The 72 ft Vosper Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs) were designed for the British Royal Navy during WWII and like the US Navy PT Boats, they carried torpedoes, depth charges, machine guns and light 20 to 40 mm cannons for coastal defense and special operations.MTB 73 was one of 27 boats ordered by the British Admiralty in May 1940. A unique characteristic of this Vosper design were the pathways on the foredeck and hull for lauching torpedoes. MTB 73 was the first Vosper boat to use American Packard marine engines, the same engines used by the American PT boats such as John F Kennedy's PT 109.

The US Navy did not use Vosper MTBs during WWII. However, U.S. manufacturers did build 136 of them under license for the Royal Navy as part of the Lend Lease program with Great Britain and the Soviet Union. US Navy PT 73, the boat used in the 1960s TV show and movie “McHale’s Navy” was actually PT-694. PT-694 was a Vosper MTB design produced in the USA for the Soviet Union. Completed too late for the war, it was purchased by Howard Hughes who used it as a tender for his “Spruce Goose” aircraft. It was eventually sold it to Universal Studios and reconfigured as PT 73.

The model’s dimensions are: 1106 x 293 x 446 mm. Scale details includes torpedo tubes, twin Vickers machine gun and four crew figures.

This model boat is design for radio controlled operation using triple brushless motors and the setup is similar to the bensworx 1 20 PT 109 RC Model Boat.

All stls were sliced with Cura v5.8 and test printed. The hull is printed in 6 sections and should fit in a 3d printer with a 250mm x 250mm x 250mm build volume.

bensworxOct 2024