The story may not be recent, but a Lego version of one of the largest ships afloat never gets old. In February 2005, after watching a documentary about aircraft carriers, IT consultant Malle Hawking from Munich, Germany, was inspired to make one of his own - using Lego bricks.
Hawking said that he used to play and build Lego models when he was a boy but stopped in his teens. With about 25 pictures from the Internet for reference, he tried to copy the Harry S. Truman again and again until he got it right.
“It took me months to purchase the parts and besides assembling sessions after work I can’t think of anything I have done in my life before that was as exhausting as sorting through all the pieces,” said Hawking.
About £10,000, over 300,000 Lego bricks and more than a year later, his scale model of the aircraft carrier was finally completed.
Measuring over 5m long, 1.2m high and weighing more than 160kg, the Lego USS Harry S. Truman is the largest Lego ship in the world. It is just like the original even to the smallest of details. It features electric lights on the flight deck, in the hangar and inside the aircraft, as well as movable lifts and radar dishes, and even a motorized catapult.
The (real) USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) is the first ship in the United States Navy to be named after the 33rd President of the United States. She was commissioned on July 25, 1998, where Bill Clinton was the keynote speaker of the ceremony.
The aircraft carrier’s first deployment was in Operation Southern Watch from November 28, 2000 to May 23, 2001. During the Truman team’s involvement in OSW, the air wing flew 869 combat sorties, totaling more than 2,700 flight hours.
In competition year 2004, the USS Harry S. Truman won the Marjorie Sterrett Battleship Fund Award, an honor given to the most battle-ready ship in the US Atlantic Fleet. She also received the Battle “E” award for three consecutive years, from 2003 to 2005.
