With a thundering boom the guns of the Italian Naval cruiser barked out, flames lept from the barrels of the ships guns as acrid acrid smoke drifted across the water, the Capt ordering a hard a starboard away from his pursuing British counter part as the battle raged in the early morning dawn of the Mediteraininan. At the exact same time as the battle swayed back & forth many hundreds of miles away a WREN quietly moved a small lead model of a ship on a table simulating the worlds oceans, moved it in a square of a huge grid pattern showing all the points on the oceans of the worlds anywhere at any given time with accuracy. Messages were composed and sent out to the pursuing British cruiser, courses were altered, and perhaps up from the south came another British vessel to meet the fray and pound the valiant Italian cruiser into a twisted burning hulk left to sink slowly to the bottom of the Meditreanian Ocean. These are what are commonly known as " combat recognition models " made from lead and made in the 1/1200th scale & used in the war rooms of both side during WW2. Massive tables were set up simulating the oceans of the world with a grid pattern covering every longetude & latitude of the oceans. Messages from the warship in any situation would be sent to the war room giving course speed & position and could be plotted on the war room tables where an informed intelligent descision could be made by senior naval staff and relayed back to the vessel in question and an action could be formed based on that. It was how wars were fought, won & lost during that waring time in our history & with an accuracy that was dead on 95% of the time & way before the use of computers. The models were made of lead, covered every warship in the world of all the navies at the time. Not only were they used in " plotting " but also to teach sailors about the characteristics of enemy vessels and how to spot them when at sea. The ones here are representative of as follows, foreground the German Navy, middle The Italian Navy & in the back ground the US Navy. The color scheme are indicative of the vessel at a specific time in their history........thanks for the peek.