Following the order from the US Army Air Forces in September, 1939, North American Aviation built 9,889 B-25 medium bombers at two plants in Inglewood, California and Fairfax, Kansas. The plane was first used in combat in April, 1942, in the Doolittle Raid to bomb Tokyo and two other cities in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid. The B-25 saw combat in the Pacific, Middle East and Europe during WWII.
Tom's Blender Models
I've been learning to use Blender to build 3D computer graphics models since August 2013 and I decided to create this blog as a progress report and a portfolio.
Monday, 21 April 2025
B-25B Mitchell
Monday, 3 March 2025
Locomotion No. 1
In 1825, the steam engine Locomotion
became the first engine to haul passenger carriages on a public railway. The engine
was built by the Robert Stephenson Company under a contact with the Stockton
& Darlington Railway to be run on the S&DR’s 25-mile track in
North-East England. It weighed 7.5 tons (about 6.6 metric tons) and
could manage a top speed, downhill, of 15 mph (24 kph.) Unfortunately, in 1828
the boiler exploded killing the driver.
#Locomotion_No_1 #S&DR #steam_engine #railway #history #Blender 4.1 #Cycles
Sunday, 26 January 2025
B-24D Liberator Bomber
In 1939, under a contract from the U, S, Army Air Forces, Consolidated Aircraft Corp. of San Diago designed a new heavy, long-range bomber, the B24. Its first flight was made in December of that year. Over the next six years, over 18,000 B-24s were built by Consolidated and under licence by Ford, making it the most produced military airplane in history. In addition to the USAAF the plane was in service with the U. S. Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Australian R.A.F..
With a wingspan of 33.5m (110ft) the B-24 had a range of
4,600km (2,800 miles), making it ideal for antisubmarine bombing in the mid-Atlantic. It had a bomb capacity of 3,630 kg (8,000
lbs) and was armed with 11 .50 calibre machine guns. The plane was manned by a
crew of 10: Pilot, co-pilot, navigator/bombardier, radio/radar operator, flight
engineer/top turret gunner, ball turret gunner, two side gunners and tail
turret gunner.
I chose to model the B-24D Strawberry Bitch, Serial Number 42-72843 mainly because the name was intriguing, but I was not able to find anything about the origin of the name. The plane flew over 50 combat missions between September 1943 and June 1944 with the 512th Bomb Squadron of the 376th Heavy bomber Group based at Cairo, Egypt.
#B-24 #bomber #WWII #USAAF #Strawberry_Bitch #Blender-4.1 #Cycles
Monday, 23 December 2024
Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star
In the spring of 1943, the U. S. Army Air Force (USAAF) realized that both the Germans and the British were seriously ahead developing jet-powered fighter aircraft. The USAAF gave the contract to quickly develop an American jet fighter to Lockheed’s Skunk Works (a super-secret, internal development group) in Pasadena. 150 days later the P-80 shooting Star, powered by a donated British Halford H1 engine was ready for testing. The final version of the plane was adapted to accommodate a wider Allison J33 American built engine.
The P-80 had a maximum speed of pf 933 kph (580mph), a cruising speed of 703 kph (437 mph) and a range of 1,754 km (1090 miles.) The plane was 105 m (34 ft 6 in) long with a wingspan of 11.85 m (38 ft 10 in). A couple of the prototypes saw some recognisance missions in the late months of the war in Italy. In all, 1,715 P-80s were built. In addition to the USAF and the US Navy the plane was used by several countries in South America.
This model and its livery are based on the F-80C version of the Shooting Star as it was in Korea in 1950 while assigned to the USAF 8th Fighter-Bomber group, now displayed at the Museum of the USAF in Dayton, Ohio, USA.
#WWII #jet #fighter #plane
#Lockheed #P-80 #Shooting_Star #Blender #Cycles
Saturday, 16 November 2024
Messerschmitt Me 262A Schwalbe (Swallow)
The Luftwaffe ME 262A 1a was the first jet fighter to be used in combat in WWII. It attacked a British photo-recognisance plane over Munich in July 1944. (Both the Americans and British were also developing jet fighters, but they were only used in combat during the last months of the war.) While the plane was effective against allied bomber squadrons in the air, hundreds of them were destroyed on the ground by US Army Air Corps bombers. Of the more than 1,400 ME 262s produced, only about 300 saw combat.
The ME 262 was powered by two Junkers Jumo 004s turbojet engines with a cursing speed: 740 kph (460 mph) and an effective range of 1,046 km (650 miles.) It was armed with four 30mm MK-108 cannons and some versions carried two 500 lbs. bombs under the wings. The planes were 10.6 m (34’ 9”) long with a wingspan of 12.5 m (41’) and weighed 7,076 kg (15,600 lbs.)
#jet #fighter #plane
#ME262 #Blender #Cycles
Saturday, 14 September 2024
BRM P15
The BRM P15 was developed for the 1950-51 Formula 1
racing seasons. The car was powered by a unique 1.5 L, V-16, turbocharged engine.
Unfortunately, the car was very unreliable; of the three races entered during
the two years, it didn’t have any wins.
Wednesday, 14 August 2024
Pinecone
The pinecone modelling project certainly presented a challenge to my inner geometry nerd. After five weeks of researching the geometry of pinecones, I finally gave up on a purely mathematical approach and ended up using Blender’s geometry nodes in a trial-and-error methodology for my pinecone model that comes pretty close to the layout of the scales on the real egg-shaped cone.
There are only two objects in the model: the stem and the scale. The stem is a stand-alone element in the center of the cone. The instances of the scales are distributed around the stem so that they follow Fibonacci curves, vary in size from large at the bottom of the cone to small at the top and the rotation of each scale on each of the three axes. The five variables are the number of scales, the size of the scales and the rotation of the scales in XYZ space.
Note: if anyone’s interested, the Geometry Node Setup is attached.
#pinecone #geometry #Blender #Geometry_Nodes #Cycles