h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

God bless grandfathers, eh wot!
Yours seems to figure prominently in providing your spiritual guidance, having a very healthy respect for your mind and your role as a man in this crazy world. His selections over the years still resonate in your adult personality.

Mine gave me a copy of Karl Marx' 'Communist Manifesto' when I was ten, telling me very sternly to read it, remember it and never let anyone know I had it. I never read it. And I'd still have it if Viking raiders hadn't set fire to my house a few years back.

The battleship was probably the USS Missouri. It's a favourite.

merry
~jwf~

You might be right!
I saw that ship featured in "Under Siege", the Steven Seagal, Tommy Lee Jones, and Gary Busey movie.
There is a wonder scene where they load up one of the sixteen inch guns and let go!
Tommy Lee's character ends up with blood dripping from his ears.
A veteran friend of mine tells me you could hear those mommas from several hundred miles inland. And you could hear the "volkswagens' flying over head, he said.
Another old friend said he served as a purser on a support ship, an oiler, if I remember correctly. He said the back wash from the Missouri heeling over was remarkable.

I seem to remember the model having two big turrets of three in the front and one in the back...they were on stepped platforms...
I don't remember what happened to any of my models.