Puttering in the Study

Memorial Day - U.S.S. Enterprise (CV-6) (1938)

My Memorial Day build commemorating all those that have served our country is an appropriate one - the legendary CV-6, U.S.S. Enterprise.  Winner of 20 Battle Stars, a Presidential Unit Citation and a Navy Unit Commendation, the Enterprise remains the most decorated ship in the history of the U.S. Navy.

But this build is an unusual one. When I buy and build a model, it is almost always because I'm interested in building a representation of a specific ship or plane at a specific point in time, and the model is chosen as the best available kit to start from.  This model is an exception as it represents an "out of the box" build of an extremely old and inferior kit.

Aurora "Famous Fighters" series

The Aurora 1/600 scale USS Enterprise (CV-6) released in 1959 was the first of its "Famous Fighters" series, and for many years was the only injection molded plastic kit of a Yorktown class carrier.  

I first built it in 1975, and eventually burned holes in the hull and flight deck to recreate the damage sustained by the Yorktown at Midway.  I later acquired another one (shown below also painted to represent the Yorktown) and the most recent I picked up at King Hobby in Austin (same place I picked up the used Man in Space kit that has gotten me in so much trouble) almost principally for the nostalgia value - I can't remember ever having the box, and the instruction sheet brought back a lot of memories.  The decals for the prewar yellow flight deck striping were useless, but since they're engraved on the flight deck, I knew I could airbrush them, and the masking would be good practice.

But it certainly wasn't a favorite model growing up.   Although the subject was outstanding, it only had three pathetic little unidentified planes, when what I could do with a ship in my living room "war games" depended on how many planes the ship came with.  And even worse, the round bottom meant that the ship had a perpetual "list" to starboard (demonstrated by the old model), and couldn't hold any planes on its flight deck.  The 1/700 (which I now know is really 1/720) Tamiya waterline kits that came along ten or so year later were far better quality, had more planes, and sat level for wargaming.

Time Period?

After I got the new model last year I spent several months thinking about how to build it, knowing that it was a sentimental build - it didn't justify any serious accurizing since there are better kits out there in my preferred 1/700 scale.  For a long time I planned to paint it in Enterprise's 1942 Midway appearance - overall Sea Blue 5-S.  But, again, the flight deck was already engraved for Enterprise's prewar appearance, and as I studied the kit I realized that the kit was designed for a specific time period long before Midway - Enterprise as built in 1938.   The foremast isn't enclosed and expanded, and the triangular signboard for providing pilots with navigational information is still there.  Both were changed early in 1939 on both Enterprise and her slightly older almost twin sister Yorktown, which would mean some significant scratchbuilding - as well as sanding the flight deck smooth, and completely redoing the AA arrangement - for Midway.  I've done exactly that before for a 1/700 scale Tamiya Enterprise and I knew I didn't want to put that amount of work into an off-scale kit.

Instead, I decided to build the kit straight out of the box, painted to match the appropriate time period - 1938 as commissioned.  That meant Standard Navy Gray with mahogany flight deck and yellow flight deck striping and letters.  In fact I only made three alterations to the kit:

• Bilge keels - both to accurize the kit and to avoid the annoying issues with roll (not that I'm playing with these on the carpet any more, but just on principle - a full hull model should have bilge keels), I added bilge keels from strip styrene, using my larger Revell Yorktown as a guide.
• Ensign gaff & rigging - the model has a paper flag wrapped around the mainmast, and I decided I could do better, so I added an ensign gaff and a piece of stretched sprue, and then attached a U.S. flag from a 1/700 flag decal set.
• Nameplate - a 1/700 USN carrier decal set (the same one that decaled Yorktown 24 years ago) provided a black nameplate.

Now this isn't the first prewar Yorktown class carrier I've begun, although it is the first I've finished.  The pictures below show the Tamiya Enterprise kit that I modified into a December 1940 Yorktown in 1993.  It isn't quite finished, but it shows both what I used to be able to do in 1/700 scale and what's possible.  (Yeah, those are crew working on and around the yellow-winged planes in the hangar).

I enjoyed this build, and the opportunity it gave me to work on basic modeling skills, including masking and airbrushing.  The principal lesson I learned is that you save an enormous amount of time by painting all the parts while they're still on the sprue.  While I airbrushed (and even primed) the hull, island and flight deck, most of the smaller pieces had to be handpainted three times for the light gray to look right.  In many cases that wasn't avoidable since the parts had come off the sprue in the half-century (or more) that the kit bounced around till I got it, but it taught me how much time you save if you do.  

Again, a good subject for Memorial Day when we remember the sacrifices made my the men and women of our armed forces and their families.  As well as for the upcoming 75th anniversary of the Battle of Midway - the only time all three Yorktown class carriers ever operated together. 

 

75th Anniversary - Battle of Midway: U.S. Navy Aircraft with 1992 Autographs

This post is a little early, but to commemorate the forthcoming 75th anniversary of the Battle of Midway net month I modeled one of each of the three types of carrier planes that operated from the U.S. carriers during the battle, choosing one from each of the three carriers.  The aircraft I chose were ones piloted by aviators that I met and got an autograph from at the Admiral Nimitz symposium in 1992 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the battle while they were speaking on aerial combat in 1942.

SBD-3 Dauntless - Lt.  Richard H. Best & ACRM(PA) J.F. Murray (VB-6) - U.S.S. Enterprise (CV-6)

Dick Best was kind enough to autograph my R.G. Smith print of him bombing the Japanese flagship Akagi as "C.O. Bombing Six, U.S.S. Enterprise Midway, 4 June 42."  Wow.

F4F-4 Wildcat - Lt.  (jg) William N. Leonard (VF-3) -U.S.S. Yorktown (CV-5)

Retired RADM Leonard autographed the oft-published photo of his F4F being launched from the Yorktown just as it was about to come under attack the afternoon of 4 June.

TBD-1 Devastator - Ens. George H. Gay, Jr & ARM3c Robert K. Huntington (VT-8) - U.S.S. Hornet (CV-8)

Ensign George "Tex" Gay - a Waco boy - was the only survivor of Torpedo 8's attack on the Japanese carriers the morning of 4 June.  He spoke at the 1992 event and was kind enough to personalize his inscription in his book about his experiences.  Getting the markings for his plane was a little difficult, since the squadron was changing its insignia before the battle, and most modelers put his "T-14" - or the earlier designation "8-T-14" forward of the star on the fuselage.  But the Torpedo 8 film footage shots just before the battle showed at least some of the TBDs with the plane numbers behind and a little above the insignia, so I went with that.

The movie also showed each plane crew with their plane, and the shot with Gay and Huntington showed their torpedo personalized with a grinning snout, so I put that on my model as well.  

There is one discrepancy, however.  Shortly before the battle, the squadron's commander John C. Waldron got the single .30 cal. machine guns operated by the tail gunner switched out for dual mounts. I didn't have a dual-mount, so I went with a single.  When the parts box acquires a dual mount I'll switch it out. 

 

"Butch" O'Hare's F4F-3 "Wildcat"

Got the last touches done on my 1/72 scale F4F-3 Wildcat as flown by Butch O'Hare when on February 20, 1942, became the Navy's first flying ace by single-handedly attacked a formation of nine heavy bombers approaching his aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Lexington (CV-2). Even though he had a limited amount of ammunition, he managed to shoot down or damage several enemy bombers. On April 21, 1942, he became the first naval recipient of the Medal of Honor in World War II.

The Lexington behind him is my May 1942 version and not accurate to February of that year.  At that time it still had its 8" turrets and was wearing a Measure 12 camouflage, consisting of Sea Blue, Ocean Gray, and a tiny bit of Haze Gray, and looked something like the photo below.  It lost its turrets and changed camouflage schemes during a March 1942 refit at Pearl Harbor.

 

75th Anniversary - Battle of the Coral Sea: 1/700 U.S.S. Lexington (CV-2) & 1/72 Leppla/Liska VS-2 SBD

Today is the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, which concluded with the sinking of the U.S.S. Lexington (CV-2) on May 8, 1942.  I finished two models to commemorate the anniversary.

The ship is a 1/700 scale U.S.S. Lexington (CV-2) by Trumpeter.  The only modifications I made to the kit were to one foremast platform, which didn't seem to match photos from the battle. It is wearing a freshly applied Measure 11 Sea Blue applied during a refit at Pearl Harbor two months earlier (or is it Navy Blue?  We don't really know, but after a few weeks at sea the difference is academic due to the rapid fading of the blue pigment in the ships' paint).  Its four twin 8" turrets have been removed and replaced with 1.1 mm quad mounts.  I couldn't identify any deck markings, so the deck is my traditional FS 36118 "gunship gray" and walkways are deck blue.  I finished several TBD Devastators and a couple of SBDs, but didn't attempt a full air group, figures, or photo etching, much less weathering.

The plane is a SBD-3 Dauntless by MPC, which is a reboxing of the Airfix SBD kit. During the Battle of the Coral Sea U.S. Navy Lieutenant John A. Leppla and Radioman 3rd Class J.A. Liska were pilot and gunner of a SBD-3 from Scouting Squadron 2 (VS-2) based onboard the Lexington, and were credited with shooting down five Japanese planes during one air action on May 8 while flying anti-torpedo plane cover for the Lexington.  "Sail 12" had participated in the attack on the light carrier Shoho the day before, and was lost with the Lexington when it sank late in the afternoon of 8 May 1942 after Leppla had landed.

The SBD is out of the box with the exception of aftermarket decals, and is my first to finish using full glosscote/dullcote procedures and decal setting solution, but I didn't attempt any weathering.

A brief note about the Lexington.  A May 1942 Lexington has always been a favorite of mine, and the Trumpeter kit is my fourth in 1/700 scale.  I got my first Fujimi kit in New Orleans in junior high (far back) and beginning in graduate school kitbashed a second in the May 1942 configuration that the Trumpeter kit is in, and built a third in its 1930's appearance of Navy Gray with mahogany flights deck marked with Chrome Yellow. 

Frustrated with the Fujimi, I had begun drawing plans for a scratchbuilt 1/700 version of the ship in 1993-94, but had not gotten further than the hull when Trumpeter came out with May 1942 kits in 1/700 and 1/350 scale.  The kit is far, far superior to the Fujimi - while Fujimi's profile approximates the Lexington, the hull shape is completely wrong, especially aft, and the flight deck and island are shaped wrong as well. I had considered simply replacing the Fujimi hull with a scratchbuilt one, but the more research I did I realized that there really wasn't a single part of the kit that was worth saving and it would be easier to just build from scratch.  Fortunately Trumpeter saved me the trouble.

I already have a prewar Saratoga in the workshop so I can try one with accurate colors (the prewar Lexington is in Light Gray, which I didn't realize at the time was too light for interwar Navy Gray).

Finishing my 1992 Models - in 2017

A couple of weeks ago I realized that it was the 75th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid, and that made we go look at how close I was to finishing my 1/72 scale Doolittle raider B-25.  It turned out all it needed was a final coat of flat finish over the decals, and like that, the first plane model I've complete in I don't know how long was done.  And that's when I realized that the thing that's held me back for 25 years - my inability to airbrush competently - wasn't an obstacle any longer.  By getting a good compressor and using primarily acrylics, I can airbrush base coats as well as the all-important gloss finish (before decaling) and flat finish (after decaling).

That got me to thinking - the part of the Pacific War that I'm most interested in occurred in 1942, so maybe I could use the 75th anniversary as an excuse to finish up the backlog of 1942-era models I have stacked up in the workshop.  (Is that a Twin Peaks movie poster in the background?  Oh my ...)  

But why do I have them in the first place?  I realized yesterday that the answer is a moderately interesting (to me at least) one.

1992

The spring of 1992 saw a lot of activity in my life.  I had been living in a nice little house in Waco attending law school and working in Baylor's General Counsel's office.  I graduated in February, and two or three days later took the bar exam.  But my job as a law clerk working for Judge Hall in Marshall wouldn't start until March, so I became a full time assistant to the general counsel for the interim.

While I was in graduate school in Austin beginning five years earlier, I began rediscovering the hobby of ship modeling as I was able to visit hobby stores in Austin and elsewhere.  Village Hobby (now closed) was a favorite, as was King Hobby.  And even for a starving college student, the kits I'd always wanted growing up were now available for just a few dollars, and there were books I'd never dreamed would be available about ships and aircraft - as well as photoetched parts, resin kits - just an enormous amount of really cool stuff.

So I started collecting a few kits and tools, and by the time I finished at Baylor I had a pretty well outfitted  little workshop, as shown below.

And now I realize that I had almost three months with nothing to do except work 9-5, after ten years of working considerably longer hours as a college/graduate/law student.  So it appears I went a little medieval on the ship modeling/naval history book collecting hobby.  (As for the books I kind of still am - as you can tell the shelf and a half shown in the summer of 1992 is now several times larger, and is crowned by a trompe l'oeil portrait of Admiral Nimitz).

My primary project that spring was one I'd probably started the fall before, and that was an excruciatingly detailed scratchbuilt model of the aircraft carrier Wasp (CV-7) in 1/700 that I was inspired to build after meeting a former crewmember the fall before in Greenwood, LA.  I saw a "Stinger Club" bumper sticker and followed the guy till he pulled over for gas.  

These days you can pick up an injection molded model of this one-off carrier, but in 1992, scratchbuilt was the only way to go, so I rolled out a set of 1/192 plans of the ship, and built it through the spring so I could send an article on it to the former crewmembers' magazine.  As the photos showed, the tiny carrier was detailed to the nines, with a full air group, probably a couple hundred crew members and a fairly full set of rigging, including signal flags.  I added a very slightly kitbashed Hornet (CV-8) as of the Doolittle raid in 1942 later in 1992, and an almost-complete scratchbuilt battleship Texas.  (25 years later it remains unfinished).

"1942 - Issue in Doubt" - Admiral Nimitz Museum Symposium

At some point I became aware of the Admiral Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, which at the time was putting on large symposia every year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Pacific War.  The 1992 event was being held at the Menger Hotel in San Antonio on March 26-28.  As it was only three hours away, I took a couple of days of work and went to SA, and then on to the museum itseld in Fredericksburg.  Hysterically, I took 30 pages of detailed notes about the various panels.   But it was my opportunity to meet veterans of the 1942 battles like Dick Best and George Gay, as well as authors like Paul Stilwell, John Lundstrom and the kingfish - Walter Lord.

During the spring and into the summer and fall after I moved to Marshall I continued to pick up models.  And working just as a law clerk though the summer of 1993, I kept building them, completing a 1/700 scale Lexington (CV-16) and getting most of the way through a Ticonderoga (CV-14) and Yorktown (CV-5).

Reality Intrudes

But all that basically came to a halt once I left the court and started practicing law in the fall of 1993.  Although I had a setup for modeling when I moved into my first house in 1994, I didn't use it much, and even less after Jamie and I married in 1996, and kids began to show up in 1999.  Even after we built our home in 2004 and I had a purpose-built model workshop off the study, I still really didn't build anything until recently.  I got most of the way through a 1/700 Lexington (CV-2) and Essex (CV-9) and similarly most of the way through three or four 1/72 scale carrier planes, but my abysmal airbrushing skills meant that I couldn't really finish an aircraft model, and couldn't really even start a ship - hand painting large sections just doesn't work in 1/700 scale.

2016 - The Air Compressor Epiphany

It was actually a couple of years ago that I realized that a first-class air compressor cost about the same thing as a pair of shoes, so I picked one up, along with a new airbrush (forgetting I'd already tried the "it's the airbrush's fault" route by buying a new one several years earlier).  But between work, family, and house, I didn't even take the thing out of the box for years.  But when I finally did and tried it out, it was an absolute epiphany.  For the first time I was able to airbrush and get a reliable base coat down on the models I had resumed work on - a 1/700 Essex and the 1/72 scale B-25.

But I still got bogged down in trying to find a level of detail to stop at.  I kept telling myself that if I tried to recreate the 1992 Wasp with photoetch detailing, dozens of aircraft and hundreds of tiny crew I'd never finish.  I had spent over 20 years looking up all the aftermarket additions for all my kits, and then never building them because my painting skills weren't up to the job.  I had, in fact, become not a modeler, but a kit "collector". The breakthrough for me was the 1/200 scale AMT Man in Space kit last fall, where - other than an aftermarket decal set - I refused to accurize the kit at all, focusing instead on simply doing a good job painting, including the necessary glosscote/dullcote to do the decals right. Amazingly, it worked, and I realized that I could both paint and decal adequately to build models. 

For example, getting the base coat for a 1942 SBD-3 this week was a piece of cake - pour, spray, flush, and I'm done - and ready to assemble and hand paint the details.  Museum quality, it's not, but this is a hobby, I finally realized.  I just want to research the model, and see a competent rendering of it on the shelf.  I can't see the level of detail I'm skipping anyway!

2017 - The "75th Anniversary" Epiphany

But it wasn't until April 17 that I realized that 2017 was the 75th anniversary of the events of 1942, and that all those carrier and carrier aircraft kits I'd stockpiled over the past 25 years actually had a potential deadline for completion and posting on social media.  I had missed the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, which was a shame, since I now have good 1/700 models of two of the ships on "Battleship Row", but I got the Doolittle Raider completed on time.

And like any good lawyer, once I have a deadline, I can start working.  So Monday, May 8 is the 75th anniversary of the climactic day of the Battle of the Coral Sea, which ended with the sinking of the old Lexington (CV-2), and I'm already planning ahead for the June 4 additions for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Midway.  Being able to say "done" and move on is something I've never been able to do before.  Well, 2017 is the year that that changes. 

 

 

The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 - James D. Hornfischer

I loved Hornfischer's Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, and enjoyed Neptune's Inferno - but I did not love this one.

The title and the book are two different things - the book begins with the U.S. Navy's invasion of the Marianas Islands in June 1944, and deals with that subject in excruciating detail, but then skips over the campaign in the Philippines in - literally - a few paragraphs, and jumps ahead to Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which it then covers lightly, then goes over the issues surrounding the plans to invade Japan and the development of the mission to carry the atomic bomb into combat.  So what's this book actually about?  

It's more of a book about the invasion of the Marianas, with essays on other late Pacific War topics.  If its thesis was that the invasion of the Philippines was a sideshow unnecessary to ending the war in the Pacific, and that the path to victory was wherever Spruance's Fifth Fleet went, I don't disagree, but that's not the same thing as the war in the Pacific in 1944-45.

But the sections on the final months of the war with planning for invasion and use of the atomic bomb, as well as the Japanese military and civilian side of the same issues was well done, but shifted into an almost contemporary discussion of decisionmaking, which I thought was ill-suited to a history.