Max's Models after hours 05/22/26

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Okay.

[00:00:02]All of this mess all around here is me digging crap out because I dropped this little nut on the back of this thing. Heard it go ping and I thought it'd gone up under here, up under there, and I wound up digging everything up and out and it dropped right here but I found it over there when I moved one of the T-shirts and it dropped out.

[00:00:36]You don't need a carpet to have a carpet monster.

[00:00:40]I have the linoleum monster.

[00:00:44]You know, that brings up a thought. I I I got this stick-on light-colored floor so it'd be easier to find stuff that I drop, but when the stuff is light-colored, it ain't that easy. But also stuff bounces a long way off this hard floor. So there might be something to be said for having some kind of really thin uh carpet that uh the stuff hits and loses its energy so it doesn't bounce very far, but at the same time obviously doesn't have any shag to hide behind.

[00:01:13]Hmm, thought to self.

[00:01:15]There should be research.

[00:01:17]And furthermore, like an idiot, I left this unsecured. It flopped over the model during the night and broke off the tail wheel.

[00:01:32]>> [music] >> Hey glue trippers, Max Max's Models here. I'm barely going to get this one out before midnight because on top of fixing all the damage you saw, which is fixed, the Corsair is fine. Uh I took my beauty photos. I'll save a few for the viewers' build and uh it's safely up on the shelf now. I got the antenna on. I got I'm That's as far as I'm going to go with it before I break something else.

[00:01:56]And uh I also got a little bit of work done on the Buffalo. This is the British one, so I got the black and the white belly painted. And then I got the the brown on it. Gave that time to try uh to to uh uh dry and then uh uh actually I I I did I did mask off uh a little bit when I when I had to do the did the black and white, but I actually didn't mask this off. I just used the define airbrush, which took me 30 minutes to clean out. get working. I don't know what was wrong. It Air was going through, but the paint wasn't.

[00:02:28]Finally, you know, enough tries I got it to work. But anyway, it started working great. So, I've got the two tones on there and uh it's more or less I I still have some uh paint touch-up to do, but for the most part it's ready to start decaling, but uh even with the air conditioner going it was blisteringly hot in there today.

[00:02:47]And uh let's see uh the the you know, that's one reason I came in to do so much work on the Honest John video, which will be attached to the end of this. It's uploaded on the Pilots and Prop Wash channel, which is really what I made it for, but I'm going to tack it on to the end of this one also uh because I can.

[00:03:06]Uh but uh getting the Corsair fixed and finishing up on the shelf is a sense of relief now.

[00:03:13]I don't know know the last time I broke as many things as I broke on that model.

[00:03:17]I mean, the brittle plastic's one thing.

[00:03:18]The bigger model's usually easier to deal with, but uh I'm I'm going to blame some of it on the resin, and some of it on the the brittle plastic, and then a lot of it on just my oafishness. But uh overall, it was still a day at building models, so I mean, really, how hard can you complain? I got my exercise looking for that missing uh nut. That was probably you know, I don't know. It's really hard to say. The time kind of passes, but 1 or 2 hours, but it was even with the air conditioner going it was so hot in there, and I was really lamenting having to move the shelves. That's why I dragged all those bottom those models off the bottom that you saw it so I could see down there so I didn't have to move them cuz I got stuff stacked all over the place.

[00:04:01]And it makes you realize how delicate everything is. Once Once you start putting stuff on top of stuff and running shelves everywhere, all of a sudden moving a shelf or something is not a minor proposition. I did get the tar bus mostly cleaned up. Actually, I used that opportunity to do some cleaning. So, anyway, enough of that, on with the Honest John video. Guys, take care of yourselves. Talk to you later.

[00:04:21]It's all Oh, live stream tomorrow night.

[00:04:23]Almost tonight.

[00:04:25]Uh 7:00 p.m. usual time. Take care of yourselves. Talk to you later. And as always, model on.

[00:04:34]>> [music] >> As the Cold War developed in the late 1940s, the US Army realized there was a need to offset the massive numerical superiority of the Soviet armored forces in Europe.

[00:04:50]The Army concluded it needed a highly mobile battlefield level delivery system for tactical nuclear and conventional weapons.

[00:04:58]Development of this system started in May of 1950, when the Office Chief of Ordnance or OCO, headed by Major General Elbert Ford, assigned Redstone Arsenal responsibility for a preliminary design study of a special purpose large caliber field artillery rocket.

[00:05:19]The following August, the Army Chief of Staff directed the Chief of Ordnance to proceed with a limited firing program to investigate the performance characteristics of a large caliber free flight rocket capable of delivering an atomic warhead.

[00:05:34]Preliminary design work was begun with a clear understanding that the system was to make the maximum use of available off-the-shelf hardware as a means of reducing costs and saving time.

[00:05:46]The Chief of Ordnance established the project with a Department of the Army priority 1A.

[00:05:52]That October, the initial design studies were completed and work on the fabrication of five feasibility demonstration models of the large-caliber field rocket were made.

[00:06:03]On October 26th, the OCO contracted with Douglas Aircraft Company for preliminary laboratory studies on the new project.

[00:06:11]Before the actual test firing of the first rocket, there was considerable controversy in the Pentagon as to its worth.

[00:06:18]There was serious consideration in the General Staff of cancellation on the grounds that such a large unguided rocket could not possibly have the accuracy to justify further expenditure of funds.

[00:06:31]That December, General Holger Toftoy, who was in charge of the program, was on a trip to the White Sands Proving Grounds when he ran into a Texan making statements that, shall we say, were hard to believe.

[00:06:45]When his veracity was questioned, the Texan exclaimed, "Why, around these parts I'm called Honest John."

[00:06:53]General Toftoy, knowing that soldiers love to give their hardware catchy names, later said, "I felt Honest John would be an appropriate nickname."

[00:07:02]Thus, this new system would be christened the Honest John, a moniker that would stick with it through several variations and nomenclature changes.

[00:07:11]Despite the Pentagon controversy, the very next month, January of 1951, the Under Secretary of the Army approved the formal contract award, which was issued as a supplemental agreement to the contract with Douglas Aircraft.

[00:07:26]The primary objective of the Phase 2 program was to provide definite proof of weapon system's feasibility through design, development, fabrication, and test of the actual components as an assembled unit.

[00:07:40]Flight testing began in June of 1951.

[00:07:44]The first of five feasibility demonstration flight tests were launched at White Sands proving grounds.

[00:07:50]This sampling was to demonstrate that a large but simple unguided rocket could deliver a 1,500 lb payload to a range of 20,000 yd with acceptable accuracy. The last demonstration in that August and successfully established the technical feasibility of the basic Honest John as a highly accurate system. This was a considerable achievement given that the Ordnance Corps Douglas team had less than 9 months to design, develop, build, and assemble the initial test models.

[00:08:22]In addition, the first flight of the series was the most successful. And in January of 1953, the first limited production Honest John rockets, designated artillery rocket XM31, reached US Army units.

[00:08:36]In September of 1953, the Honest John was reclassed as the M31, losing the X as it was no longer experimental. The first operational units were deployed in Europe in the spring of 1954.

[00:08:50]The original Honest John was an unguided 762-mm artillery rocket powered by an M6 solid fuel rocket engine which made 99,000 lb of thrust in a 4-second burn.

[00:09:03]It was spin stabilized in flight by four M7 solid propellant spin motors mounted near the base of the warhead 90° apart firing perpendicular to the rocket's flight path. The spin rockets fired briefly after the rocket left the launch rail but before main motor burnout and imparted a 3 and 1/2 revolution per second roll on the rocket.

[00:09:25]This stabilized it in flight similar to the rifling in the barrel of a gun and helped balance out any misalignment with the fins.

[00:09:32]The spin motors were designed with dual exhaust nozzles, giving it the appearance of having eight small spin rockets. The nozzles were also slightly offset to aid in stability.

[00:09:43]There were initially two warhead options for the Honest John, the W7 tactical fission nuclear bomb and a 1,500 lb conventional warhead.

[00:09:53]The W7 was a variable yield bomb with up to a 20 kiloton capability.

[00:10:00]In 1959, the W31 nuclear warhead was made available with up to a 40 kiloton yield.

[00:10:07]Later, both chemical and cluster bomb anti-personnel warhead options were added.

[00:10:12]The original Honest John rocket had a 15.4 mile range and weighed 5,820 lb.

[00:10:19]The Honest John was the United States first nuclear rocket and of all the 1950s nuclear rocket systems, it was the easiest to operate.

[00:10:28]The rocket could be transported from the depot to the launching unit by truck in three parts, warhead, motor and fins, or it could be assembled and placed on the M329 transport trailer and towed by truck.

[00:10:43]Assembling the rocket and mounting it on the M289 launcher was then accomplished by six men with a crane in about 5 minutes.

[00:10:51]The rocket could also be transported on the launcher truck fully assembled and nearly ready to fire.

[00:10:59]When the launcher truck was parked, the launch rail unfolded, the foot plates lowered and the launcher leveled, it was then ready for aiming and firing.

[00:11:08]Minimum range was 5 and 1/2 km or 3.4 miles with a maximum range of 24.8 km or 15.4 miles.

[00:11:17]Claims vary as to how long it took to set up and get the Honest John ready to fire. These are usually between 5 and 12 minutes, but once in position, the firing process still took about 10 minutes.

[00:11:30]Regardless, the Honest John was a quick rocket to set up and fire, making it an elusive target for counter-battery fire.

[00:11:37]Because of its simplicity, Army units actually preferred the Honest John to the guided missiles such as Corporal and Lacrosse.

[00:11:45]Since I'm mentioning the guided missiles, this may be a good time to make a quick point about this weapon's category that can get a bit confusing.

[00:11:54]Technically, anything thrown or launched through the air at a target with the intent of doing damage is classified as a missile. A rock can be a missile if you throw it at something with the intent to do damage. But in military weapons parlance, a missile means a weapon that is propelled by its own onboard motor and is guided or can make course corrections in flight to its target.

[00:12:18]If it is launched by its own motor, but without guidance or in-flight correction, it's considered a rocket.

[00:12:26]This can cause confusion because in June of 1963, the Army changed the Honest John's designation to MGR-1, meaning medium guided rocket one, despite the Honest John being an unguided rocket.

[00:12:45]It was renamed MGR-1 because at that time, all large Army rockets got the MGR designation. Ironically, [clears throat] this was done to prevent confusion. As we used to say when I was in the Army, there are three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.

[00:13:05]In 1959, there was an attempt to field a lightweight portable towed launcher for airborne units called the XM-33, later just M-33.

[00:13:16]The M-33 launcher was made to be airmobile and towed behind a much smaller 3/4 ton truck as opposed to the 5 ton trucks that field artillery units normally used.

[00:13:27]From what I can discern, the smaller vehicles meant the rocket could not be towed on its launcher as even the lightweight launcher was too heavy for a 3/4 ton truck to tow with a nearly 3 ton rocket on it.

[00:13:42]To address this, a lightweight air-droppable transport trailer and handling unit called the M465 rocket transport cart was made. This lightweight unit had rollers so the rocket could be rotated on the cart to aid with assembly and handling, but a crane was still needed to get it on the launcher.

[00:14:00]The M33 launcher unit failed as it was judged simply not sturdy enough for the job, but the Army felt airborne units still needed some sort of rocket artillery so they then created the much smaller MGR-3 Little John rocket just for the airborne.

[00:14:17]The Honest John underwent a series of improvements in the late 1950s, which included a lighter, higher thrust engine which raised the thrust from 99,000 lb to 150,000 lb of thrust.

[00:14:31]This made the rocket 15 in shorter and 1,500 lb lighter.

[00:14:38]The fins were reduced in size to improve accuracy. Now, that may seem counterintuitive, but it helped reduce the rocket's tendency to weather vane into the wind.

[00:14:48]The spin rockets were reduced by half and flush mounted in recesses in the base of the warhead.

[00:14:55]Thus eliminating the four fin-like protrusions near the base of the warhead.

[00:15:00]These improvements doubled the rocket's range to 30 mi for nuclear warhead delivery, and in 1961, these new rockets started being delivered under the designation M50, later redesignated MGR-1B and later the MGR-1C.

[00:15:18]They stayed in front-line service until 1973 when they were sent to the National Guard, where they served until 1983.

[00:15:26]Others were sacrificed as targets, such as this one being hit by a Hawk missile.

[00:15:31]No less than 13 foreign countries used the Honest John, some of them until the 1990s.

[00:15:37]Over 7,000 were produced, making it one of the most prolific large army rockets ever made. This was an amazing accomplishment for a rapidly designed system that was simple and low-cost at about $31,000 per rocket in 1960, or $325,000 per rocket in 2026 dollars, depending on the warhead. It was an unguided free-flight rocket that could carry multiple types of payloads and was used by 14 countries, including the United States, as rocket field artillery for nearly 30 years. Yet, despite that long service life, it was never fired in combat.

[00:16:16]Many are still on display in museums, and some outside of high schools, and even commercial establishments. It's become a favorite amongst model rocketry enthusiast and kit model makers.

[00:16:29]It was the rocket you could trust.

[00:16:31]After all, it was Honest John.

[00:16:34]>> [music] >> Out by the motor [music] yard, we heard that I am grown. [singing] Big old tube on a trailer [music] been headed for the danger zone.

[00:16:55]It ain't no fancy [music] hound.

[00:16:57]It don't need much coax.

[00:17:00]Haul it, load it, send it out [music] like a bottle rocket, Joe.

[00:17:05]Well, the captain gave a wink, and the crew said, "All right." One pull on the lever, and it vanished in [music] the night.

[00:17:15]Honest John, Honest John.

[00:17:18]Easy [music] as a bottle rocket. On his John, on his John.

[00:17:23]Watch that long tube sock it. Oh yeah.

[00:17:27]On his John, on his John.

[00:17:29]>> [music] >> Launch it and you're gone.

[00:17:35]>> [music] >> Good for a plain old warhead or a packaged mean [music] cold.

[00:17:42]Same old rough and ready ride for the brave and the bold. No silver [music] bells, no polished charm, just greeting a painted shell. If the boss said send it through, it was sure to its job well.

[00:17:57]Well, the captain gave a wink and the crew said all [music] right. One pull on [singing] the lever, then it vanished in the night.

[00:18:07]On his [music] John, on his John.

[00:18:10]Easy as a bottle rocket. [music] On his John, on his John.

[00:18:15]Watch that long tube [music] sock it. Oh yeah.

[00:18:19]On his John, on his John.

[00:18:22]Launch [music] it and you're gone.

[00:18:41]Two [music] lanes OF DUST AND THUNDER, A GRIN AND A PRAYER.

[00:18:47]Built >> [music] >> for the hard old days when nobody played fair.

[00:18:52]On his John, [music] on his John.

[00:18:55]Easy as a bottle rocket. On his John, on his John.

[00:19:00]Watch that long tube [music] sock it. Oh yeah.

[00:19:03]On his John, on his John.

[00:19:07]Launch it and you're gone.

[00:19:13]>> [music] >> Did I leave my keys on that thing?