Tag Archives: Navy

LEGO battleship Yamato, largest LEGO ship ever, completed after 6 years

In a feat of LEGO naval engineering rivaled only by Malle Hawking’s USS Harry S Truman and Ed Diment’s HMS Hood, Jumpei Mitsui (JunLEGO) completed his World War II battleship Yamato today.

LEGO battleship Yamato

LEGO battleship Yamato has some very impressive specifications:

  • Length: 6.6 meters (22 feet) from bow to stern
  • Width: 1 meter (3 feet) at the widest point midship
  • Scale: 1/40
  • Time to complete: 6 years, 4 months
  • Parts: 200,000 LEGO elements
  • Weight: 150 kilograms (330 pounds)

Jumpei’s LEGO version is based on the way Yamato appeared immediately prior to the fateful Operation Ten-Go in 1945.

Jumpei Mitsui with LEGO YamatoJumpei built LEGO Yamato to answer the question he posed to himself all the way back in elementary school: “How big would Yamato be from a LEGO minifig’s perspective?” A third-year college student today, Jumpei can now demonstrate exactly what that would look like!

Breaking through the language barrier, Jumpei pioneered the use of Bricklink among Japanese LEGO fans to source the two hundred thousand LEGO elements necessary to build Yamato.

Yamato includes wonderful details like the Imperial chrysanthemum emblem on the bow and a brick-built Japanese navy flag flying from the bridge. The superstructure is especially impressive:

LEGO battleship Yamato superstructure

See more photos of this amazing LEGO creation on Jumpei Mitsui’s website and in his LEGO Battleship Yamato gallery on Brickshelf (when moderated).

Japanese battleship YamatoNot to be confused with the fictional Space battleship Yamato, the real Japanese battleship Yamato was launched in 1941, and remains the largest battleship ever constructed by any navy.

Having fired her guns against Allied forces only once during the Pacific War, Yamato was sunk in 1945, taking nearly 2,500 of her 2,700 crew to their deaths.

Six years in the making, Jumpei Mitsui’s LEGO battleship Yamato is major news in the LEGO fan community. The Brothers Brick will get in touch with Jumpei and try to arrange an interview for our English-speaking readers. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the pictures.

Have we mentioned the overwhelming air superiority of Ralph Savelsberg?

I think it’s come up a couple times.

Ralph Savelsberg continues to amaze the world not just with the quality of his creations but the sheer quantity. The kicker is obvious from the picture above. He keeps many of them built!

His latest aircraft include an AH-1W SuperCobra and F-5E Tiger:

US Navy Sea King and HH-1N helicopters:

But my favorite is his most recent (and smallest) — a Predator UAV:

Ralph Savelsberg is livin’ the American dream

Ralph Savelsberg (Flickr) may live somewhere in southern England, but that doesn’t mean he can’t join us on the highway to a KOA hookup somewhere south of Yosemite — at least in spirit.

Check out his Ford F-150 pickup and Winnebago RV:

Don’t miss the bike rack and lots of other great details in Ralph’s Wheels photoset.

As always, a bonus airplane — a US Navy Lockheed S-3B Viking:

Ralph Savelsberg’s 1946 Mercury Sportsman “Woody”

Ralph Savelsberg (Flickr) makes amazing airplanes, to be sure, but I also love his wheeled vehicles.

His latest car is a 1946 Mercury “Woody.” Perfect for that trip to the beach you’ve been planning for the first day of summer.

Here’s a bonus creation for all of you pining for a new airplane from Ralph — a US Navy QF-4S Phantom II:

Guided Missile Cruiser by Markosbears

Brand-new Brickshelfer markosbears has posted a great Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser with lots of great detail (the images are huge, but worth the wait):

I love how the ship has such smooth curves in spite of being built with little square bricks.

(Thanks to Bruce for posting this in Classic-Castle Forums.)

Malle Hawking’s LEGO USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier is 16 feet long

German builder Malle Hawking (Weebleleezer on Brickshelf) has been working on a minifigure-scale LEGO model of the US Navy aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman (CVN-75). My friends and coworkers have been sending around e-mails with links to a site that has a few pictures of this huge ship, but doesn’t have much information — not even the name of the builder — so I did a bit of digging, found the builder on Brickshelf, and contacted him to find out a bit more about his massive project.

LEGO Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier

See more of this huge LEGO aircraft carrier