Western Warship Combat Club

On our last day in San Francisco, we were walking through Golden Gate Park and we ran into these guys:

They were members of the Western Warship Combat Club. They were testing new and recently repaired model warships. These are remote controlled 1/144 scale models of WWI and WWII warships. These are beautiful, detailed models with hulls made out of balsa wood. But the really interesting thing about these ships is that they have working guns aboard. The guns are powered by CO2 canisters and fire BBs. The guns are powerful enough to punch holes in the hulls.

They stage events where they send the ships out and make them shoot at each other. The goal of the the competition is to sink the other boats.  When one sinks, they repair it and send it back out. They can often get them going again in less than an hour.

Go to their website and check out the videos taken with on-board cameras.