Lately I have been dipping into some videos about warships from WW1 and 2. They are the kind of resources I would have given anything for in my teens, a period when I built quite a few model ships. I managed to score the odd library book with tiny black and white photos, but nothing like the footage available today, including computer reconstructions and much else besides.

I don't know what happened to my collection which I left boxed up at the family home in the 1980's but never saw again. It included (principally Airfix) models of battleships and battlecruisers HMS Hood, Warspite and Rodney; the Bismarck and Scharnhorst, the USS New Jersey and an assortment of smaller ships including the HMS Suffolk and Campbeltown. There was also a smaller scale version of the Yamato which came out looking like a pocket battleship rather the massive beast that it was. I also modelled tanks, artillery and aircraft, winning second prize in a local competition for an Italian light bomber, whose name I cannot recall.

It was fun at the time and we had some massive battles on the front lawn, using matchsticks shot from small cannon as ordinance. Together with sport of all types, that was how my youth was spent.

The box lid of HMS Warspite, exactly as I recall it.