Model request: HMS Thunder Child from War of the Worlds

**skidz** · #1 04-05-2015, 05:38 PM

Looking for something maybe in 1/144 scale to go with the war machine. Has anyone ever seen one in a paper kit?

**Vermin_King** · #2 04-06-2015, 07:12 AM

Only saw a scratch build and a kitbash of a Revell kit.

I think you will probably have to modify another model that has similar lines

**Diderick A. den Bakker** · #3 04-06-2015, 11:07 AM

Sorry to disappoint you, but a simple Google Images search gives an immediate answer. No HMS Thunder Child ever existed. Go to this link for more information: HMS Thunder Child

**skidz** · #4 04-08-2015, 07:37 PM

Probably the best rendering I have seen of it

**zubie** · #5 04-11-2015, 09:40 PM

I remember seeing a rather cool diorama using a pre-dreadnought battleship design. The book description was for a basically non-existant class of ship, but probably based on a one-off torpedo ram hms polyphemus from 1881. It seems slightly larger; perhaps his imagined second gen version of it with bigger guns.

As far as I know there is no card model of the polyphemus. On the other hand, I found this model which might fit the bill because it's along the lines of the torpedo gunboats like the british Alarm class. It's the "Crucero Uruguay-1910" which I thought was lost since the web site is gone, but I found it again here. While a little bit too modern for c.1900, it does have a rather prominent ram bow which comes to mind when one thinks of a pre-WW1 ship. The ship is finished in grey, so it would need a repaint to make it look more like a Victorian RN ship (and of course get the name on it). Haven't really done ships so I'm not sure what other mods you could do to get it too look more period and British.

Crucero Uruguay

I'd love to give the credit of the author, but it doesn't seem to be on the downloads, and the page link doesn't seem to link back to a homepage. If someone knows who this is, it would be nice to post the info. Also this might be an orphaned page (putting in the root uromodel adress generated a page not found), so the availability of these files may be shortlived.

**zubie** · #6 04-11-2015, 10:03 PM

The Alvim Correa illustration I remember being referred to as a very French-like battlecruiser because of the prominent ram.

**looker** · #7 04-11-2015, 11:46 PM

And all this trouble is because the first edition of "Jane's All The World's Fighting Ships" wasn't published until 1898 whereas Jules Verne published in 1897 and therefore didn't know what was in the Royal Navy at the time.

**Paper Kosmonaut** · #8 07-07-2016, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by looker

And all this trouble is because the first edition of "Jane's All The World's Fighting Ships" wasn't published until 1898 whereas Jules Verne published in 1897 and therefore didn't know what was in the Royal Navy at the time.

...And that Jules Verne never wrote War of the Worlds because H. G. Wells was already doing that.

Now Wells must have known what kind of ships the Royal Navy had but whereas Time Machines didn't exist either, why not completely invent a ship?
And that is what makes it all so great, actually. You can have your own vision on what Thunder Child looked like.

At the moment I am working on a diorama of the scene with Thunder Child and the Martian tripods. I will upload some pics and the build story on the forum soon. You can already see stuff being build for it on my blog.