Shipbucket

Hello everyone, I hope you're ready for another weird one.

Presenting to you, the Project A4 Hydrofoil proposed to the Soviet Navy in 1941.



Translated from a Russian-language site:

"In 1941, Rostislav Evgenievich Alekseev defended his graduation project for the A4 high-speed hydrofoil glider, and the state commission awarded Rostislav Evgenievich the title of shipbuilding engineer. However, the outbreak of the war demanded to rethink the purpose of the ship, on the basis of which he began to stubbornly develop a torpedo fighter boat. Being engaged in this project in his spare time, from 1941 to 1943 Alekseev worked as a control foreman for the production of tanks at the Krasnoye Sormovo plant. However, in 1942, the Naval Shipbuilding Department officially allocated him premises and people to work on the creation of hydrofoil combat boats."

Essentially, this was a modification of his dissertation proposal to become a high-speed torpedo boat. The boat retained the very strange hull shape, which was stated to be powered by a 2000 horsepower engine. The estimated displacement of the ship was only 28 tons, length 45 m, width 3.25 m, crew of about 10 people. The engine was claimed to be capable of propelling the boat to 100 knots, an insane speed for that time.



The main armament, consisting of four 533 mm caliber torpedoes, was located in the middle part of the hull. The torpedoes were dropped through elongated side ports, and they were aimed by turning the entire boat itself. At the top of the craft was a circular turret with a universal 75-mm gun and a built-in optical rangefinder. It is assumed that it had 100 rounds alotted to the gun. Additionally, it was planned to install from one to three multi-barreled DShK machine-gun mounts with 50,000 rounds of ammunition, and a bomb releaser for twelve depth charges was equipped at the stern.

Truly a strange design, such a shame that it never came into fruition - would've been cool to see!

Here is my rendition of the boat:

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That is stunning. Soviet weirdness at its extreme and beautiful.

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There is no "I" in TEAM but there is a ME


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Current Worklist:
Redrawing my entire AU after a long absence from Shipbucket

100 rounds for the 75mm, 100 knots, 100kg of cocaine to our dear Shipbuilding Engineer Alekseev.

Nicely drawn and utterly strange.

A crazy concept but very well drawn.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Nice work, but I find the shading bit odd.

Yeah I feel the same, it still seems a bit off. Do you have any recommendations to fix it?

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Sorry for late reply.
Few thoughts...
1) I'm not convinced about the shaded stripe along the upper edge of the hull. The "artistic" drawing available suggest a fairly typical submarine-ish cross-section, so I'd rather see only a stripe of highlight there. I guess You've adapted the idea from the "alternative" way of shading of rounded objects, such as the one I shown in the blue square on the drawing below? Although it's an officialy-approved way of shading, I strongly dislike it, because it goes counter the whole rest of the idea of SB-style shading and makes thing look confusing.
2) Marginal thing when we talk about shading, but the forward/rear views seems "taller" than elevation view...
3) The main thing... the bottom of the hull - how the shading would look better (IMHO) depends on what is the shape of the hull there - which is something we can only make guesses, but I tried to make two rough representations of how I'd shade it. Of course the emphasis is on "rough", so please, don't count the pixels in "how thick is shade in which place" - it's just a general idea.