Puttering in the Study

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.

Essex Class Aircraft Carriers, 1943–1991: Rare Photographs from Naval Archives (Images of War) - Leo Marriott

When your workbench is a double-build of the same Essex-class carrier as it appeared in 1945 and 1968, and the project before that was an Essex class carrier in 1968 (and 1943), and so was the one before that (1950), and you're updating another and being tempted to start on yet another - it's a pretty foregone conclusion that you're going to buy any book that comes out about the Essex class.

Which is pretty much the only reason you should buy this one.  While many, if not most, of the photos are not ones that I have seen published previously, many are, and in fact there are numerous photos that I included in my book on the class 25 years ago.  But the bigger problem is that the type of paper used – not glossy – means that the reproduction of these black-and-white photos is poor.  I consult numerous photos of the class on a daily basis, and this book is a very poor resource for studying the details of the class because of the format and paper.

Nor do the problems end there.  Apparently the publishing business has reached the point that no one is editing what is sent in for publication because the content suffers from numerous grammatical and formatting errors, as well as significant factual mistakes.  The second sentence of the book places the battle of the Coral Sea in the wrong month of 1942, and while substantive errors like this are not common, they are common enough that I don't trust the factual assertions presented without checking them in another source.

The book does not have much substantive text, but it does have extensive detailed photo captions that explain the photos, and this is one of its high points.  The captions provide analysis that I have not seen elsewhere, as well as explanations of certain activities that are not covered in other publications.  So while the photos are of marginal quality, they are clear enough to understand what is being portrayed, and the captions do provide useful background.

All in all, if I saw a really good picture in this book I would run it down online if I needed it for reference, but what is in the book is probably good enough unless you are trying to nail down a very specific detail.  And there is useful information, mostly in the photo credits.  But the bibliography is short and puzzling - how can you not list Norman Friedman?  

From Hot War to Cold: The U.S. Navy and National Security Affairs, 1945-1955 - Jeffrey G. Barlow

The U.S. Navy's transition from World War II into a nuclear postwar in the new U.S. defense establishment is the subject of this lengthy treatise.  Actually the treatise itself is not quite so lengthy because 304 of the 710 pages in this book are references, including index, bibliography and an insane amount of endnote material.  But given the quantum of information that I'm sure exists on even this narrow slice of a subject, it is still probably only touching on the high points of the story of what happened in the Navy in the first Iten years after the end of World War II.

The principal story to be told is the Navy's role as the national defense establishment nosedived in terms of appropriations following demobilization after the war, then skyrocketed again during the conflict in Korea beginning in 1950, and then swung back and forth over the next five years as first the Truman and then the Eisenhower administration's attempted to settle on appropriate level of military funding in a peacetime that it was increasingly clear was not all that different from wartime in terms of national responsibilities.  The knife fight between the Navy and the new Department of the Air Force - mostly over whose aircraft got to carry the nuclear weapons - is covered, as are the various departmental leadership struggles as the Navy found its way under the new Defense Department establishment where it was no longer a Cabinet-level department under a three-plus term President who had been an avid naval supporter since his days as Assistant Secretary of the navy in 1913-1919. Truman, unlike FDR, was no fan of the Navy, and it was one of his Secretaries of Defense that canceled the Navy's new supercarrier United States with no notice to the admirals, sparking the well documented "revolt of the admirals."

All in all, while clumsily written in places, it is a useful reference to understand what was going on during certain periods of time, and a good starting point for research to dive deeper into individual issues within its scope.

Warship Builders: An Industrial History of U.S. Naval Shipbuilding 1922–1945 (Studies in Naval History and Sea Power) – Thomas Heinrich

This book tells the story of the development of the naval shipbuilding industry in the United States after World War I that built the fleet that won World War II.  It also explains how naval shipbuilding is different than maritime shipbuilding.  Merchant ships, in contrast to naval ships, are built to lower standards, and have far less technically complex systems.  unlike warships, they don't have to continue to operate after being the target of substantial amounts of explosives, nor do they have to carry defensive measures such as armor or radar, or offense of measures such as guns or airplanes.  As a result, they lend themselves to assembly-line type construction.  Naval ships, on the other hand require significantly more expertise, and importantly for the story, expertise that takes years or even decades to build up.  As a result, it was critical to the ability to build a large fleet in World War II that the United States preserved its naval shipyards during peacetime, either by providing them with work in the form of continuing naval construction, or by funding major capital construction programs in order to keep a critical mass of civilian yards in business.

The book also spends a great deal of time explaining the difference between a private shipyard and a government-owned Navy yard, and explains the important role played in certain types of construction by Navy yards, which had expertise that private shipyards were not able to reproduce.

While some of the minutiae of yard management was not the most interesting subject in the world, it was overall an interesting book and illuminated the important relationship between the Navy and the shipyards the contracted construction of its warships to.

2020 Modeling Review - Six Essexes

2020 was definitely a themed year.  When the year started I had two Essex class carrier projects underway, and at the end of the year - still two underway.

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 underside, 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 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 back 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 I think is intended to represent 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 correct 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 the 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–profile 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.

The build album is at https://www.scalemates.com/profiles/mate.php?id=48557&p=albums&album=56282 .

 

USS Essex (CVS-9) – Revell 1/530 Resurrection Build

 

It took three days short of a year for my resurrection build of a 1980 Revell 1/530 Essex-clas angled deck carrier done.

The model started out as a Bon Homme Richard (CV-31) that I built in 1980, the last of nine models of this kit. Five were given to me already built in 1975 or so and the other four I built from 1977 to 1980 (the photo shows four of the original five, plus the first that I built). On the last day of 1981 all nine went into two boxes and spent the next fifteen years in my mother’s attic while I was at college. I retrieved them in 1994, and took them to my first house on South Washington, and ten years later to the model workshop at our current home on Harris Lake Road.

I took BHR out June 30 of 2019 and decided to try to accurize it using the aftermarket parts that are now available – but mostly to correct the starboard side by lining the kit hangar deck up with the hull. That would mean adding four scale feet of hull outboard, but I figured hey, how hard could that be?

A year later, the answer is – very hard. I worked on the model continuously till November, then didn’t touch it until we started sheltering at home in March of last year.

I was able to get 1996 plans for the lead ship of the class, USS Essex (CV-9) from The Floating Drydock, and decided to model Essex near the end of her career in October 1968 when she recovered the first Apollo mission, Apollo 7. The photoetch is by GMM, the decals and resin hangar are by Starfighter, the island by Model Monkey, and anchors, guns, boats, aircraft and deck equipment by various other vendors on Shapeways. Model Monkey and other vendors were very accommodating resizing their 1/350 scale products to 1/530 for use with the Revell kit. The Apollo capsule is scratchbuilt.

I usually build ship models waterline, but made an exception here since this was a build of a sentimental favorite. But near the end I saw another modeler built a seascape on one side of a full-hull build and decided to try to replicate it using a removable “wrap” for more of a diorama effect. A side benefit was that the uneven gloss finish reflected light back up on the hull, approximating real water.

The build album is at https://www.scalemates.com/profiles/mate.php?id=48557&p=albums&album=58702 .

 

USS Oriskany (CV-34) 1950 (1/700)

The USS Oriskany (CV-34) was the 24th and last Essex-class aircraft carrier to be commissioned. Construction on her was stopped in 1946 and she was completed in the fall of 1950 to a new design, SCB-27A, which better accommodated the newer and heavier jet aircraft that were coming into service. Numerous other carriers of the class were modernized to SCB-27A (and SCB-27C) standards, and all but one of those later received the hurricane bows and angled flight decks of the SCB-125 program.

I wanted to model a SCB-27A ship as part of my research into the program so I could see what the physical changes made to the class were. I chose Oriskany because she was the first, and her “as commissioned” appearance included a suite of sixteen 20mm twin mounts that didn’t last long. By 1952 many of the mounts had been removed, and within a couple of years they were all gone. In addition, the SCB-27A ships originally had a simpler pole mast arrangement without the prominent “X” structure at the top that would become a feature by the mid-1950s.

My model started with Dragon’s 1/700 Princeton (CVS-37), a mid-1950’s unmodernized Essex. The first step was adding the 6′ wide blister to both sides of the hull, as well as an escalator and island from Model Monkey (I also used their 3″ gub tubs, port crane sponson, lift raft baskets and Mk 56 gun directors). The bow was reworked to add the secondary conn, and all the gallery deck catwalks were removed and replaced with thinner sheet plastic after the gallery deck itself was thickened up. All flight deck structures (gun mounts) were removed, and new sponsons for the 3″ twin mounts built from sheet plastic and putty. Although photos sometime described these as the tubs for the earlier 40mm quads, they are actually significantly larger.

I also added the bracket on the hull for the ship’s pole mast. Carriers using the Brooklyn Navy Yard (where Oriskany was built) had a bracket on their hull to hold their masts so they could pass under the East River bridges.

Late in construction I added the removable underwater hull after I added the partial blister to it. Unlike the later conversions, Oriskany’s blister was more of a belt and went only partway down the side of the hull underwater, which I thought was worth modeling.

The aircraft are Dragon’s early jets from the Bon Homme Richard (CV-31) kit, which also donated the twin 20mm mounts. The 3″ twin mounts are from an old Skywave/Pit-Road USN parts parts set, along with the corresponding pieces from two CVL kits.

Build album is at https://www.scalemates.com/profiles/mate.php?id=48557&p=albums&album=61373#56

 

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

I purchased the Dragon CV-31 kit for the early jets aircraft, and the 20mm twins were a nice surprise. I initially thought that kitbashing the kit into its Vietnamese-era appearance would be a good project, since it was everything the Essex and Oriskany were not - an SCB-27C and not only that, one of the ships (along with Lexington and Shangri-La) that received their SCB-125 modernization at the same time, so it would have a completely different hurricane bow shape.

But the kit was a very good one of the ship in its 1951 appearance off Korea, and it would be a shame to destroy practically everything in it to build it to a different period, so I decided to backdate the Dragon kit to its initial wartime appearance in July of 1945, and bring down the old Hasegawa Essex kit that’s been in my stash 25 years and use that hull for the 1968 version. 

By the end of the year, the 1945 version was nearly finished, just needing some finish work on the aircraft, island and 20mm mounts.  The 1968 version was similarly almost done, with nearly everything other than the island and the air group finished.

The build album is at https://www.scalemates.com/profiles/mate.php?id=48557&p=albums&album=62759 .

 

Essex bow: short hull/long hull/hurricane bow construction notes

I am researching how the bows of the Essex class carriers changed from their entry into the fleet in 1943 through their long history, and have come across some recent pictures during their modernization periods that may provide a better understanding of how the updating was done.

Short Hull / Long Hull

As originally configured, the Essex class aircraft carriers had a rounded bow as shown at far left above.  During construction, most of the later units of the class had the bow reshaped into a "clipper bow" which was flared forward and to the side to accommodate the second 40 mm quadruple mount antiaircraft gun as shown in the drawings in my 1997 book Essex Class Carriers in action.  The photo of the Shangri La (CV-38) at left is one of the few that seems to show a bit of a jog in the main deck, and a change in the hull plating where the bow lines were reshaped.

SCB-27A/C

During the initial round of postwar modernization, six of the "short-hull" units were brought up to SCB-27A or -27C standards, and in each case their bows were altered to the "long hull" form. 

After doing some research, I think how that was accomplished is a little clearer.  These two photos shown the Essex (CV-9) beginning her modernization in April 1949.  Oddly, the sides of her flight deck forward have been removed, which doesn't seem to make sense, since the flight deck remained after the conversion. 
 

But I was looking at similar photos of the Lexington's modernization at Puget Sound five years later and the pieces fell into place.  

These two photos, taken in April and June of 1954 show a short-hull Essex being reshaped into a "long-hull" prior to also receiving a hurricane bow, since Lexington went straight from her World War II confirguration into a SCB-125 one.  In other words, she missed the middle stage of the top photo, and went straight to the third photo. 

In the first photo, "No. 1 and No. 2 sections of new bow" are in the foreground.  The structure behind is the third "bent" supporting the flight deck - everything forward of it has been removed, and the entire bow forward of about the first bent has been sliced off and a new section of bow with the clipper lines is being prepared for attaching. 

For purposes of illustration, the attached photo of the Oriskany model shows the three "bents" on a long-hull ship.

Here's the interesting part.  The next photo, taken two months later, shows the new hull section (with a hawsehole, I note) attached and notes "installation of two of the three flight deck sections removed earlier in the conversion.  And now we see bents # 1 and 2 reattached to bent #3 and to the forecastle - essentially the section remaining on Essex in the photos above.  And this is when I noticed that the pictures of the Essex showed a railing being placed separating the forward section of the flight and gallery decks - it was because they were about to be removed.

But this shows how far back into the hull and superstructure they went in the "short-hull" ships to reshape the bow lines in the SCB-27A/C modernizations, and for the two "short-hull" ships that did their -27C and -125 at the same time, Lexington and Bon Homme Richard.

In case you're interested, the hurricane bow itself was delivered on a truck and mounted on the ship by crane.

SCB-125

Did the bows have to be cut back this far in the SCB-125 conversions that added hurricane bows? No.

As the attached photo of Ticonderoga shows, while the technique was similar, the section of bow that had to be cut back was far smaller, and didn't require removal of any of the flight deck supports. This photo of Shangri La shows only half removed, and then during the bow rebuild.

But why was any removed at all?  I had assumed that the clipper bows were just faired up into the new hurricane bows.  

The "clipper bows" caused excessive slamming in service, with the Ticonderoga buckling her main deck during a passage around Cape Horn, causing major damage.  This reinforced the need for hurricane bows, but also resulted in the existing bows being reshaped slightly to offer less resistance to the waves in heavy seas. 

As this comparison of the Oriskany's forecastle after her SCB-125 modernization to a long hull forecastle kit part shows, the corners of the bow were rounded somewhat, which made the final hurricane bows less likely to cause unwanted slamming.

USS Bon Homme Richard (CV-31) Double Build

My next project will be a "double build" of kits as the USS Bon Homme Richard (CV-31), one of the last of the Essex class carriers to make it into combat in the Pacific before the end of World War II in 1945. 

One kit will represent the ship in its initial configuration in the summer of 1945, shown at left refueling with the battleship Missouri.  For this I'm using the state of the art Dragon kit of CV-31 at it appeared a few years later when reactivated for the Korean War in 1951-52.  

The second will represent the Bonnie Dick in 1968 as an attack carrier off the coast of Vietnam after her SCB 27C / SCB 125 modernization. For this version I am using an old Hasegawa kit that I bought at least 26 years ago intending to accurize it as an October 1944 Yorktown (CV-10) as I had done with two other similar kits the previous two years.  It's long since been surpassed by the new Trumpeter and Dragon kits, but it'll do fine as the starting point for an angled deck postwar Essex.  None of the detail is accurate, but all will be covered or replaced anyway.

I chose the BHR because I needed the Dragon kit for parts to finish Oriskany.  BHR has the "early jets" aircraft, and after getting it I discovered it also has the twin 20mm mounts that CV-34 carried (briefly). I was going to just build it as the 1968 version, but that would be a waste of a really good kit.  So I decided to backdate the kit to the carrier's World War II appearance (I always wanted a Measure 12/Measure 22 two-tone Essex anyway) and use the old Hasegawa kit from my stash as the base for the angled deck version.  

The 1968 version will combine the research and skills I've learned on the SCB-125 Essex and the SCB-27A Oriskany - but every ship is different.  BHR was one of the three ships that got both the 27 and 125 modernization in one yard period - and as a 27C ship she has a completely different bow flight deck and hull from the Essex, which I'm looking forward to modeling.  Plus, I've never scratchbuilt a hurricane bow, especially for a ship that went from a "short hull" to SCB-125 in one fell swoop.  (The other was Lexington (CV-16) but I already have a 1/700 CV-16, and I'm trying not to unnecessarily duplicate ships.  This project is the exception).

I try to focus on a specific feature in each build, and on BHR it'll be the forward elevator.  BHR was one of the few ships that had the forward elevator elongated by extending the forward edge - either to accommodate larger aircraft or the tugs that pulled them.  I've built #2 and #3 elevators up and down before - but never #1, and certainly never a pentagonal shape. So that'll be something new to look forward to. 

I'll build both kits' #1 elevators down so the change in configuration is apparent.  The Dragon kit already has a fairly accurate elevator well (as you can see in the picture below), but the Hasegawa doesn't even have a hangar deck, so everything - including the flight deck opening - will be scratchbuilt.

The Dragon kit could be built far faster since other than thickening the gallery deck - which kit makers always model too thin - and redoing the catwalks it's an almost OOB build - but I'm hoping to keep both at about the same level both so I can use the Dragon kit as a guide for the extensive scratchbuilding that'll be needed on the Hasegawa, and show the differences that were made in the later version of the ship.

Also, the Dragon will be painted throughout the process, but I'm hoping to keep the Hasegawa largely unpainted (at least the exterior) to show the work as it's being done. 

Daybreak For Our Carrier - Max Miller

I picked up an e-book Carrier! Life Aboard a World War II Aircraft Carrier for 99 cents the other day, despite the generally poor reviews - and ended up very happy that I did.

It turned out the book is actually a republication of the 1944 book Daybreak For Our Carrier by reserve officer Lt. Max Miller, a peacetime writer called into service during the war.  Miller was writing about what life on an aircraft carrier was like for people back home during the war, so the book is almost completely lacking in specifics - no ship or aircraft or island names at all - just his take on what it's like on this new type of warship.

The book began almost exactly the same as the narration for the movie The Fighting Lady, also released in 1944 about life on the same carrier.  It's only slightly sappy in places, but not overly so given the age - in fact it's one of the more restrained pieces of its era that I've read.  But his take is simply terrific.  He's not presenting life as an exercise in patriotism and duty but as simply what goes on on the ship. Three images in the book stood out to me.

First, he described the predawn General Quarters during which all the ship's planes would be warmed up and readied for possible launch on the flight deck.  But here's the picture he paints of what he sees when he looks down from the island through the complete darkness toward the tightly packed planes spotted aft:

"The blue-reddish flames from the multitude of exhausts, all bursting and roaring at the same time in the blackness, is what gives the flight deck its Dante’s Inferno complexion during such times. They do not throw out much light but they do throw out terrible shadows under the wings and against the fuselages; fiery shadows which appear to be leaping and shrieking in a mad effort to get the hell away from there. It is as if, too, the devil’s own little henchmen were having a lot to do with the affair, as if they deliberately were stirring it up, as if they were wanting a real fight to occur between flame and flame, the winner being the one which can out roar the other."

(Emphasis mine).

 

What an incredible mental image - one that had never occurred to me since I've never seen engine exhaust at night, and never thought about the shadows it'd throw under the packed aircraft.  You can catch a glimpse of it in these two paintings by his fellow reserve office William Draper who was aboard the same ship a few months later, and painted views from the island at night. 

 

Miller also paints metaphorical pictures of the ship during an operation, noting that due to its sending its planes out, it becomes hard to know how the day went.

For a carrier’s pattern of operations, as previously mentioned, continues to be a sort of fourth-dimensional one even during an engagement.... Each of these tangents is a thread then, and if under the pressure of the weaving, these threads get lost or snap, the day’s design automatically may change.... that is the trouble with engagements in general. They do not follow the rules of good theater any more than a day’s pattern will always stick to its original design.

Another great example of writing that conveys what carrier life must have been like.  Unlike the ships around it, the carrier's life is tied up in what happens to its aircraft.

 

He also refers several times to the dark catwalk under the flight deck that led from the squadron ready rooms to the flight deck.  This would have been suspended above the hangar deck, and would have been the place all the pilots traversed on their way to their planes - a sort of tunnel suspended in space.  Pointing it out just really brought home to me the journey that these men were about to make.

 

Finally, he narrates his trip as an observer in a plane on a bombing mission, and provides yet another unique description of the carrier.  Every account I've ever read refers to the carrier in maternal terms - as a mother hen to her fliers.  His experience after leaving her deck was different - he writes that "[i]n shoving us out of the nest she merely had turned from a mother ship into a rather stern old dad." And a dad that expected results, he continues.  That's a completely unique observation about a carrier.

 

In summary, a great little book.  I hunted a good copy down online after I read the e-book. I want my own copy of this one.

Bringing Back a Hero - Robert D. Jornlin

Our last stop on our RV trip was LST 325 in Evansville, Indiana, where I picked up this book by its captain on its return voyage in 2000-2001.  The story is an incredible one.  A crew of retired LST sailors, average age 72, got the ship back in working condition and talked their way into bringing back over 6,000 miles across the Mediterranean and Atlantic to the United States - so we'd have an example of a World War II LST.

The ship was an incredible experience to visit, but the artifact pales compared to what these men did to bring her home.  Jornlin was a retired commander from the 1960's, but his experience on the vessels and in feed sales gave him both the technical and the personal skills to successfully negotiate the challenges of getting the ship restored and the necessary permissions to bring her home.

I highly, highly recommend this book.