Puttering in the Study

Revell angled deck Essex - bow "knuckle" & flight deck installation

One of the characteristics of the SCB-125 Essex class carriers was a prominent crease or "knuckle" at the bow which marks where the class' original open bow was plated in from the forecastle deck to the gallery deck. The knuckle disappears where it meets the hurricane bow, which was all-new construction, and this is approximately where the anchor is located.

On the modern carriers there is no crease - it's a smooth curve up to the flight deck - but on the modernized Essex class ships there is a distinct line.

The 1943 Essex model above shows the "lip" at the forecastle deck.  The lower edge is what would become the "knuckle" in the postwar refits.

Unfortunately, when I measured the kit's version of the knuckle - which is really just a bulge - it was significantly below where it needed to be.  The correct location is the upper pencil line, and the kit location was the lower.

So I sanded the existing knuckle down with the Dremel (ignoring the fact that as I've noted previously, the hull is a little wider than it should be here anyway), and glued strips of angled plastic.  That white strip will tell me where the curve changes, and provide a sharp line that will hopefully match that on the real ship.

I did a little more work on the gallery deck and port sponsons before realizing that it was time for the big step - reattaching the flight deck. I double checked that all the gallery deck sponsons were sanded down properly, and marked the parts that needed plastic cement and the ones that needed super glue (the resin hangar deck needs it where it attaches to plastic).
Next step is the one I've been looking forward to for a long, long time - puttying the bow into the gallery deck - now with an accurate "knuckle" to guide the sanding. The selfie at the top is the current status with two applications of putty (too thick and it won't dry properly) - with the lower (hull) section getting a sanding in between.  The upper (forecastle) part will need a couple more applications before I can start shaping it.

 

 

 

Revell angled deck Essex - gallery deck pt. 2 - gun platforms and sponsons

The Revell angled deck Essex is a little like the AMT Star Trek Enterprise in that I’ve looked at the models hundreds of times more than I have even photos of the real article, so sometimes it’s a surprise that the familiar arrangement of the kit doesn’t match the real ship.

One of the examples of this is the gallery deck platforms for the modernized carriers’ 5” .38 cal. guns.  This became a consideration when I decided that the platforms were far enough off - primarily that they were .04" too low - that I would rebuild them to match the 1966 plans and contemporary photos.

The basic plan was to sand the existing platforms flat and place new correctly elevated and shaped platforms on them, then rebuild the sponsons as needed.  That ended up being a bigger project than I initially anticipated.  (These photos are taken while I'm still sanding and fitting parts together, so the appearance is not final).

Port - forward

The platforms on the port side are original to the ship’s construction during World War II, but there’s a major difference forward.  While the shelf supporting the mounts looked fine at first glance - after all, I’ve been looking at it for 40 years and never noticed anything - when I checked my 1993 photos of the Yorktown I was surprised to realize that the platform doesn’t sit on a shelf at all - it rests on a sponson that’s smoothly faired into the hull. Can’t imagine how I missed that.  

Now the 40mm quad that it once held aft of the 5" mounts was on a shelf, as shown in this February 1, 1943 photo of Essex newly commissioned, and maybe that was the origin of the kit’s configuration, but by 1968 the Essex’ had been removed.  One difference between the kit gun platforms and the real thing was that the former didn’t recess under the flight deck as they should have, so that adds some shadow detail to the model - as shown in this 1968 picture taken during the Apollo 7 recovery operation - precisely the period I am building the ship to.

I built the sponson up using putty, and after cutting out essentially the entire hangar and gallery deck of the kit in this area, I reconstructed it using sheet plastic, and left an opening for the new platform.

Port - aft

The aft platform was correctly shaped, but extended significantly too far out, so I cut the sponson back, sanded the existing platform flat, and added the new platform on top of that.  Kudos to the designers of the original 1957 kit here - after studying a Yorktown photo closely I noticed that the forward edge of the sponson was slanted slightly as a result of the hull being slightly wider here after the SCB-27A conversion.  Sure enough, the kit’s sponson is slightly slanted the same way.

Starboard

The starboard sponson was new to the Essex class ships, but reminiscent of the same platform on the older Yorktown class ships and appears to be the same as the existing port sponson , although the platform somehow extends further from the flight deck, and the recessed area is less.

But in studying the photos it became clear that the sponson extended significantly further back than the model - so I added sheet plastic platform deck and framing and puttied it in. As the existing platform stayed in place it shows how much had to be built up.  I then placed the new platform on top of the old.

More sanding next, and finishing up the hull and getting the platforms glued in place, then I'll prime everything to make sure it's good.  Then it's time to start adding railing to the platforms.

BTW there is also a completely new sponson on the starboard side aft - it's already had railings added and been painted, so it doesn't show up as well as the three new platforms.

When the flight deck is added, there will be yet more extreme puttying and sanding, of almost everything forward of the sponsons, so we're a long way from starting detailing still.  But I thought I'd bring out the 3D printed gun mounts for the overall picture at this stage.

Revell angled deck Essex - gallery deck pt. 1

The whole reason for this resurrection build of the 1957 Revell kit I first built in 1981 was to get the hangar deck walls - which were originally the outer hull of the ship all the way down to the waterline - to line back up with the flight deck. The Revell kit has the hangar wall inset, as shown at right in a picture of this kit as CV-31 before I took it apart to start this build.

As the above photo next to the 1/700 1943 Essex shows, the flight deck is finally aligned (there's now a tab near the stern that holds it in the right position) so that the hangar sides match it exactly.  This alignment will be even better when the flight deck is glued in place, but then obscured when the catwalks are added, but it's rewarding to see it now.

With  the flight deck aligned, the next step is adding the gallery deck around the sides of the flight deck.  I measured the precise height using the FDD plans and cut strips of plastic the appropriate widths, keeping in mind that the flight deck is approximately .06" thick already, generally over a third of the finished height.

The starboard side needed an additional 5" gun gallery aft so after a couple of false starts on the measurements I finally got that built into the hull with a recess in the gallery and flight deck above it. 

Next was the very odd shaped section over the forward hangar deck opening (the white plastic in the photo to the left below).  The photo to the right, taken shortly after the Essex' SCB-27A modernization, showed the shape of the gallery deck, which in most photos is obscured by the catwalk. With this photo as a guide, I was able to locate the right lines on the blueprints and duplicate them in the right scale. Again, it'll be obscured by the catwalk, but it'll be right.

Essex (CV-9) off Japan or Korea - Summer 1952

 

 

Setting the correct elevation for the new 5" gun tub on the starboard side made me realize that the two forward 5" tubs would need to be raised slightly - in fact completely rebuilt - so for a change of pace I moved to the port side and did the corresponding weird forward section, as well as some initial bracing for the angled flight deck sponsons as I start to figure this area out. 

The thing about the gallery deck is that contrary to how almost every Essex carrier model is built, the gallery deck needs to be full height all the way to the hangar deck walls (in most cases it runs all the way across the ship) and not just a flat panel hanging off the side of the flight deck. So once I had the outer face in place I put spacers and a bottom all the way back to the hangar deck - which is why the above photo is from below.  This ended up being a lot easier than I had feared, so when I got a few minutes later in the day I went back and added the same thing for most of the aft starboard side as well.

 

Essex (CVS-9) in Hamburg - 1968

As this (right-side up) photo from the Essex' 1968 visit to Hamburg shows, this area will be covered with a lot of detail once the catwalks and life rafts are in place.

 

Revell angled deck Essex - fantail research

Sunday's project was rebuilding the fantail. I used the kit platforms, and recut them to fit the Essex plans, as well as enclosing the top (gallery) deck. (See photos where it’s still white and gray to see what’s original and what’s added). While I had the flight deck on and aligned I added the structural members supporting the flight deck. Still needs detailing, including railings, but it’s ready for the flight deck back there now.

For comparison, an OOB Wasp from the storage boxes, circa 1977.

I thought I'd pass along a few thoughts on the fantail of the Revell angled deck Essex model that I thought I’d pass along.

I’m working on a resurrection build of an old Revell angled deck Essex into an October 1968 CVS-9, and spent yesterday building the fantail based on plans from FDD and photos, mostly of the Yorktown (CVS-10). A photo of my Essex next to an OOB Wasp shows the original kit configuration. I wanted to share what I learned.
REVELL KIT
First of all, the kit. Revell’s box scale Essex has a single piece for the fantail deck and bulkhead to the hangar bay, as shown in the attached photo, plus two open decks which represent the upper hangar and gallery deck levels. The two decks have built-in railings but no structure on the decks themselves. The upper deck overhangs the lower - more on that in a moment - but the height is correct, meaning that between them they are three decks of equivalent height.
I decided to use as much as I could of these two decks in the rebuild, so I cut off the support posts, sanded them relatively smooth, and replaced the posts with scratch built as needed.
UPPER HANGAR DECK
Surprisingly, with some rounding at the edges the first deck was almost exactly the right size per the plans. But what Revell didn’t have was the shops that were constructed on that deck. They didn’t come all the way out to the edge of the deck, which is about to become important. So I built those per the Essex plans, as shown in the photo.
GALLERY DECK
The Revell kit differs from the original (including the Bennington (CVS-20) on which it was based) in two major ways here. First, the Revell deck overhangs the level below it, rather than coming out the same amount, as the photo of the plans clearly shows. And second, the Revell deck is open to the stern, when the original is enclosed completely by the massive transverse truss that supports the flight deck.
In photos and in person this truss is dominating (I once had a dinner on the fantail of the Lexington in Corpus Christi, and it is not a relaxing location sitting in the shadow of that monster of a truss). and sure looks like it is taller than the deck below and overhangs it - but it doesn’t. As this cross-section shows, it is the same height as the decks below it and extends no farther after than the deck below it. But it appears to because it does overhang the shops built on the deck under it.
And I think this is why the Revell engineers mistakenly thought that it did. Assuming the Bennington had enclosed shops extending only partway to the stern rail, the gallery deck would have overhung them. Now why they didn’t model this piece with a vertical wall, I don’t know.
In the attached builds of this kit, modelers have gone different ways with modeling the stern.
OTHER MODELS
In preparing my build, I’ve looked for other accurized versions of the Revell kit on the Internet and found a couple that have been a big help. For his Yorktown (CV-10) John Higgins chose to keep the Revell configuration of the decks (adding an accurate fantail - note that Essex has a solid rail but Yorktown has 3-bar) but sanded off the kit railings and added photoetch railing. Louis Carabott a lso added an accurate rounded stern to his Hornet (CVS-12) but corrected the kit decks by enclosing the gallery deck at the correct length and adding vertical details.

George Bush's TBF Avenger "Barbara III" - 1/72 Academy

Another recent finish was the a 1/72 TBF Avenger finished as George Bush's final TBF, the Barbara III. 

My tail markings are not wrong - the aircraft shown below behind Bush and his crew was the Barbara II, which had a dark panel behind the aircraft number on the tail.

The kit is the 1/72 Academy, which seems to be a modified version of the even older Frog kit.  It is (mostly) of the British version, the Tarpon, and the further I got into it the more I realized this wasn't going to make a very good model.  Nor were the decals very good - the national insignia were a royal blue.  And don't get me started on how the flat finish coat went on like snow.

In the end, I decided to just finish this one as best I could as practice for airbrushing a three-color paint scheme, and look for a better kit to use the Barbara II decals - and better national insignia - on later.

Guadalcanal: Decision at Sea - the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, November 13-15, 1942 - Eric Hammel

This is the third of Hammerl's three books of the Guadalcanal campaign.  I had read The Carrier Battles, but not Starvation Island, and thought this might explain the surface actions a little better.  Did it ever.

The book began by patiently explaining that in the first year of the Pacific War, U.S. ships had both a poorly prepared cadre of combat leaders based on prewar caution, and widely varying fits with respect to fire control, radar, and training on both.  Some ships relied on manual firing of their guns, some had various systems to more accurately direct their fire, and some had the brand-new "radar" units, some of which could aid in firing accurately, especially at night, and some of which could aid in locating enemy vessels in the first place.  Importantly, some commanders did not yet understand that it could do that.

This explains the two nights of battles covered in the book.  In the first, a poorly organized and led line of U.S. ships was heavily damaged by a Japanese formation, despite having the tools on various ships to do much better.  The second battle a couple of nights later saw a more evenly matched engagement, where the U.S. flagship, the battleship Washington made effective use of its radar-controlled fire to destroy the Japanese battleship Kirishima.

The emphasis on the various radars had a distinct effect on my next modeling project, in which I updated an old Matchbox destroyer USS Fletcher (DD-445) which was tail-end Charlie the first of the two nights.  But it had both fire control radar, SC air search radar and - crucially - the new SG surface-search radar.  So unlike the two flagship cruisers where the admirals sat, it could - and did - accurately locate the enemy.  So I scratchbuilt a new mast to carry carefully fabricated photoetched versions of all three.

How Carriers Fought: Carrier Operations in WWII - Lars Celander

Now this was an unusual book.  It dealt with the nuts and bolts of how aircraft carriers operate - from what happens in the cockpit to how aircraft and the ships that carry them actually work, to the battles they fought in.  The book concludes with an analysis of various carrier design and combat tactics which I found very interesting. 

Carriers tend to be approached either as historical objects or as tools used in significant historical actions.  Some books deal with them from a design perspectives, but few deal with carrier tactics, much less analyze why the tactics were what they were, and whether they, the the ships' design, should have been otherwise.  

Celander's book also discusses postwar developments to a certain extent, explaining how carriers developed postwar and why, and - I especially liked this part - why they would not have developed as they did had the wartime need for "deck-load" strikes persisted.  It never occurred to me that angled decks only made sense if a carrier is constantly rotating aircraft, and would have been highly problematic had carriers still been launching massive strikes as was usually the case in naval combat. Celnader's book doesn't get into this, but had that need remained we might have seen carrier design divide into "rotating" air operations carriers, as we have now, with a few "battle" carriers which are designed to launch and land large numbers of aircraft in a short period of time, while protected by "rotating" carriers.  WW II task forces did that by sometimes having certain carriers assigned to provide CAP (combat air patrol) while others launched strikes, but that isn't how modern air operations work.

All in all, a very interesting book.

1/700 U.S.S. Fletcher (Matchbox) - weekend rebuild

I've had this old Matchbox 1/700 Fletcher destroyer model for at least 25 years.  I had built it partway down to the detail parts and left it, as shown in the picture to the right (no U.S. flag).  Last weekend I decided that I wanted to take on a small project, and rebuilding it with aftermarket parts and the correct camouflage colors seemed like a good idea.  It ended up taking three days, not the anticipated two, but I finished it this morning, as shown on the left (finished model has a US flag).

The inspiration for the rebuild was Eric Hammel's Guadalcanal: Decision at Sea, which I finished over the weekend.  The Fletcher was the last ship in the line at the naval battle off Guadalcanal on the night of November 13, 1942, and the book really got me interested in the different fire control systems on the ship.  Unlike almost all the rest of the U.S. Navy ships that were there that night, Fletcher as a new ship (and first of her class) had a full suite of radars, including SC, the brand-new SG, and radar fire control.

First step was to take the ship apart as far as it would go, including discarding the kit turrets and torpedo mounts.  I then shot the whole model, including the Skywave USN equipment parts I knew I'd need, with Ocean Gray (5-O), which is the middle color in the Measure 12 Mod. camouflage scheme, then handpainted the Deck Blue color for the decks.

I reassembled the kit using new 5" .38 cal. Mk 30 gun houses with separate barrels with blast bags, as well as new rafts, lifeboats, searchlights, torpedo mounts and Mk 37 gun director from the Skywave parts kit.

I hadn't planned on scratchbuilding the foremast, but as the kit part was the wrong height and I needed to add photoetch radars I went ahead and scratchbuilt it, complete with SC and SG radars in the correct positions.  The Skywave Mk. 37 director got a photoetched fire control radar as well. I added a gaff for the national ensign on the aft stack, and pole masts at the bow and stern.  As the ship is modeled underway, the U.S. flag is on the stack gaff, and nothing is flying at the bow or stern.

Keeping in mind that this is a poor quality 1978 Matchbox kit, I used 20mm mounts from the Hasegawa Essex kit with strip plastic shields, and scratchbuilt K-gun depth charge projectors, three to a side on the main deck aft of midships.  They're not particularly accurate, but I make exceptions for things that are smaller than an eighth of an inch.  The only photoetch rail is on top of the superstructure, where I thought it added a nice detail.

The camouflage pattern uses Navy Blue (5-N) for the lower hull color.  It might have been Sea Blue (5-S) but the Fletcher commissioned right around the time that color was replaced with Navy Blue, and in any event I tried Sea Blue and it was way lighter than almost any of the many photos of destroyers in late 1942, so I darkened it to Navy Blue - which is still markedly lighter and bluer than the color I had been using at the time, as shown in the "before" photo above.  The lighter color used in the superstructure is Haze Gray (5-H).  I added some weathering and chipping at the waterline based on a mid-1942 color photo of the similarly camouflaged destroyer Buchanan.

I have had a state of the art kit of the Monssen - the prewar destroyer that was next in line ahead of the Fletcher on the night of November 13, for a couple of years now, and now that I know more about that ship's history it might be the next build. 

Pacific Thunder: The US Navy's Central Pacific Campaign, August 1943–October 1944 - Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

This book focuses on the U.S. Navy's Central Pacific drive from August 1943 to October 1944.  It really begins ten months earlier with the last of the 1942 carrier battles, Santa Cruz, which left the U.S. with only one damaged carrier, Enterprise, in the South Pacific to face the entire Japanese navy.  It contrasts that with the picture only 24 months later, when after the Battle of Leyte Gulf the U.S. had nine light and nine heavy CVs, with another three working up and twelve more in the pipeline, and the Japanese navy was virtually destroyed as a fighting unit.

Unfortunately, my practice of reading every book on this subject that I can on the Kindle and several at the same time means I don't recall much about each particular book.  So while I don't have anything negative to say about the book, it just didn't make much of an impression.  

First Man - the annotated screenplay - Josh Singer

I picked this up to see what decisions they made making the movie - how much was strictly accurate, how much was moved around or modified, and what was admittedly created for the movie. And I absolutely loved it.

As you’d expect, the book reveals the movie that was written, the movie that was filmed, and almost all of the movie as it was edited - the book wrapped four weeks before the film did so some final cuts aren’t reflected.