Tag Archives: Missile

Fifties Cruiser

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Ah the fifties! Hot rods, milkshakes, prosperity, and exciting new Giant Implements of Death. This is one of America’s, the Martin Mace cruise missile and MM-1 Teracruzer translauncher, designed to transport a nuclear warhead to a location from which it could blow up a Russian city. Yay!

With a range of only 1,000 to 2,000km, the TM-76A / MGM-13A Mace cruise missile needed to be fairly close to Russia to pose a viable threat. Thus the U.S deployed it in West Germany, which they were able to do following Germany’s defeat in World War 2, thereby bringing the Cold War to the heart of Europe. Thanks America.

It also explains why The Soviet Union felt the need to send their nuclear missiles to Cuba, in doing so sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis, to ensure their Giant Implements of Death could reach America in return.

Thankfully both countries have moved on from such pointless willy-wavi… oh, they haven’t? Sigh.

This superb recreation of a horrible device comes from Ralph Savelsberg, and there’s loads more to see at his ‘Teracruzer TEL and Mace cruise Missile’ album on Flickr. Alternatively, here’s a mini-figure riding a giant tortoise, which looks altogether more peaceful.

It Looks Like a Giant…

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We’re linking to that childish Austin Powers sketch today for good reason. Firstly because penis jokes are funny. Secondly because this Atlas-F inter-continental ballistic missile looks like one. And thirdly because it, and all the other fantastically pointless atomic weaponry developed during the Cold War, amounted to little more than chillingly dangerous willy waving.

The SM-65 Atlas was one of the USA’s numerous ‘my dick’s bigger than yours’ taunts, and being 85ft high and weighing 260,000 lbs it was admittedly pretty massive. But still completely pointless.

The Atlas-Fs were the first ICBM’s able to be deployed from underground silos, taking just ten minutes to launch. Six squadrons were armed with the F, with seventy-two of the things deployable at their peak (plus another fifty-seven of other variants), each armed with a warhead over a hundred times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

This marvellous recreation of a horrendous machine comes from Flickr’s Ralph Savelsberg (aka Mad Physicist, who is perhaps living up to his name with this build), and is – somewhat unbelievably – mini-figure scale. A neat launch pad, silo, and two mini-figure missile boffins are included and there’s more to see at his photostream. Click the link above to wave your willy.

Retribution Weapon 2

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Lego V-2 Rocket

Today’s creation may look like a jauntily retro space rocket, but it is in fact an Aggregat 4, known affectionately by the Germans during World War 2 as the ‘Vergeltungswaffe 2’, (or V-2 for short). That extravagant title translates as ‘Retribution Weapon’, which is an apt name, because retribution was all the V-2 was designed to do. Which makes it surely one of mankind’s most evil inventions.

But also one of the cleverest. Whilst abhorrent in purpose, the V-2 rocket was brilliant in engineering. It was the world’s first guided ballistic missile (which considering it first few in 1944, when a computer was the size of an office block, is scarcely believable), and also the first man-made object to cross the boundary of space.

That cleverness made it all the more evil though, as the 3,000 V-2 rockets launched from Germany during the Second World War are estimated to have killed over 9,000 people in London, and later other European cities. Another 12,000 concentration camp prisoners died in the making of it, and yet at the end of the war the Allies rushed to capture the designs to accelerate their own missile production.

Thankfully this V-2 is nothing more than a collection of superbly shaped Danish plastic, and it comes from previous bloggee Sunder_59 of Flickr. There are further pictures of Sunder’s perfectly recreated Vergeltungswaffe at his photostream – click the link above to see more of the worst mankind can do.

Russian Arms

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Surface to Air Missle Launcher

SA-4 / 2K11 Krug Surface-to-Air Missile Launcher

And now for a more serious post. This incredible MOC is a Cold War era Russian 2K11 Krug Surface-to-Air missile launcher, built by D-Town Cracka on Flickr. We’ll let you form your own opinion on its brilliance and instead use this space to highlight the current plight of Syrian Refugees, fleeing to the Turkish border from the brutal crackdown of a tyrant.

The stories from the refugee camps in Iraq and Turkey include tales of brutality, shootings and land mines, and from our own press, the news that Syria is using its Russian-supplied arms against a Turkish border that’s providing shelter for over 30,000 refugees, including the shooting of a Turkish F4 Phantom by a Russian Surface-to-Air missile system.

If you want to find out more, read the Human Rights Watch report*, and/or to donate, visit the Red Cross Syria Crisis Appeal.

*Reader caution advised