The 80 foot ELCO PT boats are the most iconic of all WWII motor torpedo boats. PT 109, commanded by Lt (jg) John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president, is the most recognizable boat of the PT 103 class. On the night of Aug 2-3 1943, PT 109 was rammed and sunk by the IJN Amagiri in Blackett Strait of the Solomon Islands. Kennedy’s ordeal following that collision was dramatized in the “PT 109” movie. The 80 ft ELCO PT boats were also used in the filming of “They Were Expendable” with John Wayne. This scale model has been designed for high speed radio control operation using three brushless out runner motors on 4S LIPO batteries. Hull details include triple 10mm (or 8mm) propeller tube bore, brushless motor mounts and rudders. Scale details include a 20mm Oerlikon cannon, twin 50 caliber machine gun turrets, torpedo tubes, depth charge racks, rear mufflers and Cockpit Bridge. Removable chartroom and day cabin assemblies provide access to radio control equipment and batteries.At 1/20th scale, the model dimensions are 1216 x 319 x 376mm. Over 1000 hours was expended in model’s design for 3d printing on Sketchup CAD tools and the CURA slicer. Hull lines and other details came from Original ELCO factory drawings.

The hull and integrated deck are printed in four sections vertically. A 3D printer with a volume of 300x300x330mm is recommended. However, the hull was also divided into 16 sections for printers with a 250 x 250 mm bed.

Plan on using 3 to 4 boxes of PLA filament. Instructions and interactive 3d-pdf files are included to aid in the assembly of this large “plastic” kit.All 186 STL files were manifold checked before printing. CURA v4.5 project files, and compiled gcodes are included.The RC performance is better than scale speed with a 4S LIPO battery. If the model gets damaged as a result of a collision, another can be 3D printed making this model truly “Expendable” .

The model was printed using Ben Levi's open source BLV_MGN Cube #D Printer. Details can be found here:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3382718https://www.blvprojects.com/

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