I’m guessing this was accomplished by the E4 mafia.
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The real problem is I am not that good at painting figures (I’ve tried a whole bunch of the online tutorials, and while theirs are museum quality, mine are like 60%), so making a non-com doings some rapid procurement would be harder than building the whole diorama! I do have a Tamiya 1/35 scale US Army logistics team, although desert storm era not Vietnam, which would look wierd as they didn’t have Kevlar plate carriers back then… although painting the straight green uniforms is easier than digital camo (that always come off as a bad-monet).
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I haven’t been brave enough to do a River yet, concrete, stone, land are much, much simpler. I guess I did have a puddle in the howitzer diorama, but that was orders of magnitude easier as puddles don’t have waves and you can hide mistakes with weeds and mud. Like the bow-wave In the reference shots of that model is not a beginner’s water-effect skil! Although at least I know how to add an Arduino with an audioshield to play “fortunate son” when people approach the model, and of course for manual backup. Although for those of us who Apocalypse Now was a haunting experience in our childhood, it could play the Doors “this is the end”…? But I’ve never seen a 1/35 scale Martin Sheen figure?
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Ah, since I’ve never done any ship modeling (or boat I guess in this case) but watching this guy’s videos I could totally do a river boat scene! If you want your brain to melt watch the USS Missouri surrender diorama video, which I think that build would have turned me into a serial killer (I truly hate assembling photoetch parts and those look insane - for those who haven’t encountered them they are paper thin brass like metal that comes flat and you bend them into shape by hand with tweezers and use CA glue to hold them together without somehow bending them again). And unlike plastic parts if you damage the part there is no easy way to remake it (at this point I can scratch build almost any plastic part either via 3D printing or straight scratch building, but paper thin metal, not so much). The video below is particularly amazing in that the ship is about hand sized, unlike the Missouri model which was like a meter long.
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In virtual or model it is water and smoke that are killer to try and get right. I find that far more amazing than all the tiny bits. Still more amazing would be to do the “mostly” 2d parts on a laser, and the 3d parts on a 3d printer. These days starting with a kit feels almost like cheating. What would be a good starting point would be a set of plans with all the distance details for accuracy as that would be near impossible for the average person to get their hands on.
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This video will dissuade you of that notion…
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The image alone would dissuade me of the notion of even trying to do the model even if only putting already finished people on board. The virtual Constitution on my page is more my style in any case, though I had little more than a few photos to go from.
3d Printing and installing a hip and knees without the bone spurs would beat out even getting all the individual faces and clothing of the people correctly matched to the folks who were there, however.
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That is an amazing project. I can’t imagine trying to put it together especially wearing gloves. It was especially interesting to see how they did the paint to show stains on the sides of the ship and the water movement.
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Who would have thought poop could make such a difference. Very impressive.
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Some E1 is going to get reamed for there being visible poop on the flight deck thanks to you 
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Have you tried Twinmotion for virtual? Killer water effects and decent fog since it’s built on Unreal Engine.
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I know in real life they work super hard to try to get birds to not settle around planes to prevent bird strikes, but I thought it looked more lifelike to have one here. I really wanted a seagull, but when the world gives you pigeons you make pigeons…
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Water is harder than smoke in my mind, since hopefully when the plane is finished it will have the iconic smoke effects down the cowling that every sky raider had (at Airventure 2023 I got to see 2 sky raiders up close so got a really good look at their smoke streaks, and I did do some water effects on the howitzer diorama since it was supposed to be muddy terrain, but real running water takes more effort (great tutorials online nowadays)
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I do CAD modeled parts all the time, and my Formlabs 3 and Glowforge are constantly making parts (next part I need to model and print is a hand pump for a 55gal oil drum) as these planes ate oil at a fearsome rate (during the ferry flights from Subic Bay to Saigon they had to carry and extra oil tank as it would burn off all the engine oil. I thought this solution to the leaking oil on this radial was kind of cool (since unlike the air force, this guy is paying for his own oil… I am assuming he has some sort of plug that goes into the lowest cylinder’s valve port, and he rotates the prop until the cam opens the port and that drains the excess oil into the jug for reuse. This also prevents trying to start with a hydro locked cylinder and blowing the cylinder head off.
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The poop does look more Seagull than Pigeon. 
I live 20 minutes from Oshkosh and Airventure, I hangout around the airport all week and usually go in to the EAA Grounds one of the days. I was there Saturday this year. I love photography and the planes are great subjects.
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I am almost done editing the over 8000 pics I took during the 7 days we were there. Since My son is one of the instructors for the UND aerobatics team, we sat under the wing of “red” during the air show since by tradition UND gets the first spot in front of the IAC pavilion at show center. Sure the super decathlon can’t quite pull the gs that an extra 330sx can, but I don’t have to sit under a low-wing to stay out of that brutal sun (and even with SPF 50 I fried like an egg)
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