Puttering in the Study

SBD Upgrade

From when I started collecting kits almost 30 years ago my 1/72 SBD experience has been limited to the old Airfix/MPC kit.  While I have a couple of the Hawk/Testors kits, even I could tell they were too crude to be worth building.  I also bought every decal sheet I saw, so I probably now have enough decals to build well over a dozen aircraft, although at least half the decals are woefully inaccurate - usually the wrong size.

At present I have two of the Airfix/MPC kits built as Dick Best’s B1 at Midway and Leppla/Liska’s “Sail 12” at Coral Sea.  But in addition to being bad kits (and poorly built), both are now the wrong colors.  Best’s SBD-3 has a upper color I stopped using years ago in favor of FS 35189 for M-485, and the underside is FS 36440 which, although recommended by many sources, is not the FS 36357 of M-495.  The Leppla/Liska aircraft has the right color for the upper surfaces, but for some reason I used a different light gray for the underside.  

I had planned on simply repainting and upgrading, but recently I was able to get my hands of three of the Hasegawa kits - one SBD-5 and two SBD-2/3s (which have all the parts for -5s).  As the -2/3s kits come with markings for the Leppla/Lisko aircraft (many of which I’m not using for reasons I’ll explain in that build) that will be the first build.  After studying all the decals in my stash, I think the second will be a similar February/March 1942 Enterprise CAG aircraft with the oversized markings.  The third will be the SBD-5 box-art aircraft - a summer 1943 SBD-5 on the new Lexington with the red-outlined national markings.  

The Hasegawa kits I have been searching for for so long are no longer state of the art, even with aftermarket resin and PE - there’s a new Flyhawk kit out.  But it may be a while before I have that, so I am saving it for the Best replacement aircraft.  And with some aftermarket, it’s a tolerable build, and there are numerous SBDs I want on the shelves, so I’m still happy to have all three.

You can never have too many SBDs.

Nine Weeks of OOB

Back in mid-August I decided to take a little time off a nearly-complete 1/700 carrier model - yet another Essex-class ship - to try something a little different.  I wanted to build one of the 1/72 aviation subjects I had been adding to my stash for years.  I have been avoiding them because my airbrushing was poor, and a plane would show it much more easily than a 1/700 carrier, which has few large exposed surfaces that aren’t broken up by detailing and weathering.

Plus, I was tired from several years of ship (and Apollo launch tower) scratchbuilding where almost every piece had to be hand cut based on study of old photos and plans.  I was ready for some OOB (that’s “out of the box” for non-modelers) building for a while.  Let somebody else drive for a while.

Little did I know that nine weeks later I’d have eight completed 1/72 projects, and a very different skill set for modeling going forward.

Equipment Changes

The first subject was a F6F Hellcat with an aftermarket cockpit and decal set with markings for Alex Vraciu’s aircraft.  The painting was terrible, highlighting that I really could not airbrush a dividing line.  The model was saved by the fact that the matt finish was so bad it actually made the model look weathered better than my weathering attempts did.

Next up was the first of several kits I picked up at King Hobby in Austin in late August - an old Airfix Avenger.  I had built a far worse kit as George Bush’s aircraft a couple of years ago, and wanted to start building better versions.  I decided to avoid the whole airbrushing dividing lines issue by building it as Bert Earnest’s TBF at Midway so I could mask the line, and three good things happened.

First, I switched out my airbrush tip from a 5 to a new 3 and the difference was like night and day.  I could airbrush smooth coats and work in smaller areas.  Second, I started using Vallejo Model Air paints and for the first time got the upper and lower colors right on a 1942 aircraft.  While the upper was still Testors, and underside was Vallejo from their USN set, both looked great.  And finally, I was able to disarticulate the canopy and show the aircraft with the pilot’s canopy pushed back.  The final result wasn’t great, but I was making progress, and getting good use out of the aftermarket decals I had to build a historically significant aircraft. And I learned a lot about my subject, which is why I enjoy this in the first place.

Next up was another of the Austin kits - a reissue of a classic Airfix German 88mm with tractor.  I had always wanted to build an 88 on its road wheels and this model was a great subject.  I got to experiment with paints and weathering for an Afrika Korps vehicle, and saw what an 88 was actually made up of. And ended up with a shelf-friendly kit.

Better kits

Next up was a Trumpeter Flying Tigers P-40.  This was the best aircraft kit I’d worked on in a while, and I really enjoyed the research into the subject.  This is where I tipped completely into using Vallejo Model Air paints after I found a set of China/Burma/Pacific paints at the local Hobby Lobby, including the bespoke paints Curtiss used for the RAF aircraft that were hijacked for the AVG in China.  The canopy worked great slid back, and the paint went down almost perfectly - until I tried freehand painting the second camouflage color.  Not so great.

Worse kits

Next up was the third Austin kit - an old (and cheap) Frog Junkers Ju 88 Luftwaffe bomber.  I’d been wanting to build one of the awkward Luftwaffe twin engine bombers, and this looks like a cheap way to do it.  Boy was I wrong.  The research into the aircraft persuaded me that I needed aftermarket decals, so the final price ended up being the same as if I’d bought the newer kit that was also on the shelf.

The kit itself was the most primitive I’d ever built.  I’d heard of Frog kits, but never built one, at least under that name.  It was really more of a scale model toy than an accurate miniature.  Then, although the airbrush was now giving me great results and more flexibility, and I was now masking camouflage panels instead of brush painting them, the 1942 paint scheme of RLM 65, 70 and 71 was giving me two dark greens that were almost indistinguishable - the same problem I’d had with a 1940 Stuka I built a couple of years ago,  I ended up using washes to darken and lighten the panels to increase the contrast, but I was glad to finish this project and go back to a good kit. But a lot of good experience masking and painting.

Great kits

Next up was one of the “new tool” Airfix kits, here a F4F-4 Wildcat with folded wings.  While not perfect, I finally felt I was hitting on all cylinders.  The paint was good, the detailing was good, and I was able to see the improvement over the same subject - Bill Leonard’s F-13 at Midway - over two years ago.  The paint colors were right, the kit was better, and the modeling skills were as well. The old kit was retired to a lower shelf for eventual refinishing as a Guadalcanal F4F.

More tools and better technique

The last of the Austin kits was a DML Arado Ar 234 C “Blitz”, but coincidentally a later trip to King Hobby generated an Ar 234 B, so I had one of both the twin and four engine versions.  I decided to build the twin engine version using all Vallejo Air paints, here RLM 76, 81, and 82.  And taping off the panels was so annoying on the Ju 88 that I ordered a set of masks.

The final result was not bad.  There were fit issues, more my fault than the kit’s, but I learned from my mistakes on the Wildcat, and studied the instructions in advance to make sure I knew the order things needed to be painted and assembled to make final painting easier, and I could reason out what to do when the painting instructions were incomplete.  (This included translating the paint references).  The airbrush was also starting to spend a lot of time airbrushing parts on the sprue based on a complete list of which parts needed which paint.

Repeating

The Hurricane was another “new tool” Airfix kit, so I knew I’d have a fun time with it, but wasn’t prepared for how quickly it would come together.  I spent one evening painting most of the parts on the sprue, and after determining I could not find the aftermarket decals I needed for a Battle of France version, the model only took one day to assemble and paint, including masks, with a second day needed for decaling.

The painting was simply a joy.  The Vallejo Model Air I would put in a few drops and hit a couple of parts or sections, flush it out, and the whole cycle would be less than a minute.  The thin coats dried way faster than brush painting.  The Testors I used a dropper and even with flushing that and adding a few drops of thinner, painting was crazy fast - and good. Mistakes with overspray could be corrected quickly.

The biggest problem continues to be the gloss/matt finish.  The gloss finish is going on pebbled and doesn’t provide a good finish in many cases for the decals, and the final matt finish isn’t fixing the problem with a flat topcoat.  I think I need to look for an airbrush-ready gloss coat - the Vallejo matt finish seems to be working okay, but the gloss is not.

But if the goal is to build skills for models that are more important and more complex - the Airfix B-25, the Tamiya F4U, and the Hasegawa SBDs and Airfix TBD that needs to take a step up from the old kit it’s starting as - I think I’m there.  

 

Carrier Warfare in the Pacific: An Oral History Collection (SMITHSONIAN HISTORY OF AVIATION AND SPACEFLIGHT SERIES) - E. T. Wooldridge (Editor)

This 1993 volume is a collection of edited oral histories of participants in the carrier war in the Pacific.  It's an extraordinary volume, with insights on everything from strategy and tactics to ship and aircraft design and operation.  

As oral histories will do, it focuses on the experiences of the narrators, and doesn't present a balanced narrative of the events recounted, but that's just fine with me.  I am interested in what they did, and saw, and thought was happening.

Grey Ghost: The Story of the Aircraft Carrier Hornet - Lee Merideth

I read this book before touring the Hornet last month.  Lots of errors a good proofing should have caught, but very useful information about the ship and what it contains.

USS Ticonderoga (CV-14) 1/700 – Finishing a 1994 Build in 2021

https://imodeler.com/2021/07/uss-ticonderoga-cv-14-1-700-finishing-a-1994-build-in-2021/

USS Bon Homme Richard (CV/CVA-31) 1/700 Double Build

Since Typepad requires pictures to be uploaded and situated separately, I've started posting about completed builds in iModeler, and sharing the link to that post.

https://imodeler.com/2021/03/uss-bon-homme-richard-cv-cva-31-1-700-double-build/

Warships After London: The End of the Treaty Era in the Five Major Fleets, 1930–1936 - John Jordan

This was an enlightening book.  It covers naval ship design following the second of the interwar naval arms limitations treaties, and explains why the treaty came out the way it did, and how it affected warship design in the late 1930s.  

Following the end of World War I, a major naval arms limitation treaty (Washington) resulted in the scrapping of large numbers of capital ships then under construction, and provided Britain, Japan, and the United States with the battle cruiser hulls, unusable for their original purpose, which became the first generation of large fleet aircraft carriers.  Some years later, a second round of arms limitation talks (London) resulted in a second set of limitations, which had a major impact on all countries' naval construction in the 1930s as they began to ramp up for a possible war.  

The book was very interesting in that it explained the differing strategies countries had for naval construction – for example France and Italy had very different needs, and had different ideas about the best way to allocate their limited shipbuilding tonnage.  Similarly, Britain, Japan and the United States experimented with different allocations of their tonnage based on which ships they believed would be most useful in the event of war.

It can be dry reading, especially when the book is discussing ships which did not play a role in World War II, but it is still interesting to see that there were different strategies surrounding naval construction during this period, and that all nations had false starts and design dead ends, with differing effects when the war began.

Captain McCrea's War: The World War II Memoir of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Naval Aide and USS Iowa's First Commanding Officer - John L. McCrea, Julia C. Tobey

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which is a publication in book form of various writings and oral histories of Admiral McCrea.

The significance of this officer is that he served as naval aide to President Franklin Roosevelt throughout 1942, and subsequently as the first captain of the new battleship Iowa, in which capacity he carried his former boss to North Africa for conferences with Churchill and Stalin in late 1943.  I'm gathering references for a model of the Iowa during this trip, including the privacy screens on the first superstructure deck and the two elevators that allowed FDR to go up to the bridge levels, so it's interesting to read about the actual journey.

The book provides a great insight into Roosevelt's wartime White House, but with a couple of bonuses.  McCrea was charged with replicating Winston Churchill's map room in the White House, and selected a room on the ground floor next to the president's doctor's office.  I'm partial to this room, and it was one of the ones I asked to see when Jamie and I had a private tour of the mansion some years ago.  At that time its wartime use was commemorated by the map showing the Allied armies closing on Berlin on the day FDR died hanging over the mantel.  That's long gone, I understand, but the history's still there.  

He was also responsible for the creation of the presidential retreat Shangri-La in the nearby Maryland mountains, which would subsequently be renamed Camp David by President Eisenhower.

It is a very interesting story, and his stepdaughter did a good job of creating a narrative from the various sources available.  I highly recommend it to the reader interested in this interesting corner of World War II history.

Next Ship Model Project - USS Randolph (CV-15) - 1/700

My latest project is one that I have had in mind for a long time.

When I was about 10 years old, and just starting to get interested in World War II and aircraft carriers, one of the first books I got was Barrett Gallagher’s 1959 “Flattop”.  I remember it coming from the old stationary store at 115A East Austin – the one that my office is one door down from now – but I can’t recall the specifics of it, other than a vague recollection that it came from one of the dark rooms toward the back of the second floor.  I am guessing it was one of the books Pop had for sale in the store that Daddy found and thought I would be interested in.

The book details Gallagher’s experience photographing American aircraft carriers, beginning with the Essex class Randolph in 1945 and continuing to a photo of the new Enterprise under construction.  It is where I got my initial list of prewar carriers, and its opening photo of the stately Essex steaming behind a destroyer was one that has never left my mind.  In fact I recall getting in trouble during religion class in high school when Deacon Roden caught me sketching it out in the margin of my book!  It eventually became the model for the cover of my own book on Essex class carriers in 1996.

After completing four intensive builds of Essex class carriers ranging from 1945 to 1968 in the past year, all of which involved extensive kitbashing and scratch building, I wanted to undertake a simpler build this time around. 

The Subject

I decided to do the Randolph as it appeared in this photo Gallagher shot from the rear seat of a SB2C Helldiver on its way to strike targets in Japan on 10 August, 1945.  In addition to being a favorite subject, it would also give me the chance to model a couple of things that I had not before.

The Kit

I chose the Dragon 1/700 Randolph kit as my starting point.  The kit depicts CV – 15 as completed in the fall of 1944, in dazzling camouflage, and without the enhanced complement of 40 mm quad Bofors that had become common on carriers in the Pacific. 

The changes needed to the kit would be basically twofold.  First, the kit would have to be updated to reflect the ship’s appearance in August 1945, and second, various inaccuracies and deficiencies in the Dragon kit would need to be addressed.

References

I do not have access to a set of plans for the ship as of late 1945, but I do have a set of profile and plan views of the ship’s exterior as completed in 1944 in Raven’s Essex Class Carriers, as well as several photographs documenting the modifications made to the ship during its refit at Hunters Point on the West Coast in January 1945.

40mm quads

At Hunters Point, Randolph received the by-then standard three 40mm quads under the island and two aft on the starboard side, as well as two slung below the gallery deck on the port side aft.  The photos document the locations clearly, including the new lower location on the port side compared to mounts installed earlier in the war.

As it was only the second Dragon Essex kit, the Randolph kit does not yet have any of these mounts, as it depicts the ship as built.  Later Dragon kits have them on sprues G and M.  Fortunately, I had both in my spares box from the Princeton CV-37 kit that I modified into the Oriskany (CV-34) last fall, so I simply added parts G-5, -5, and -6 and M-7 and -8.

No hangar deck catapult

Dragon includes the external hangar deck catapult sponson that early ships of the class had, but Randolph never had one, but it is relatively easy to sand this off, as I did for both Oriskany and Bon Homme Richard.

Deck Blue Flight Deck Stain

Every Essex class ship I have built to date had the lighter blue flight deck stain.  However, later in the war the ships began to complete and refit with a significantly darker flight deck stain which was intended to approximate the Deck Blue paint used for walkways.  This color was just released by Mission, and I am using that paint.

White Flight Deck Numbers

Although the Randolph appears to have been completed with the standard black flight deck numbers, the lack of contrast with the dark flight deck stain was apparently enough of an issue that at Hunters Point the Randolph became the first fleet carrier to change from black flight deck numbers to white ones.

The kit comes with black flight deck numbers, and as I discovered to my sorrow on my last build, my almost 30-year-old Gold Medal Models flight deck numbers are in poor shape, so I ordered a new set of numbers.

Reconfigured 20mm gun tubs

To accommodate the new 40mm quads on the port side, the existing gun tubs were relocated while the ship was at Hunters Point.  They seem to be the same 6-mount tubs, so moving them around should be pretty simple, and using the same kit parts. 

Whip antenna

Multiple photos show a whip antenna at the extreme end of the port gallery deck catwalk forward.  The kit doesn’t have this, so I will add it with stretched sprue.

Bow gallery deck tubs

Both gallery decks terminate at the extreme bow with small round enclosures.  I have not been able to figure out yet what they are, but they will need to be added to the kit.

Island 20mm gallery / yardarm

This will be my first Dragon island, and one change I know is already necessary is that the aft starboard side 20 mm gallery is much too long.  It holds six mounts, and photos seem to indicate it should only have three.  I will probably just cut out a portion of the existing part.  The kit also doesn’t have a yardarm so that will be added as well.

Measure 21 Navy Blue (5-N) camouflage - weathered

While at Hunters Point, Randolph repainted from her East Coast dazzle camouflage scheme into overall Navy Blue.  A photo showing her in profile at around the time I am modeling her, approximately seven months later, shows extreme and uneven fading.  So I anticipate doing a lot of work weathering the finish.

Flight deck cutouts

The Dragon kit contains small cutouts for gun directors that were intended to be installed on the port side gallery deck.  None of the ships ever had these installed, and Randolph never had the cutouts at all, so I will be filling these in with some small chips of plastic.

Sand down hull

I may be wrong, but I think that Dragon’s Essex class kits are too tall from the water line to the hangar deck, so while it only contributes a tiny amount, I try to sand the lip of plastic that is intended to help the model fit to its underwater section to reduce the height a little.  I then put the boot topping on the upper hull, and that seems to get the waterline to the right point.

Lower 40 mm mounts

One of the things that changed on the Essex class carriers during the war was that the 40 mm quad mounts located adjacent to the port side 5 inch gun galleries were lowered from their original position so that they became level with the 5 inch galleries.  This was likely because the ships were increasingly overweight as the war went on, and even if weight could not be eliminated, if it could be lowered, it would help the ship’s stability.

As Randolph was the second generation of Essex class ships, it was built with these two mounts in the new lowered position.  But since the Randolph kit was a modification of Dragon’s original Essex, it still uses part C-6, which has the original raised position.  But its later versions, including Princeton, have a new part — M-6 that has correct lower position, so I swapped out C-6 for M-6.  (I missed this new part when building Oriskany, and scratchbuilt a 40mm tub in the correct lower position).  Aft, D-34 can simply be lowered by cutting off the tab and puttying over the hole in the hull.

3D printed 20 mm guns

I gave up completely on the Dragon 20 mm weapons on my last build, and simply put short pieces of wire into the openings to simulate the kit gun barrels that wouldn’t fit.  The Blue Ridge 3D printed weapons came highly recommended, so I have ordered a couple of packages of those.

Gallery deck undersides

Finally, although I am not going to cut off the gallery deck catwalks and replace them with thinner ones as I usually do because I have realized that after the railings are attached you can’t tell how thick the underlying structure is anyway, I will be adding strips of .040 plastic to the underside of the flight deck as needed to simulate the correct thickness of the gallery deck.

And to the extent I can ascertain what the bow and stern walkways were, I will be adding those in photo etch as I did with the Bon Homme Richard.

Photoetch railings & radars

Finally, I ordered another Gold Medal Models World War II carrier photoetch set so I would have all the parts to do the necessary railings, radars, and other fittings.

Flotation net baskets

Finally, I have found that adding flotation net baskets to the outside of the gallery deck railings really adds to the appearance of the kit, and will be including a couple of dozen or more of those cut from .040 plastic strip.  They are available in 3D, but I didn’t think the cost was worth it.

While the above may look like a lot of modifications, it is actually pretty minor compared to what I have been doing on similar builds lately, so I don’t anticipate this build taking too terribly long.

At the Edge of Honor (Honor Series) - Robert N. Macomber

I should just quit trying.  I'm never going to enjoy a nautical historical fiction series as much as I do C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series so I should just quit looking.  The latest attempt is the story of Union sloop captain Peter Wake knocking around Key West during the Civil War. it is the first book in a series that sees him in the world of naval intelligence all the way through the Spanish-American war and after.

Forester aficionados have to get over our assumption that every naval officer is an angst-ridden genius, and I promise that is not the reason I didn't love this book.  The guy has his problems, but near – paralyzing self-doubt is not one of them. I actually moderately enjoyed the book, and if some of the favorable outcomes of his various stratagems were a little forced, and the deus ex machina at the end creaked atrociously, I actually had nothing bad to say about the book until the ending – where clearly the author held up a sign telling the characters to wrap things up.  Obediently, they did, but it was terribly clumsy.  

I am still on the fence about whether to get the next book in the series.  What I should actually do is get out the first Patrick O'Brien Aubrey novel and read it again and see if I like it compared to Hornblower.  I didn't when I first read it, but that's on me - there's no way the book should come off unfavorably against anything.  That I thought it did is probably a good indication that I am officially a terrible judge of nautical historical fiction. 

But I can't help it.  Commiserating with Horatio about his feelings for Lady Barbara is one of my favorite pastimes.  You can keep your Jack Aubreys and Peter Wakes.