- Inside of the HMS Barham (Tyler) -

HMS Barham– Tyler (launched 2016)

5.5 units, 26 seconds, British Battleship

HMS Barham was completed in 2016 as my primary battle ship and was battled until the end of 2018 when I switched back to the Nagato. It is the first fiberglass hull I’ve built, some build photos can be found here. The Barham is in my opinion the best Allied battleship due to it’s largish size (can bump and grind with bigger boats and can take more damage reliably), the 75 round haymaker, the gun positions, and the dual rudder/4 shaft combination. It’s 5.5 units, traditionally set up with dual stern guns in the far back turret, haymaker in the next forward turret, a bow sidemount in the bow most turret, and a pump. I have it set up with 2 pumps, 2 stern sidemounts, and a off angle bow firing gun or as I call it the “funny gun.” The idea with this setup is to maximize the damage potential from the most dangerous part of the ship (stern) with sidemounts and increase survivability with the two pumps. Also theoretically you can shoot 175 bb’s as below the water line shots vs only 125 with the other setup. I would consider this an advanced setup which takes on average a bit higher level of battling experience to take full advantage.

Angled profile. The superstructure is all ABS plastic which holds up well to bb damage over time.

Polar Bear mascot.

The stern end. The stern most barrel is bent slightly from a collision but hasn’t yet been repaired. This view really brings into perspective how little of the ship you have to expose to fire the stern sidemounts.

The bow section with the “funny gun.”

The ship comes apart in 3 sections. The middle section slides forward with the latches holding it in place. The back edge of this upper part of deck helps to hold down the stern section. There are inset magnets right by the turret that help hold it down as well.

The internals without batteries and bottle. Under the stern cross brace are the drive motors. The two pumps are inline with the outlets seen exiting the deck either side of the ship.

With the mid section off this is taken looking towards the bow. The red plastic is glued down and holds the bottom part of the bottle when it sets in. the bow gun solenoid is basically jammed in with the wires/hose but could be zip tied. You can see the mass of wires exiting the radio box and heading to the pumps/motors. Also you can see that there is a middle section that allows water to flow freely under the other components to get to the pumps. There are areas to the outsides that are battery trays, this allows the weight of the batteries to sit as low as possible in the ship.

The stern deck section. The turrets flip open to load the guns that have magazines bent back to their originating turrets. This makes them fairly easy to load without taking this section of the deck off. They do at times have difficulty feeding which straight magazines often do not, but the straight magazines some times get in the way of other components and make removing deck sections more difficult. The stern most gun is the 75 round. The guns are held in place with the red plastic custom made mounts.

The stern section has one slide in the far back. The rest is held down with magnets. The gun magazines are right under the deck to allow for room underneath of them. In the middle are the two solenoids, which are attached to the sides of the boat via the tubing. They sit somewhat loosely in there but don’t really shift either.

The rudder setup is fairly standard for a lot of my ships. Two rudders turned by a larger gear that is either directly attached to or push arm controlled by a servo, depending on how much space I have in the boat. I’ve had fairly good luck with the waterproof servos, they are high enough torque and seem to hold their water tight qualities over time fairly well.

More of a top down angle of the stern. The water channeling is microbaloons with white plastic that comes in a two part liquid which hardens after I poured it over the top of foam. The far bow and far stern should be built up higher to disallow water from sloshing around and forcing the ship to settle bow heavy or stern heavy, which can massively effect performance in terms of mobility and damage taking.

The gear boxes are Traxxas Villain, which are manufactured to be replacement parts for a plastic speed boat kit. They work fairly well for our purposes though I do modify them by cutting the blue aluminum plate in half and by cutting out the pre-cut holes deeper to allow for a smaller gear to be used.

The bow section has slides. The gun is mounted similarly to the stern guns with plastic mounting piece on the barrel and the magazine that bends back to load from the same turret. The radio box is the furthest forward functional component in the boat with everything forward of that being water channeling built up to the bottom of the cut out window.

The radio box is a tight fit but that helps it stay stable and not shift as it battles.

Here is the inner section fully loaded with batteries on the outsides in yellow coverings and the CO2 bottle in the middle. This ship uses four 10 amp hour 6 volt NiMH packs for 40 amp hours. Generally 40 amp hours is sufficient for most battleships. A common theme that my ships have is that the heaviest components are compressed as much as possible to the center of the ship from front to back which decreases rotational momentum and allows you to turn quicker, and as wide as possible from side to side which increases the rotational momentum so the ship doesn’t rock as noticeably.

Rudders are 5 inches from the stern, props at 5.5-6. The drag props are at 8 inches.

Props are 1.75 inch four blade. Rudders are just slightly taller than that.

Rudders are 1.5 inches long. There is a triangular section cut out the bottom stern most part. They are not pictured here but there are “fish tail” vertical fins on the tail end on the middle part of each rudder.

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