You could print up some 1/35 newspapers with large headlines about the crisis and scatter them on the beach. In the pictures the road was next to the missiles on the beach. You could put a 1/32 scale car of that vintage driving by.
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You could also add a sign like the one in the picture below :
It should be quite similar, if not exactly the same, to this one :
H.P.
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Here is another, in color, to see what colors the Smathers Beach sign might have been.
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Thanks. While the sign doesn’t necessarily say 1962, when you think about it, if a missile battery were placed nearby, it would definitely suggest abnormal times!
I think if you put all the elements together (sign, beach, newspapers, '60s car, and the HAWK) it would definitely get the point across.
One of these cars would be perfect.
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BTW I did wonder how the HAWK missile battery was transported. What could pull it?
I was able to find this on eBay.
https://www.mafva.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/hf087.jpg?v=79cba1185463
HTH.
Usually a 2 1/2 ton truck, M35 type.
You can just see the rear of the truck.
The above tracked system by Hobby Fan was used to carry missile reloads to the trailer and load them, not to move the trailer around.
Nice find! That’s actually what I was thinking. I guess the loading tractor was just a part of the missile battery.
I guess M39 series 5 ton trucks like the M54 were used as well. Here you can see one towing a M390C transport trailer on Hill 327, Da Nang, South Vietnam, 20 March 1965 :
There’s also one visible in one of the Smathers Beach views posted above.
H.P.
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The reason I brought this up is that a missile battery on a beach near the ocean looks interesting but doesn’t actually “say” anything. A missile battery being taken through town, however, would be a more interesting story.
One calm Friday morning, a suspicious looking couple drives by to scrutinize the newly missile-lined beach. Boris and Natasha contact Fearless Leader to inform him of situation… “When these HAWKs are rock-in’ don’t come a knockin!’”
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Ironically Jay Ward tried to visit President Kennedy at the White House and was driven off at gunpoint. He did not know until later that it was the first day that the Cuban Missile Crisis began.
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