The ship models were about 2 feet long, and very realistic models of a Navy destroyer. They were controlled by one of the officer candidates, using a radio control panel. This officer candidate (OC) controlling the ship was instructed (via voice commands) by the other OC who was being trained and evaluated. So this story involves my being the OC being trained and evaluated, which means the ship was being controlled by another OC in response to my voice commands.
These voice commands were the exact same as what we would use on a real ship, when we were eventually the conning officer on the bridge. (I served as a conning officer on the USS Pensacola for three years, in my capacity as the Junior Officer of the Deck during underway travel.)
Anyway, one part of this harbor model had a bridge across a river. The bridge was plenty high enough to allow a ship model to go underneath. The exercise was greatly complicated (on purpose) by having a strong "crosswind" (a strong fan) blowing across the ship's direction of travel, so the ship was being blown sideways into the bridge supports as it tried to go under the bridge.
All of the other OCs crashed their ship into the bridge. It is a complicated maneuver to get a ship through a narrow opening like a bridge, when a crosswind is blowing the ship off course.
I was the only OC who successfully got his ship through the bridge. To the best of my recollection, even the OCs who followed me crashed their ship into the bridge.
I'm not even sure how I knew how to do it. I suppose that sometime during our classes, we were instructed in some fancy maneuvers that were relevant to this exercise. In any case, I watched the ship from behind. (The pool had wide walkways around it, so we could move around the harbor model and get a good view of the ship.) I gave rudder settings to the other OC controlling the ship, to "crab" the ship toward the bridge opening. (By "crab", I mean aiming the ship somewhat off course, into the wind, so it traveled somewhat sideways toward the bridge opening in spite of being blown off course. Aircraft pilots also "crab" in a crosswind.) When the ship got close to the bridge opening, I gave the instruction to turn the rudder the other way ("Shift your rudder!"), so the ship started turning toward the downwind part of the bridge opening. But because the ship had enough forward movement, it got through the opening before it hit the bridge. Then I gave the instruction to turn the rudder back to its original setting ("Shift your rudder!"), and the ship continued on its way along the "river".
That was a lot of fun, and gave me confidence later, when I was on duty on the Pensacola, to make some very complicated maneuvers underway. Some of the previous stories in this blog describe some of these maneuvers.