Bert,

Yes the ships do take real damage. My Bismarck is armed with 8 1/4 inch ball bearing cannons powered by CO2 gas. The ship is fiberglass with windows covered by 1/8 inch balsa. With out a bilge pump the ships will sink very quickly. The pump is sized to the real ships displacement. Recovery systems are normally a float with a line attached to locate the position after the sink. I finally settled on 900 MHz radio modems. On the head end I am using a Sony PS controller interfaced to a 8051 that is hooked up to the radio modem. On the ship end, I have a CAN network. The nodes control the systems on the ship.

Regards,

Bobby