The Ship Model Forum

He is very proud of having been a junior Naval Officer during the war. Certainly for most of his generation it was their great life's adventure for good or bad. William Manchester, a well known author, wrote a memoir of his time on Guadalcanal "Goodby Darkness". It took many years for the vets to talk about it, but they were proud of meeting the task.

Tom

Tom,

Congrats & Happy Birthday to your dad - 97 is quite an achievement!!!

Hank

He will certainly be very pleased with this beautiful photo.

Showing him the model would certainly be very moving.

A photo from today. My Father just had his 97 th birthday and my sister wanted a photo of the ship to print and give to him. I wish I could transport the model to him, but not really a practical task.

Cheers: Tom

On the personal control page there is an obscure control, allowing selection of "Friend/Foe". Using this control one can prevent arrival in my feed of posts of anyone that you desire to not receive comments from. Sort of an anti TROLL feature. Other people will see it but I will not. So TROLL's need not expect a reply or comment.

Cheers: Tom

Very nice!

Well, I had both a MK 37 with MK 4 Radar and a 5" twin mount with no ship to install them on. Single 5" mount with a MK 51 might have been more feasible. After all the ship already had two MK 51's for the Quad 40's. Such setups were used on the LSMR's.

Cheers: Tom

AHA - An April Foolsie a few days late - I love it!!! You had me as well, Tom!!! That addition would have been a real engineering feat for the officers/crew if it had been able to have been pulled off. As Phil has elaborated upon, a near impossibility.

However, in the vein of "what-ifs", it is actually more doable than some of these wild-ass ideas about bringing back IOWA class BBs and refitting them with all this "stuff", etc. If anyone recalls, LONG BEACH was retro-fitted with (2) 5"/38" single mounts so that she could actually participate in off-shore ops during the Vietnam War. We high lined with her one day and the ship looked "odd" with weapons that simply didn't fit her "age group".

Once again, thanks for adding a bit of fun & intellectual "spoofing" for the crew!!!

Hank

I had hoped that someone would respond to my little hoax. I am quite aware of the complexities of what the support systems require. The ship had plenty of volume for all this stuff. The various balasting capabilities allow for plenty of stability, after all a whole LCT could be carried on an LST as deck cargo. Perhaps the hardest issue would be the cam's for controlling the difference in position for the mount vrs. the director. The space below the mount was merely a little storage space and plenty easy to run supporting structure below that. Ammo, in plenty amongst the amphibious force, many of the members of the gator navy had 5" mounts, including the LSMR's which she acted as mother hen. These ships had one thing which most warships did't have, a lot of volume. She had decent light AA for a ship her size but not the longer range AA. If I were Captain Flanigan I'd want some more defense for the home Islands invasion. Small reduction in repair capability and a significant increase in defense!

It would never fly through BuShips...

Tom,

Interesting!

Adding the twin 5"/38 mount and the Mk 37 director was a lot more complicated than simply bolting them to the deck. They would need a fire control system linking the director and the mount. This consisted of a Mk 1 computer/rangekeeper and a lot of wiring. Since there was only one mount it could be wired through the computer directly to the director. Without the computer to calculate lead angles and burst times the probability of hitting an aerial target was essentially zero. Even with the entire fire control system the probability was pretty low. After the war it was calculated that 1000 rounds (of all types) were needed to score one kill. Even with the proximity fuze late in the war a shot from the 5"/38 still had a pretty low probability of destroying an airplane.

The gun required a handling room directly below the mount and magazines for powder and shells. The superstructure below the mount and director would have to be beefed up quite a bit. And adding all that mass topside would change the metacentric height and affect the stability of the ship. An amount of mass equal to (or greater than) the mount, handling room and director and the beefed up support would have to be removed first. That's a lot of surgery for the ship! Doing all of this at a forward base would be challenging.

Then there would be the problem of getting the Naval Supply System to provide ammunition. Larger combat ships would have priority. I don't know how it was during WWII, but when I was in the Navy if a part or supply wasn't on the allowed parts/supply list you couldn't get it from the supply system. Well, that was the theory, but we got a lot of stuff on the little minesweeper I was on by trading 5 pound cans of coffee and canned hams (COMSHAW)! But ammunition could be tricky.

Phil

A little known and off the books project in preparation for Operation Coronet was a Kamikaze upgrade undertaken by Captain Flanagain, with the help of his experienced chiefs and enterprising repair officer. To lighten ship for voyages of damaged picket destroyers off Okinawa much top weight was removed. Having some stroke in the repair/salvage community seemed a waste to not upgrade the firepower before venturing into Japanese home waters. In the event the end of the war stopped completion of the upgrade.

Tom

Bow AA positions manned.

Question:

Who would recommend a Kakhi paint for figure uniforms? Crew populating Poseidon at the moment = 39

Thanks: Tom

Going through a lot of Orlikon loaders, Randall has 10 20 mm's so that makes for a lot of loaders. Each one of a batch is a different figure, the figure can be sized, mirrored and each magazine is hand merged with some mirrored etc. Made a CPO overseeing goings on with an evil eye from one of the officer figures. I think I can make a phone talker by merging a large helmet onto a figure. For Randall's 5" mount I can add carried items such as 5" shells or powder casings. Slowly getting better at painting these little "gentlemen". Variations in tone of chambray shirts and dungarees (and skin tone) helps create a miss cognition of greater diversity.

Tom

Two steps forward, several steps back and at it again. Murphy's law says if there are two different types of resin on the bench, you will refresh with a slosh of the wrong one. As a test to see what might happen I went ahead and ran a batch anyway. Now't... Nutt'n. So the good news not a lot of resin. Emptying the vat revealed time to replace the FEP (Film) and re calibrate. So ran a batch of my various ) everyone different) 20 mm loaders. They cane out just fine though a couple were a little bow legged? So spent some time painting, grey primer overall, blue trousers, chambray shirts, flesh tones, black magazines and shoes, then a little grey touchup. So installed a couple on Poseidon though Randall will end up with a bunch more. The surprise was the cheapest possible detail brush was much mo-betta than the expensive one's I am won't to use.

A suitable brush makes life easier.

I think the sitting gunners can be shoehorned into the sky lookouts, that makes for 12 new crew for the APA! Poseidon only has 2. Randall gets 10-14 lookouts and who knows whatever number of searchlight jockeys, and on and on. I will avoid populating the decks with hundreds of assault troops?

My old girlfriend tossed out my dad's WWII Officers work coat, with thin pile lining. Wish I still had it, needed a new brass zipper.

Tom

Printed a small squad of Orlikon loaders. Designed a single detached magazine and moved it in Chitubox into the open arms of one of the figures, such that it was resting in his hands. The figure and magazine, though two pieces print as one joined piece. However every single figure and mag must be hand joined, they do not copy as a unit. I got 8 good ones, enough for Poseidon but Randall (APA) will need many more. I can vary them a bit, mirror the figure, change the orientation of the magazine and whatnot.

Tom

Today painting and installing weather decks crew members. So far no adult supervision, Chiefs and (maybe) junior officers. On deck crews for the 40's on the APA and ARL are complete, lacking a few second loaders. I have been able to take a sitting pointer/trainer figure and slip it into the sky lookouts. Lots of those. Added a couple of Quartermasters on the bridge wings taking Pelorus bearings on both ships. I need (a lot) of Orlikon loaders with drums. I think I may be able to merge a drum and figure in Chitubox to get an acceptable loader figure. Maybe... So printing more figures! No Pacific Officer colors onboard as yet.

Cheers: Tom

Sometime, and I haven't found out exactly when, the ship was repainted from the green amphibious camo scheme to the grays. I believe this was perhaps in July 1945 at Hagusha Beach or Kerama Reto. It is the same color I used for Randall, self mixed from Golden Fluid Acrylics, White/black/Pthalo Blue/purple to match a 21% reflectance as reference to Kodak 18% grey card for density (measured with Minolta Spotmeter F and Gossen Luna Pro). Color balance eyeballed under varying light conditions for the original batch in comparison to Snider & Shorts color chips. Unfortunately the Chips are misplaced currently. Photos generally taken under studio strobes with a Canon 5D sR. I notice some color shift in the photos between JPEG and Raw images. Generally I use photo stacking to increase depth of field from raw images. Then 95% of the image info is tossed out in conversion to small JPEG's for posting.

I did have access to the green camo scheme for this particular ship but no access to suitable greens for mixing and no experience with working with them.

It's not perfect. The photo above is slightly over exposed with shadows brought up in the raw file in photoshop to keep from loosing crew details in the shadows.

Tom

What type of gray color is used on your ship and what year, Tom?

Tom,

Your crew has certainly added a new dimension to the overall effect of the model - well done! Those small amounts of color really bring out some of the more interesting details that otherwise might be missed.

Hank