QMan Chinese Aircraft Carrier Liaoning Set 1418

Qman's Chinese Aircraft Carrier Liaoning is an 8-in-1 set with instructions for eight military vehicles and aircraft — tanks, helicopters, missile vehicles, jeeps, anti-aircraft guns and fighters. Age 6+.

China's first aircraft carrier was bought as a floating casino

The Liaoning began life in a Ukrainian shipyard as the Soviet carrier Varyag, and when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 she was about two thirds finished and belonged to a country that could not pay for her.

She sat rusting at Mykolaiv for seven years. In 1998 a company registered in Macau bought the hull at auction for around 20 million dollars, stating that it intended to turn her into a floating hotel and casino. The engines, rudder and most of the internal systems had already been stripped out.

Getting her to China took three years. Turkey refused passage through the Bosphorus for sixteen months, on the reasonable grounds that a 300-metre hull under tow with no engines and no steering is a serious hazard in a narrow strait. The ship eventually passed through in November 2001 under Chinese diplomatic pressure, was towed round Africa because she would not fit through Suez, and reached Dalian in March 2002.

No casino was ever built. She was rebuilt as a warship over the following decade and commissioned in September 2012 as the Liaoning, China's first aircraft carrier — initially as a training ship, which is what you use to learn the extraordinarily difficult business of operating aircraft from a moving deck.

The Macau company's connections to the Chinese navy were never satisfactorily explained.

Eight models from one set

The set carries instructions for eight different builds, each with its own step-by-step guide. It is the format Qman uses across this range, and it means the box holds several afternoons rather than one.

Specifications

Eight alternative builds with individual instructions · Series: Qman Combat Zones · Age: 6+