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Marco - The appearance of your LCM is outstanding. It looks like GPM did a fine job with their portrayal of the weathering and that you did an exceptionally good job of edge coloring and additional weathering. The effect is very realistic.
As Jim Nunn points out, it is always dangerous for a Dogface (infantry Army guy) to use salty talk, and I have been known to make mistakes. However, as I pointed out previously, I have done a lot of research on amphibious warfare, teach some courses, and wrote a book on the subject. Last time I checked, the Army still operates a few LCM-8s, the descendants of your LCM.
I do not have a lot of actual amphibious experience, but in 1966-67, I spent a fair amount of time in LCMs, traveling on the Bassac and Cochin Rivers (mouths of the Mekong in what was then Vinhbinh Province) with the Vietnamese infantry battalion to which I was assigned as an advisor. I participated in one amphibious "assault" and, by coincidence, Jim Nunn, who was in the U.S. Navy then, happened to be providing security on our flank. As it turned out, because of a shifted sandbar, we spent most of the day circling around off shore in the South China Sea in an LCM almost exactly like the one you are building. By the time we got to shore, there wasn't a VC soldier within miles, so it wasn't much like Omaha Beach.
For all these reasons, and because I really want to build this model, I continue to monitor your progress closely.
Don
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