “So kill me these flying guns!” |
I used a variety of discarded plastic pipe and toner cartridges to build this fighter, and discovered that these plastics can not be glued together with any adhesive known to the human race! Building it became a race against finishing it and seeing which part would fall off first! The description in the novel is minimal, at best, so I decided that a helical ammunition feed under the weapon barrel was necessary, as was a maneuvering rocket system. Fuel tanks would be needed for that, along with two solid rockets, not just one. Image: Left side Image: Top view |
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This page was last updated 28 November 2000