Puttering in the Study

The Death of Stalin - Armando Iannucci

Parker had told me a couple of stories about this movie (doesn't your 17-year-old provide recommendations on movies about postwar Soviet apparatchicks?), so last weekend we decided to sit down and watch it. OMG it was hilarious. That may sound like an odd thing to say, but all you need to know that the director's best-known work in the United States is Veep. So when he takes on the power struggle of Soviet party leaders after Stalin's unexpected death, it's going to be from an unexpected perspective.

Good story, good script, magnificent actors – what's not to like? It was particularly fun to watch Steve Buscemi (who plays Nikita Khruschev because of course) just get handed the keys to the movie. Typically it seems like he gets a line every so often and then just watches the other actors react and carry the movie. Here, perhaps because we know he's the one to watch, we are always looking to see what he does, and he never disappoints. I mean, Vyacheslav Molotov is played by Michael Palin, and you don't even notice. 

I highly recommend.

Dracula: Writer's Digest Annotated Classics - Bram Stoker (author) Mort Castle (annotator)

Bram Stoker's Dracula has fascinated me since I first read it in 1983. Not for the subject matter, but for the atmosphere of dread and horror that Stoker managed to convey. In the ensuing decades I have picked up a lot of good literary commentary on the book, including fascinating analyses of where Stoker got his information and how he put the book together, all because I am interested in finding out how this dull, conventional, Irish theater manager could have told a story with so many levels and in places with such skill. For this reason, annotated versions of the book have been an obsession of mine going back to the mid-80s.

This version is a little different, however, in that the annotation by creative writing professor Mort Castle doesn't explain the people and places that Stoker was referring to, but instead uses the text to teach writing students how Stoker was telling the story in order to convey what he was doing as a writer.

While I appreciated the intent of the edition, and did learn a lot from it, the book left something to be desired for two reasons. First of all, putting the invitations in a tiny font in red ink made them very difficult to read.  I often spent more time trying to find the tiny red circles in the text indicating what sentence the annotation pertaining to that I did reading the annotation.

More importantly, it doesn't appear that anyone reviewed the annotations to make sure that they were clear. In numerous places, the annotations took the form of exclamations or comments that were potentially intended sarcastically, but the reader couldn't be sure. Therefore the entire intent of the annotation was lost because the meaning wasn't clear. A sentence like "are we being treated to a little more of Stoker's humor?" would work well in a classroom followed up by an explanation of the relevant passage. But in an annotation, it is often unclear whether the question is rhetorical or actual.

But even with those shortcomings, the annotations help point out where Stoker was enhancing the tale with ambiguity, humor, foreshadowing, and especially towards the end, simply staying out of the way of the action. In doing so, it explains to the would-be writers reading it some of the tools they have available, and how to use them.  It doesn't shy away from noting where Stoker made what Castle believes to be in error, and could have made a point better, and this is very useful as well.

Over and over it praised – and rightfully so from a writing perspective – Stoker's decision to present the story in an epistolary format where multiple narrators and sources present bits and pieces of the story. From the first time I read years ago it this tool – which I had never seen before – impressed me enormously, and it was interesting seeing a writing professor explain why it was so effective.

So this is something of a specialty Dracula, but if you're interested in an exposition of the book as an exercise in writing, this is the one to get.

Dinosaurs: A Journey to the Lost Kingdom - Christine Argot & Luc Vives

I picked this book up last spring or the spring before at the Smithsonian in Washington when we were going through with Collin and Parker. It is a beautiful little slipcased book, and had the best illustrations I've ever seen of dinosaurs.

Only as I started working my way through it did I realize that it was about the dinosaur collections of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and was created to coincide with a traveling exhibition of that museum's T. Rex "Trix" and the international release of Jurassic World. But it provided an extensive background on the history of the collections and of the history of paleontology as applied to dinosaurs, including a substantial collection of paintings and engravings from the earliest days of dinosaur illustration.

Overall, a very entertaining book.

Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln - Edward Achorn

This turned out to be a really good book. A number of years ago I read Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Gary Wills and really enjoyed it. At least I think I did – I just took it down from my bookshelf and there's a bookmark at page 148, so maybe I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I did. And as I look at my bookcase, it also appears that I have another book Lincoln's Greatest Speech; the Second Inaugural by Ronald C. White Jr., so I may actually have read about this before. But as the late Ralph Hall once said, there are three nice things about getting older about getting older.  You meet new friends every day, a new woman makes you breakfast every morning, and you meet new friends every day.

My point is that even if I didn't remember that I already had a book about this speech, I knew that I was already interested in books about the genius of Lincoln's two short speeches.

Achorn's book is actually weak weak on the address itself – his focus is on the events of the few days leading up to its delivery as a means of acquainting us with Abraham Lincoln and the people he interacted with in Washington DC in the last days of the Civil War as he was beginning to turn to the challenges of Reconstruction. He gives a magnificent insight into Lincoln the man – how desperately ugly and awkward he was, how sorrowful and serious, how hated by so many of those around him, and how unappreciated. But you also get the sense of how extraordinarily intelligent and almost inhumanly patient he was, and how politically astute. By walking through the actions of his days immediately preceding his second inauguration, the book provides a sometimes riveting account of what was actually happening in and around the Capitol before and during the ceremony itself.

Those parts of the book were my favorite. My least favorite were the side visits into the bit players of Lincoln's world – Salmon P. Chase, Clara Barton, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and even John Wilkes Booth. I understand that they provided some insight into the subject matter, but they just weren't as interesting as Lincoln and what he was thinking and doing.

Again, it was surprising how weak the book was on the address itself - when it finally got to Lincoln standing to present his address, it skipped through parts of it and only discussed portions, and most importantly to me it didn't tie – at least adequately I thought – Lincoln's thoughts and policies into the words of the address. It attempted to, but by going through chapter after chapter of minutia, it unfortunately transformed the address to minutia as well. The centerpiece of the book was not the address, but Lincoln as he was preparing and delivering it. If the book had been focused on Lincoln's second inaugural, I wouldn't have noticed this is much, but since it focused on the address itself, I did.

But for that reason, if you're interested in the speech, you need to read this book, because it says a lot about the man who delivered it.

 

Liriodendron Tulipiferia

One of the good things about working from home is that I get to spend the day looking out my study at my tulip poplar (liriodendron tulipifera). It’s a historic tree - we got it as a sapling through Historic Trees of America from a tree at Franklin Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park, New York in 2001 after touring the home and learning it was FDR’s favorite tree.

It was a favorite of our founding fathers as well, with Washington and Jefferson putting it in places of honor at Mount Vernon and Monticello. Jefferson’s retreat at Poplar Forest outside Lynchburg, Virginia also has them - here’s a picture of some of the old bulls still around - and they are still replanted at the site. (The plastic sheeting is covering archaeological excavations of the original circular drive).
Ours spent three years as a 3’ tall sapling in our back yard on South Washington before we transplanted it to our new home on Harris Lake Road in 2004. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that it was planted so it’s precisely in the middle of the center French door as I sit at my desk. Surely I’m not that compulsive-retentive. But the house - Poplar Hill - was actually named for it, so maybe so.
It is slower growing than the red maple to its right that I planted in 2002, but it’s probably 30 feet now. Last week was the first time I’ve seen it blossom and it certainly looks like its cousin at Springwood’s (blossom close-up). The blossoms are high in the tree, and this is the first year I knew where to look (from upstairs) and when. No, I didn’t site my bathroom so it overlooks it. That is absolutely just a coincidence.

The King at the Edge of the World - Arthur Phillips

I still think Phillips' The Egyptologist was a great book, but I hated this one.  He writes well, and his protagonist's bad luck broke my heart at the beginning of the book, but the ending infuriated me.  I won't spoil it, but I was not amused that he brought me into a story and got me interested and involved in the story of this Ottoman doctor, and then ... did what he did at the end.  It wasn't how the story turned out - it was how the book ended.

This one's going to Half Price Books when they lift the stay at home.  I won't have this on my shelf.

The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War - H. W. Brands

This is the first post-World War II book I have read in almost as long as I can remember. But I needed to do some reading on the Korean War, and had picked up this book several months ago because I knew I would enjoy it whenever I can get around to reading it.

I wasn't disappointed – I intended to just read the first couple of chapters for something I was working on for a class, and got so into it that I was routinely reading 70 pages or more a night, and knocked the whole thing out in less than a week. Brands tells a good story, and with respect to both Truman and MacArthur described their positive and negative traits in a way that I found very helpful. For example, MacArthur is an easy historical figure to hate, but Brands doesn't let you forget that he had extraordinary talents as well, and the people that dealt with him – let's take Gen. Matthew Ridgway for example – could express extreme praise for his talents, but also recognize his shortcomings.

It was also refreshing to watch Truman wrestling with the extraordinary risks the country face during this period as well as MacArthur's repeated actions that Truman could have taken his insults, that didn't.

It would be a mistake to consider this a balanced treatment of Truman - while his stubbornness comes out occasionally, he was at his best dealing with foreign policy, it appears. The picture in terms of domestic policy, including claims of cronyism with respect to some of his appointments, is not quite so rosy. But it was a distinct pleasure to watch the seriousness with which he was taking his job when it came to foreign policy.

There was one specific incident related in the meeting where he told his advisors that he was relieving MacArthur and went over the public statement. One of his younger advisors thought he should have included that his actions were taken based on the unanimous advice he had received from all of his advisors, and when the president asked if anyone had any input, he spoke up and suggested that that insertion be made. Truman acknowledged the suggestion, but said that he wanted it clear that the responsibility was wholly his - he didn't want to appear to be passing off responsibility for what he knew would be a very controversial decision.

One of the best parts of the book, however, was the last section, which dealt with the congressional hearings that followed MacArthur's firing. He was initially the man of the hour, but when the congressional hearings into US policy in Korea got underway, it became increasingly obvious that MacArthur's view of US policy in Asia was not just not supported by Truman – it was not supported by anyone within the leadership of the administration, and Defense Secretary George Marshall and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Omar Bradley explained in detail why. But because much of their testimony was designated as confidential, neither the public nor MacArthur ever understood why Congress dropped MacArthur like a hot potato in the weeks following the hearings.

In the end, the difference between MacArthur in Truman could be summed up as the difference between a theater commander and a president. What MacArthur wanted was for the United States to take the steps that he needed it to help him succeed militarily in Korea. But Truman was playing a much bigger game, and recognized what MacArthur did not – that the actions MacArthur was asking him to take would have run a very significant risk of a major war with Communist China and with the Soviet Union. MacArthur did not think that was likely to happen, but then MacArthur had assured Truman that the communist Chinese would not join the war in Korea very shortly before they did so, so his judgment was not infallible on this point.

Again, a great read.

#IntrepidCorrected - Revell's Classic 1/720 Essex Class Carrier (Corrected)

For many modelers of World War II ships, Revell's 1/720 scale model of the USS Intrepid (CV – 11) was an early favorite. It was cheap (two dollars, compared to four dollars for a Tamiya Akagi), easy to build, and gave you a big rectangular flight deck with a dozen aircraft for  living room carpet war games.  I built my first in 1973-74, and many more since then.

 

The kit was originally released in 1967 as the USS Franklin (CV–13), and was re-released as the USS Essex (CV-9) the next year. In 1972 it was rereleased as Intrepid. (CV-11). It was the only class of wartime aircraft carrier available in plastic modeling in or near the 1/700 scale until the advent of the water line Japanese manufacturers in the 1970s. While the flight deck is basically accurate, the hull shape is significantly undersized, and the island suffers from numerous inaccuracies.  The kit was greatly surpassed in accuracy by the Hasegawa Essex and Hancock kits in1974, and over 20 years later by a far more accurate series of Essex class carriers by Trumpeter and Dragon.

 

As a result of these later kits, the Revell Intrepid is not a logical candidate for building as anything other than a toy, as one of these later kits could be accurized far more easily. In fact, it would be significantly simpler to build an Essex class carrier in this scale from scratch than it would be to accurize or kitbash this kit into one. 

 

Nonetheless, the kit is a sentimental favorite of mine, and I recently began contemplating building a "corrected"version of the kit which would have the major errors in shape and detail corrected in a way that is visible. I chose to do this by making all the corrections in white plastic and putty, and leaving the model unpainted so that the revisions are clear.  Again, the intent was not to detail or accurize the kit – the kit's armament and other details remain the same – but instead only to correct the kit's inaccuracies using the same level and type of construction of the original model. In other words, I focused on making changes that could have been included in the original kit when it was released.

 

Date of Model

 

I chose to model the Intrepid as it appeared at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October, 1944. I did this for two reasons. 

 

First, the kit lacks a  40 mm quad mount on the front of the island, has multiple 40 mm mounts elsewhere, and the box art and kit painting instructions show a dazzle camouflage pattern. This does not match the Intrepid's appearance as built in 1943, but does match its appearance after a March-June 1944 refit following its torpedoing off Truk in February 1944. Intrepid returned to service with the fast carriers of Task Force 38 in August 1944, so Leyte Gulf two months later was a logical time. This also meant that I could use the extensive detailed (and scaled) plans of the Intrepid in its June 1944 configuration in John Roberts' The aircraft carrier Intrepid Anatomy of the Ship book, reduced to 1/720 scale.

 

Hull

 

The biggest change to the kit was obviously going to be deepening the hull significantly. I prepared a profile with the accurate dimensions, which gave me precise calculations for how much additional hull material was going to be needed. I used as my starting point the existing kit's main (hangar) deck, and determined that additional height had to be added in the underwater section of the hull, immediately above the water line, and at the top of the hull just below the flight deck.

 

Underwater Hull

 

I decided to replicate the kit's two-part hull, so that I could separate the underwater portion from the rest of the ship in case I ever wanted to paint it and add it to my  collection of 1/700 waterline Essex- class models. This meant that the first piece of construction was going to be a separate underwater hull.

 

I started by drawing up a set of hull sections to be attached to a central "keel" for the underwater section of the ship. This would then be glued to the existing kit's underwater hull. I quickly realized that this would mean cutting away most of the underwater hull, since the Revell kit is terribly inaccurate in this department. Like its Yorktown class forebears, the Essex class has a streamlined hull fore and aft that is completely unlike the North Carolina class battleships whose underwater hull the Revell kit more closely resembles. In the end, all I ended up keeping of the kit's underwater hull was the bottom, which ended up being the approximate shape and thickness of the ship's double bottom, as well as the sides of the hull amidships. Once the cut-down hull was attached to the keel with hull sections, the rest of the hull was filled in using strip plastic and white Tamiya  putty.

 

I then cut two waterline plates, one to serve as the top of the underwater hull, and the other to serve as the bottom the of the above water hull. After carefully aligning them, I cut holes in both for a series of dowels to align the two parts of the hull when finished. I finished off the underwater hall by scratch building a rudder, propeller shafts (to which the kit propellers were attached) and  bilge keels.

 

Upper Hull

 

The above-water portion of the hull was built the same way as the underwater hull, with hull sections attached to a longitudinal member glued to the upper water line piece. The approximately quarter-inch section of strip plastic that marked most of the missing depth of the hull above the waterline then served as the guide for how much of the kit's above-water hull would need to be cut away, which was a significant portion  below the hangar deck aft, and the entire forecastle forward. Once the kit's hull sides were securely in place, I added a full hangar deck.

 

If the insufficient depth of the hull is the worst flaw in the kit, the  shaping of the forecastle is the second. As a result, the hull was completely reframed forward of the #1 elevator, and topped with a new much broader forecastle deck. Again, the hull was filled out with sheet plastic and putty to the correct shape. The kit's original anchors were cut off the kit's hull pieces and then sanded down as much as possible before being glued on. 

 

Even with the substantial addition below the kit hull, the  hull was still slightly too short from the hangar to the flight deck, so another section of sheet plastic was installed between the hull sides and the flight deck raising it to the required level. Interestingly, the hangar openings in the hull were almost completely accurate – so while I had to raise the height of the openings, I didn't have to move them, as I had to do when kitbashing the Hasegawa Essex and Hancock kits. I couldn't help adding some roller doors in a partially lowered position - which I justified because the way the hull pieces are molded, it would have been easy to include this level of detail.

 

Hull detailing was deliberately limited, since I did not want to turn this into an accurizing project, but I included the level of detail that was consistent with the molding of the kit's era, including some hull piping which had been lost in all the sanding, as well as supports for the deck-edge elevator. The stern was completely missing the necessary structures, so I included them, built simply enough that they could have been included as part of the kit parts.

 

Last, the 5 inch gun platforms forward and aft on the port side in the kit completely lacked the necessary sponsons, so I built those up with sheet plastic and putty.

 

Flight Deck

 

The kit's flight deck has always been a favorite of mine so I decided early on not to modify it, other than rebuilding the deck edge elevator. The elevator on the kit is not correctly shaped, but more importantly is not the right size, so I cut it out and installed a correctly sized elevator at the hangar deck level. After the bow was lengthened by including a correctly shaped forecastle, and the stern was reduced by eliminating the sponson for two 40 mm quad mounts, which the Intrepid didn't have until later in the war, I had to trim off a portion of the flight deck aft, and add a section forward. The kit's flight deck is slightly wide for scale, but not enough that it demanded change, so I left it alone.

 

When I checked the gallery deck antiaircraft gun mounts against plans of the ship for the relevant time period, they were surprisingly close to correct. Because the kit's 20 mm mounts are oversized, the gun tubs, while generally the correct size, only hold about two thirds the number of weapons they should, but I thought that was close enough to leave as is. The only place where I modified the shape of an existing gun tub was the aft starboard side, where I substantially increased it in order to get to the same two thirds ratio that the other tub show.  I particularly like the Frankenstein's monster appearance it gives the model!

 

On the starboard side forward, the Intrepid didn't have the forward 20 mm mount gun tub that some other ships of the class had, so I snipped that gun tub out and replaced it with strip plastic, and added another section a little further back on the starboard side gallery deck. Intrepid did have three small gun tubs near the stern that aren't shown on the kit, so I scratchbuilt those and filled them with matching mounts from another kit. The spares box also provided two more lattice masts aft.  The last change to the gallery deck mounts was replacing 5 inch 38 caliber guns in two tubs on the port side aft with 40 mm quads - why they didn't have them in the first place is a mystery.

 

Island

 

The general shape of the island was, surprisingly, pretty close, but there was some reshaping necessary. Most notably, the kit's island has a rounded shape at the front, which is incorrect, so I squared that off using putty and plastic. 

 

One of the most prominent errors in the kit's island is the inclusion of an open tube at the front of the flag bridge. It isn't intended to be an AA mount, but instead the gun director that sits on a stalk just in front of and below the flag bridge. I cut it off and installed it on the necessary stalk. I then modified the island platforms to match the Roberts plans, which included both trimming existing platforms, which remain in their original gray, and installing new platforms, including a completely new flag and navigation bridge.

 

The "hat brim" stack cap on the Revell Intrepid is one of its most characteristic features - and does bear some resemblance to the famous photo of the Franklin afire, but it is still completely wrong. I replaced part of it with sheet plastic cut and carefully sanded to match the actual stack cap, but topped with the original stack covers from the kit trimmed and thinned. The Mark 37 gun directors were a little tall, so I cut the radars off and shortened their attachments, and spent some time sanding off the mold marks. I also added strips of plastic to the 5 inch 38 caliber twin turrets to improve their appearance.

 

The kit island's worst error is that the tripod mast was molded backwards so that instead of the back legs leaning towards the front, the front leg leans towards the back. I could not fix the kit part, so I scratchbuilt a new tripod mast from rod plastic, and put the kit's mast head platform on top of that. The pole mast on top of the platform is actually the kit mast chopped up. The kit mast is so overscale that I was able to cut it and use the parts for the Intrepid's configuration in the fall of 1944. The yardarms and new mainmast are stretched sprue, but could have been included with t he kit in 1967. The SK and SC radars are sheet plastic, and the SC is mounted on a bracket salvaged from the kit's stack cap. 

 

Influence of the USS Franklin (CV-13)

 

As noted above, this kit was originally released as the Franklin, and numerous details in the kit match the Franklin far better than the Intrepid.  

 

First and foremost, the kit mast is actually fairly accurate for the Franklin. After being damaged in Japanese attacks twice in October 1944, Franklin went through a refit that resulted in several changes that match the Revell kit. First of all, the topmast was still a single pole as shown in the kit, not a stepped one as in the Intrepid.  There are also indications that the kit designers had access to the bomb damage drawings of the Franklin, as they show a longitudinally aligned topmast that may have been the source for the kit's - which way the actual ship's was aligned is not completely clear in photos. The unique dog-eared deck edge elevator in the kit is also a close match for the kit. And unlike the Intrepid, Franklin did have twin 40 mm quad mounts at the stern, thanks to a late 1944 refit.

 

The Franklin may have contributed one other detail to the Revell kit. In that late 1944 refit, the 40 mm quad mounts on her port side gallery deck were all lowered to the same level as the 5 inch .38 caliber mounts, likely for stability reasons. Previously they had been at a slightly higher level, and many other Essex kits show them this way. Only the Revell kit has all of the portside mounts at the same level – even if it inexplicably has two of them with 5 inch guns instead of 40 mm quads.

 

The Franklin may be noteworthy for one other reason – many of the images of the burning Franklin taken after the attack on March 19, 1945 show her listing heavily to starboard, presenting a profile that is very similar to the shallow–draft Revell model.

 

Conclusion

 

All in all, this is the model that I always wanted the Revell Intrepid to be.  The only question is whether it'll stay gray and white to show the modifications, will get that hand painted tan flight deck and dark gray patches on the hull that I remember so fondly from almost half a century ago, or will get an accurate camouflage scheme.  I still haven't made up my mind about that one.

This week's books - military history & a little Apollo music

• This week's only new paper book is Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: The Transformation of Modern Europe by James J. Sheehan. It's part of the reading for my World War II Today class. These four came in in Kindle editions - more should follow next week in time for the class' start Monday week:
• The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New Press People's History) by Vijay Prashad;
• D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration by Michael Dolski, Sam Edwards, John Buckley;
• A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory (American Encounters/Global Interactions) by Emily S. Rosenberg; and
• Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law: A Quest for Justice in a Post-Holocaust World by Michael Bazyler

I've read the first 3/4 of Sheehan in order to get to the assigned reading, which is 172 to the end.

Also picked up Brian Eno's Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks on CD. It's the 2019 remaster which includes a second disk along the same lines.  Really enjoying it as study and model workshop music.

Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan – Ronald Spector

I ran across this on Audible and decided I'd give it a shot.  It's a little older - 1985 - but provided a thorough and not-too-lengthy overview of the war in the Pacific. I ran across a used hardcover of it in Dallas a few weeks ago, but it was a little on the expensive side and wasn't a first edition, so I held off adding it to the paper library for the time being.