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The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of the Pax Americana - Peter Clarke

2216070I ran across this book while searching for additional sources for one of the papers I was updating for my capstone project.  I needed more information on Britain's plans for British Malaya after the war, and how those plans may have differed from its plans for other territories that were formerly part of the British Empire.

The book is much broader than that obviously, and deals not just with specific territories but with the larger political debates going on within the British government and between Britain and the United States over the nature of that portion of the postwar  world which was formally known as the British Empire.  It was an interesting book, and I enjoyed it and recommend it highly if you are looking at the jockeying for postwar position between the allies which culminated in Britain's departure from India.

December 22, 2021 in Books, History - General, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Battle for Hell's Island: How a Small Band of Carrier Dive-Bombers Helped Save Guadalcanal - Stephen L. Moore

24611596This was one of my least favorite books about the Pacific war.  It wasn't because of the subject, which was always interesting, or the writing, which was always good, or the data contained, which was exhaustive.  It was because I could not figure out what the book was about.  It began by relating accounts of seemingly every sortie flown by a dive bomber in the Pacific beginning months before Pearl Harbor, then had unexplained gaps for things like, say, the battle of Midway, and then picked up again with the Guadalcanal campaign.  Again, the account is interesting, but it's like listening to the broadcast of a game – it is a narrative, but not a story.

Only at the end of the book, frustrated, was I able to go back and ascertain what the book had been about.  It is the story of the dive bomber pilots on the Enterprise during the Guadalcanal campaign who operated off of Guadalcanal after their carrier was damaged, and played an important role in fending off the Japanese assault during the critical phases of the battle.  The reason you wouldn't know this is that the book starts with pilots flying from the Lexington and the Yorktown months earlier engaged in unrelated activity.  After Coral Sea they are amalgamated into a new squadron and sent out on Enterprise.   There is no introduction telling you this.  There is a preface, but it doesn't tell you this, and instead starts you with a pilot operating from Enterprise, not Guadalcanal.  

So what you get is a narrative about pilots that is untethered to any particular story, objective, or goal.  It was very frustrating reading because the accounts jumped from ship to ship with no reason given for why, and was always only a small part of the story him him I knew was there.  If I had known at the outset that this was the story of pilots who would later play a key role in a major battle, I would have had the necessary framework for the book.  Yes, I assumed it had something to do that because of the title, but I assumed the content of the book would reflect the title, and it simply didn't until late in the narrative.  So what would otherwise have been an informative and interesting read ended up being an exercise in frustration, searching for nuts of information about a subject I am usually interested in.

It's hard to write a book about American aircraft carriers in the Pacific in 1942 that I don't like.  But this book did it.

December 22, 2021 in Books, History - General, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

To the Marianas: War in the Central Pacific 1944 - Edwin P. Hoyt

IMG_3805Hoyt's "Blue Skies and Blood" was the earliest book I had on the Battle of the Coral Sea, and I later discovered he had written a number of others on different stages of the Pacific War, which I started to pick up as I saw them.  This volume picks up after "Storm Over the Gilberts", which I have, and is followed by another on Leyte Gulf - which I saw at a HP Books last month and chose not to bring home.

It's not a knock on this book as much as it is on Leyte - there are numerous more recent books on the subject, and while Hoyt is readable, my research into his books indicates he tends to churn out volumes that don't really add to the existing knowledge on a topic.  But for this book that wasn't a problem, since there isn't a lot of literature on the drive across the Central Pacific in the first six months of June 1944, and that's a subject I was particularly interested in.  The Gilberts campaign was very much a trial run for the long-anticipated drive, and this book explains how that matured.

It's a good book, and a very informative addition on this corner of the conflict.

December 22, 2021 in Books, History - General, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Second World War - Antony Beevor

61ZRknm6PfLThis book is another example of one I can't say anything detailed about because even though I finished it a few weeks ago, I don't remember much about it.  I listened to it on Audible, primarily during long car trips, and found it interesting and informative - but there's nothing that stands out other than that I enjoyed it as a good, new, one-volume overview of the war.

 

December 22, 2021 in Books, History - General, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz - Erik Larson

5e5ec56f2ee72.imageThis book is a perfect example of why I need to curate my reading a bit more.  It was recommended to me earlier this week, and by coincidence I noticed that I had downloaded the Kindle version last summer.  Assuming I had not read it, I started reading it again, and was in the second chapter when things started looking familiar.  Not because it was talking about Chruchill during the Blitz but because it was talking about Churchill's daughters' social lives.  Surely that wasn't in another book.  I rechecked the Kindle entry, and it showed that I had finished reading it last fall.

Unfortunately, I think I was reading it at about the same time I was reading Michael Korda's "Alone" and got the two confused.  I also apparently never posted on the book, so I didn't have any record other than Kindle that I had actually read the book.  Until I discovered that, um, I posted that this book was the reason I painted Churchill's portrait on my study ceiling last August.  266323232_10226891649424444_1042462880057091890_n

The problem is that I read so many books at the same time, and most by Kindle or Audible.  But it's okay.  I just got through rereading three WW II books so eventually I'll get around to this one as well.  

It reminds me of what the late Ralph Hall said about the three the benefits of getting forgetful with age.  You meet new friends every day, a different woman fixes you breakfast every morning, and you meet new friends every day. 

December 22, 2021 in Books, History - General, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

SBD Upgrade

03979EBB-776D-433D-A39A-2308110693B4From when I started collecting kits almost 30 years ago my 1/72 SBD experience has been limited to the old Airfix/MPC kit.  While I have a couple of the Hawk/Testors kits, even I could tell they were too crude to be worth building.  I also bought every decal sheet I saw, so I probably now have enough decals to build well over a dozen aircraft, although at least half the decals are woefully inaccurate - usually the wrong size.

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

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

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

You can never have too many SBDs.

November 27, 2021 in History - Naval, Models, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nine Weeks of OOB

0C0D12DE-FAAE-4506-B697-BBA3AA0FD21BBack in mid-August I decided to take a little time off a nearly-complete 1/700 carrier model - yet another Essex-class ship - to try something a little different.  I wanted to build one of the 1/72 aviation subjects I had been adding to my stash for years.  I have been avoiding them because my airbrushing was poor, and a plane would show it much more easily than a 1/700 carrier, which has few large exposed surfaces that aren’t broken up by detailing and weathering.

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

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

Equipment Changes

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

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

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

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

Better kits

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

Worse kits

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

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

Great kits

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

More tools and better technique

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

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

Repeating

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

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

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

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

 

October 24, 2021 in History - General, Models, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

July 25, 2021 in Books, History - Naval, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

51ZG3MF55WL._SX319_BO1 204 203 200_I read this book before touring the Hornet last month.  Lots of errors a good proofing should have caught, but very useful information about the ship and what it contains.

July 25, 2021 in Books, History - Naval, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

July 18, 2021 in History - Naval, Models, World War II | Permalink | Comments (0)

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