![]() “He’s turned out to be a gold mine,” Scarola said, noting that he has helped bring attention to Post 303. Joseph Scarola, past commander of Post 303, said he struck up a conversation with Wells at a fundraiser about eight years ago, and invited him to display his ships at the post. ![]() He continued building them through the next few decades, even constructing some from scratch, and now has about 140 American and Japanese cruisers, destroyers and aircraft carriers, along with a few British and German ships, which he recently added “just for effect.” “When I saw these come out, I said this is not something that you have sitting on a stand,” he said. Two years later, he began building plastic model ships from kits he bought at local hobby stores. Wells, 70, of Hewlett, served in the Navy from 1966 to 1972. ![]() They were busy fighting one of the largest naval battles of World War II - the Battle of Leyte Gulf, near the Philippine islands in 1944. Seven-hundred times smaller than the original ships, the stationary models were flanked by “angel hair” cotton - the wakes - to appear to be on the move. “Somehow, when they should have been sunk in 15 minutes, this group managed to hold off the Japanese for two and a half hours,” said George Wells, gazing at a group of American ships sailing on a shelf on the second floor of Rockville Centre’s American Legion Post 303.
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