USS Enterprise (CV-6) by ted99 - Trumpeter - 1:200 - PLASTIC

[ted99]

I'm afraid photo viewer is out of my wheelhouse.  Looked through all of the PE sheets for the flight deck in the MK1 package and found only one set of "possibles" for the risers.  There are "lots" of pieces of PE for which there are no pictures in the set and no idea where they fit.  It's really an exercise of guessing.

[ddp]

are you using windows, mac os or linux? see if that pe is a bit longer then the dashes on the flight deck where the risers are supposed to be.

[ted99]

Windows.  They are 2.5X the length of the dashes.  I was going through the "left over" pieces of deck (meaning the SS sheets) PE and found what is clearly the cover for the torpedo loading deck hatch.  By "left over", I mean parts for which there were no pictures in the MK1 material and whose purpose is unclear.

 

I've also been looking back at some of the small details for the flight deck on the instruction sheets and found things I missed the first time through--looking at the forest and missing some trees at the gross stage of construction.  For instance, one small line on a drawing actually indicates the arresting wires are way up the deck starting just before the midships elevator and extending all alongside the Island, with one just after the "catch fence".  That seems to be a lot more forward than I had imagined.  I have a friend who was a WW II carrier pilot (he is 105) and I'll ask him about how things worked on WW II Carrier landings.

 

This second look at the small insets on the plan pictures indicates that those pieces (described above) that I thought could have been the standoffs are really diagonal support posts for the "catch fence".  It looks to me like there are no provided arresting wire standoffs--these would be VERY small details.  I also finally saw a little inset of the torpedo loading hatch and the railing around it.  You can see the railing still in the SS PE I pictured earlier--another mystery piece's location solved.

 

I'm feeling really dumb.

[ddp]

not your fault the model & pe instructions appear to be crappy. there is a saying, "if in doubt, ask" before you make a mistake & we'll see if we can get the answer(s) so that you can continue building. 

those line are crash barriers not arresting cables from midships elevator to alongside the island as i just checked the Booklet of General Plans of the Enterprise, 1944/45 Saratoga & 1946 Bunker Hill as the other plans of the fleet carriers i have are angle decks from 1955 to 1968.

your arresting cables stop before the midships elevator.

you have windows photo viewer as is part of windows which is what i use.

Edited March 10 by ddp

[ted99]

Checked with Gene and he confirmed that the arresting wires are fully at the stern.  Makes sense that crash barriers would be around the Island.  The Mk1 PE set has mesh as part of the PE set, but I have not yet found any pictures or diagram of how they are deployed.

 

I asked Gene about the retractable hard barrier that is provided in the set and which is located just forward of the Island.  He said it was always erected during flight operations.  He told me a story about one time when he was waiting his turn for launch in his F4F and a landing plane got a wave-off.  The pilot was slow to react and clipped the barrier with his landing gear crashing down on top of Gene's plane.  Gene got out OK.  Gene got the DFC for dropping a bomb straight down the stack of the then-largest BB in the IJN (Gene wasn't clear on the name, but this must have been after Musashi and Yamato were sunk), which resulted in it's sinking, in the Battle of Okinawa.  Gene said that toward the end, when the air war was mostly confined to Kamakazi attacks, the F4F squadrons were repurposed to bombing and he did a lot of low-level runs skipping bombs into hillside caves.

 

Picture shows the relocated arresting wires.

[ddp]

you have them in the wrong spot as should be on the lines with the 3 short dashes as per Sheet 6 Flight Deck drawing.

as your friend was flying a F4F then he was on an escort carrier not a light or fleet carrier as they used hellcats & corsairs.

[ted99]

So the 3 short dashes/crossbars are where the stand-offs go.  I was postulating that the ears on the deck surrounds were part of the arresting mechanism mounts.  That may be right, but the wires were on the other side of the ears than where I have them.  Those crossbars/steel strips extend along the full length of the flight deck--standoffs on all of them?  My error on F4F.  He was on a sister ship to Enterprise, but I'm not going to ask him which one again.  He was definitely flying a Hellcat.

[ddp]

how many arresting wires come with the pe kit? here is a cropped picture of the flight deck with the red showing the arresting cable locations, the blue for the locations of the arresting cable pulleys & deck edge tabs the pulleys partly sit on then the green for some of the riser locations. 

would not be Enterprise's sisters as both CV-5 Yorktown & CV-8 Hornet were sunk in 1942 & the Hellcats came out in 43 so he must of been on one of the Essex class carriers that started entering service in 1943.

Edited March 12 by ddp

[ted99]

Thanks for that.  9 sets of wires.  Tabs used as I thought and the wires are reversed from the way I set them.  Saw Gene at lunch and confirmed he was on the Ticonderoga and flew the F6F Hellcat.  He describes how the Navy was desperate for pilots for all the new carriers that were to be commissioned and plucked him out of Princeton 4 months before graduation-- he had signed up for Naval Aviation and expected to be called up just after graduation.  He completed training and a shake down cruise on another newly-commissioned carrier, but rotated out to Ticonderoga in time for the Okinawa invasion.  Up until his 100th birthday, he was deadly on the putting green.  Fantastic eye/hand co-ordination.

 

I was on a ship that sometimes performed plane guard duty for carrier ops on my first Vietnam tour (ultimately did 3 more in-country).  One of those times on Yankee Station we were with the Ticonderoga (lol).  It had a half-assed angle deck, so that must have been a subsequent modification.

[ddp]

9 wires would be from almost at the stern to the midships elevator according to the sheet 6 flight deck plans.

that is CV-14 USS Ticonderoga, an Essex class aircraft carrier, the successors to the previous Yorktown class that your model was part of. https://www.navsource.org/archives/02/14.htm

i have 6 sets of Booklet of General Plans of the angled deck Essex class saved on my computer

the plane guard was most likely a destroyer from 1 of about 5  different classes.

Edited March 12 by ddp

[ted99]

Yes, that's the way it worked out.  First wire just before aft elevator and last wire just before midships elevator. 

 

I was M-Division officer on Truxton, DLGN 35 (later CGN 35).  We were mostly with Enterprise, except when we went North to be "North SAR".  Since we didn't need to refuel, we ended up being plane guard for other Carriers, as well.  

[ted99]

I'm down to only two things I cannot find any photos for from MK1 PE in the SS "deck" details.

 

One could be a catch barrier for a plane that didn't hook up and the other is a pair of "U"-shaped pieces.  The catch barrier is way too wide to be deployed across the flight deck, without bends, plus I cannot find any means of attachment at the ends.  I think the u-shaped pieces are edge detail for the gratings that fit next to the forward part of the Island/deck join.  They are the right size for this, so I don't think they have anything to do with the catch barrier.

[ddp]

can you point out the 2 things so we know what you are talking about?

[ted99]

On the left sheet, the "wires" running lengthwise with 3 crossbars, but no bars at the ends.  On the right sheet, the 2 "U"-shaped pieces in the middle.  My calipers say they are the right size to be surrounds for the 2 vents to the right on the sheet.  Problem is that the MK1 photos only show one of the the "vents" in place.  It is on the forward, inboard side of the Island and is "folded" in the middle with the grill part flat on the island and the part with the "legs" flat on the flight deck.  A small piece of wooden decking fits between the two legs--and there are 2 of these pieces of decking in the kit.  There are also two cutouts in the flight deck wooden decking for both of these pieces, leading me to believe that there are supposed to be two of these vents; even though the kit photos only show one.

[ddp]

so you are talking about the orange circled objects on the left & the yellow circled objects on the right, correct? can you post a close-up shot of the area you think are "vents" as i think they are the 2 bomb elevators?

on the 2nd picture, is the yellow circled objects the "vents" you are talking about & do you have the orange circled objects in pe or plastic as those appear to be the ends of the crash barriers?

Edited March 17 by ddp

[ted99]

Aha--so those are bomb elevators.  There are cutouts in the MK1 wooden deck for these elevators and two small pieces of decking to fit inside the U-shaped metal surrounds.  The MK1photos show the forward PE part with a bend in the middle and the grilled part of the PE attached to the side of the Island.  The grilled part was why I was calling them "vents".  The MK1 photo does not show the after elevator having the grilled part on the Island, so I'll cut it off from the elevator hatch part.

 

I see 6 "Barriers" marked as adjacent to arresting wire locations on the drawing, but only one piece of "wires" in the MK1 sheets.  Plus, the kit wires are WAY longer than the width of the Flight Deck.  The drawing seems to indicate that the barriers laid flat on the deck with the triangle-shaped pieces attached to the ends and were raised to a 90 deg position as needed.  All in all, I think I'll just relegate those "wires" in the MK1 PE sheet to the "don't know" bin.

 

I'll do this work after I've finished the detail work on the Stbd side of the Island and turn the model around on my bench to work on the Port side.  This thing is so large that it's getting cumbersome to move it around.

[ddp]

take a look at this link https://www.navsource.org/archives/02/020667.jpg as can just see the 2 bomb elevators.

"The "Big E" had her island modified during her July-October 1943 refit. Note new platforms on both the navigation and flag bridges, for better visibility, and Mk.37 dual purpose director (with Mk.4 radar antenna) in place of her former Mk.33. Photo taken on March 20, 1944 from one of her own planes."

https://www.navsource.org/archives/02/06a.htm

[ted99]

Yes, just the one grill above the forward bomb elevator.  You can see on the earlier pictured piece of SS PE that two of these "grills" are provided in the MK1 kit.  I also notice that the grill in the photo has a lot of "thickness", so I'm going to cut off the second provided grill and glue it to the top of the forward one to increase the thickness.

 

Those pictures are very useful in finding out how the life rafts were deployed.  The Trumpeter kit includes 16 of them, but there is no depiction of them in the plans.  Most notably, it appears that the motor launch on the fantail platform, as shown in the Trumpeter plans, is removed and there are two stacks of life rafts in it's place.  Other photos show them arrayed in various places on the sides of the Hanger deck.  It looks like they were stuck wherever there was room.

 

The photos are in B&W, so the raft color cannot be determined.  Yellow? or Gray?  Would they have been painted gray for wartime use?

[ddp]

go thru this link https://www.navsource.org/archives/02/06a.htm to look at all the war time pictures to locate most if not all the life raft positions. the rafts would be painted the same color(s) as the location it is in so can have more that 1 color depending on the camo scheme used.

[ted99]

Yes, those are the pictures I was going thru.  They are very helpful.  Thanks for the advice on color, as well.

[ddp]

no problem.

[ted99]

Stbd side "completed".  Now going to turn the hull around on my workbench and start on Port side.  Some touch up painting needed and going to paint the life rafts.

[ddp]

if the model  is supposed to represent mid 43 to 44 then can't have the Wildcats as were on til May 1943 then Hellcats in Nov 1943. you would be using airgroups 6 or 10 for that time period.

http://www.cv6.org/company/airgroups.htm

http://www.cv6.org/ship/big_e.htm

Edited March 24 by ddp

[ted99]

So, Air Group 10 deployment 16 Oct 42 to 10 May 43 was the last to use F4F.  Trumpeter provided F4F models, so I'll make it so.

[ddp]

then you have to use Measure 11 March/April 1942 to Fall 1943 not Measure 21 Fall 1943 to Summer 1944. http://www.cv6.org/ship/camo-radar.htm

so you'll need Wildcats, Avengers & Dauntlesses for that group.

[ted99]

Fortunately, I was already using Measure 11 (because it was the colors I had on hand).

[ted99]

Not any posting or progress.  I now need to have the artificial shoulder that was done 15 years ago replaced.  Wore it out.  I attribute it to sanding the Amati 1:200 Bismarck wooden hull (lol).

[gak1965]

Good luck and get well soon!