The Ship Model Forum

Phil:

In the B&W photos the sweep gear looks like it might be white, is this a possibility? Today I printed some floats and kites but forgot to reverse 1/2 the floats which seemed to be stowed fin inboard.

Tom

Our floats and kites were white. They need to be visible so the following ships can maneuver relative to them.

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Thanks Phil, that’s what I thought. It looked that way but you know well the vagaries of old photos. Working on a print of the bridge area, this will probably be a test, but it might work out. I painted the aft deckhouse clip shack and a bunch of small bits in my Zane Gray, airbrush was in a good mood for once. White, the goopiest of colors to paint with, harumph. I should paint the underside of overhangs white, something which I haven’t done.

Cheers: Tom

I printed the pilot house area of the superstructure, a little complex to lay out because of the sheer. So though looking boxy, not a lot of right angles. Rail added to the aft deckhouse and the top of the pilot house. It is becoming apparent that this vessel is quite cramped and as with the APA everything must be located accurately to have room for everything!

Tom

The bridge structure was reprinted as the auto primer I used had a bad reaction with the resin and remained goopy. Airbrushing directly with my Golden Acrylics worked much better. The raised platform aft of the bridge, sometimes called the "Bandstand" is now printed and will require careful fitting to the hull. This was an interesting feature of these ships and allowed working of a portion of the main battery in just about any seaway. The aft 3" 50 also sits on top of the aft deckhouse. It is somewhat difficult to divine exactly what the exact configuration was viv a vis the bulkheads. Some of the original destroyers had this walled off at the front with the aft open, some had this completely open. The presence of the splinter protection here on the 01 deck varies a lot. So far the interpretation is that there were tubs for the 20 mm forward but no bulwarks for the 3" 50's. This continues aft as the Orlikons all have tubs and the 3" 50's do not. The ships were originally fitted with a 4" weapon, but as a DMS the biggest need was for a lightweight dual purpose weapon as air attack was a significant hazard. This was especially true after the failure of the anticipated 1.1" auto canon quad.

Cheers: Tom

The drawings I have tend to indicate a four blade prop. However dry dock photos of the Four Pipers tend to show three blades. As a boiler was removed and less max speed as a result, the ships might or might not (costs money) had the original blades replaced. Currently I have 4 blade props but not too much of a deal to make 3 blade versions.

Building the Missouri in current configuration was easier as the ship was available to hand and I could take hundreds of photos. Still a lot of unanswered questions!

Tom

Currently working on attaching and fairing in the aft portion of the main deckhouse. This area was sometimes called the "bandstand" and sported two of the 3" 50 rifles and two 20 MM Orlikons, in effect half the armament. This elevation above the waterline insured workability of the guns in almost any seaway. Underneath was the galley (centerline) and some small working and storage spaces.

Below the main deck are several of the boiler rooms. These were, though oil fired, descendants of pressurized fire rooms with air locks for entry-egress. This was necessary for a forced draft system from the days when stokers stoked. As with most high speed ships, an astonishing amount of the volume was taken up by machinery. For many of the non fleet destroyers numerous Clemson's had one boiler room converted to other uses as for escort duties, minesweeping, APD's, seaplane tenders and whatnot 28-30 knots or so was entirely sufficient. Additional fuel capacity was also essential to operate over vast distances in support of the Fleet. For ASW they were used as DE's in effect, though having a little more turn of speed that the Buckleys etc, 24 knots was considered entirely sufficient for convoy work. One DE in particular did become famous in a Fleet Battle, the Sammy B Roberts at Leyte, getting a chance to use both her torpedos and pop guns against the Japanese Battle Line.

Photos sometime.... Tom

Tom,

The pressurized boiler was still in use after WWII (and to today?). The Clevelands' boiler rooms were not pressurized, but the boilers were enclosed in a pressurized shell, complete with air locks for access into the forced draft blower rooms.

Air was drawn in from a level a few feet below the top of the smoke pipes, down through an outer shell on the smoke pipes where it gained some heat from the inner shell where the hot exhaust gasses escaped. The forced draft blowers blew air into the outer pressurized casing around the boilers. From there some air entered the furnaces directly to support combustion and some flowed through the burners where it mixed with fuel oil before entering the furnace.

In essence, the burner assemblies were the equivalent of the stokers shoveling coal in earlier days.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Exactly! The shrouds over the boilers eliminated the need to pressurize the whole compartment. Not only did that make the compartment hotter a shell hit could cause a flashback.

Cheers Tom.

Happy "Sinko de Maino" to everyone.

Today very minor progress, test fitted for appearance purposes the four stacks, though I will only use three in finality. As a result of the testing, I changed the stacks (Pipe's as it was a four piper) slightly and are printing them now. I filled in the cooling intakes and am going to make a smaller set more appropriate to this ship. The bridge is almost ready to be attached and sports 12" signal lamps, deck binoculars and bridge chairs, ahnnnnd, a rangefinder.

The stacks, only slightly off vertical for printing slated to continue on for9 hrs and 45 mins. Ready in morning.

Cheers: Tom

DMS stacks still on the tree.

Tom

Tom,

The smoke pipes look good.

I started making the smoke pipes for the OK City out of brass, including some fancy "flattening" of some 3D parts so they could be photo etched. But assembly was pretty tricky and I got to a point that I needed better tools and a lot of patience.



However, I was doing the photo etch at home and just couldn't get good enough resolution for some of the detail parts like catwalks.



Seeing your results I may start over and try to print the parts. It certainly would be faster and easier than making all of those pieces out of brass! I still might use photo etch for the catwalks.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Phil:

The catwalks will always be tedious, but I think at your scale they might be doable. It might be good to do them separately, as a limiting part, you can work out the limits without having to reprint the whole funnel as you chase down the design and technique down.

Tom

Under the "wah hail" provision of model making, I forgot to include the padeyes for the stack guy wires....

New information always comes to light after the latest iteration has arrived. Zane was fitted with a fairly unique defector plate atop the stacks, mach as found on modern cruise ships, to help alleviate the stack gasses from burbling downward as half the armament is in the bandstand (top of galley deckhouse). So I added these and padeyes for stack guy wires.

Cheers: Tom

New condenser intakes added and the bridge structure now attached to the hull. I made a somewhat crude but completely useful building cradle so the ship can be solidly held and damage less likely as items are added topside. Flat bottomed hulls, don't have his issue, ie. APA, ARL, LSM. For a given hull displacement a semi rounded hull will reduce the area and achieve less skin friction. For large vessels with high speed hull forms (ie Alaska, Missouri etc) a flat bottom is still utilized to keep draft from becoming excessive with regards to dockyard facilities and the below waterline volume is needed for side protective systems. Destroyers can't be accused as to possessing much in the way of anything more than required to keep the water out. Fletcher's were a minor deviation as to having heavier plating by way of the engineering spaces to protect to some extent against strafing and splinters. When the Clemson's (Four Pipers) were designed, air attack was a very minor possibility.

Designed the bow anchor windlass. Though the Cambeltown AOS book has a drawing of the winch, photographs tend to show a somewhat different piece of equipment. So I went with the photo. A pretty small item so we shall see how well it prints. Next the unique anchor davit needs to be designed and constructed.

Both the engine rooms have an interesting series of hatches, a dozen or so each that can open for ventilation plus a series of large trombone style vents. Typical high speed warship, the black gang owns most of the hull volume leaving scraps at bow and stern for berthing and other ships functions. The lack of light AA, four single 20 mm Orlikons at least kept the crew size down. A USN WWII heavy Cruiser had a larger compliment than HMS Hood, approaching that of Bismarck. The culprit, the very effective AA compliment carried.

Tom

Current progress DMS Caine. Most of the stuff is just sitting on deck.

Tom,
That is really beginning to take shape - quite well done, I might add!! the details are going to really make for an interesting "small boy" to add to your collection.

Hank

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HMS III
Mocksville, NC
BB62 vet 68-69

Builder's yard:
USS STODDARD (DD-566) 66-68 1:144, Various Lg Scale FC Directors
Finished:
USS NEW JERSEY (BB-62) 67-69 1:200
USN Sloop/Ship PEACOCK (1813) 1:48
ROYAL CAROLINE (1748) 1:47
AVS (1768) 1:48