The Ship Model Forum

Okay, here’s the start of my USS Sims conversion set for the Dragon 1/350th Benson.

A little background... This is really meant to represent either USS Sims or USS Hughes in 1941-42. There are some wonderful photos of both ships care of a photo CD that Devin Poore sent me awhile back (thank you!), but especially Hughes, that supply a great deal of detail, and since I’m partial to early war vessels, the choice was obvious. I’m using the Floating Drydock’s Sims plans, as well as those from Profile Morskie, but the photos are the final word as I’ve found that while the plans aren’t wrong, they are sometimes lacking in details.

The basic parts are CADded up in 1/96th scale in Alibre/Geomagic Design and then scaled to 1/350th. Moment of Inspiration, a great NURBs based program, is used for some of the organic shapes like the gussets on the funnel’s base. Don’t worry, they’ll be placed as soon as the rest of the part is done. Geomagic just can’t handle the loft, while MOI can. Geomagic is super for 2D drawing and I love what it can do when it isn't crashing (Grrrr....), while MOI is rather intuitive and easy to learn, and again, is super at handling organics.

Anyway, I’m at the design freeze point for both the midships deckhouse and the funnel. I’ll need to scale them and then do the remaining small details in 1/350th to ensure that the walls aren’t too thin for printing. A lot of the small details like bolts and rivets are probably unprintable in 1/350th, but maybe someday soon they will be as the technology improves, so I've included them. So, what did I do wrong? Where can I improve the parts? The after deckhouse is yet to come and maybe a few other items, but I want to finish what’s already been done before moving on to it.

The midships deckhouse and its small details are specific to Hughes, but as she and Sims were built in the same yard, I’m assuming (yeah, I know that can be dangerous) that they would have been pretty much identical early on in their careers. I’ve not placed rain gutters over the hatches and portholes as I can’t see any. Can anyone confirm them on Hughes or Sims in 1942?

The funnel is another matter. There are a lot of subtle shapes in there and the various ships of the class had slightly different funnels, mainly with the piping and the whistle platform arrangements. I’m doing the piping as Sims/Hughes-specific as possible, but am then falling back on pictures of Russell to fill in the blanks. There is a large mushroom vent at the main deck level that pokes up in between the forward uptake legs, so no worries, I haven’t forgotten that. As an aside, I do believe that the various building yards handled the funnels differently, as photos often show very subtly different shapes to the base, legs and gussets. There's nothing I can definitively point to, but different funnels from different ships built in different yards often have ever so slightly different appearances to my eye, however subtle.

Thoughts? Stuff I’ve totally botched and screwed up? I'd like to fix things now before the drawings are scaled and finalized. I've already uploaded a test file to Shapeways and they claim that the deckhouse is printable in 1/350th, but we'll see - I've heard that from them before only to have parts rejected during printing.

Thank you for any pointers or ideas.

Bob

PS. Here's the Photobucket album with a few more pics in larger size/DPI: http://s231.photobucket.com/user/aptiva ... t=4&page=1

Bob,

You certainly are correct that ships of the same class can be different. I have been studying the Cleveland class (27 ships in three versions from four yards) and there were a lot of changes over five years.

Different yards have their own ways of doing things, no matter what the blueprints show. But even in one yard there may be incremental changes. As ships are built errors are often found in the drawings, or just better or faster ways to do things are discovered. Drawing revisions are published periodically and applied to new construction, so two ships being built side by side may have noticeable differences.

Furthermore, during WWII ships in forward areas often didn't get any upgrades until they had enough battle damage to bring them back to a shipyard or tender. And then there are the changes made to individual ships by the crews - a cleat here, a life raft there, and maybe even a new compartment topside. In classes with a lot of ships it is likely that no two were alike by the end of the war.

With the Clevelands many of the revision drawings have been lost, so photos of the particular ship at the desired time are essential for seeing how the ship was actually constructed.

You model looks great!

Phil

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Many thanks! This is a tougher project than I originally thought, but worth it. I've always liked the prewar ships. After this, I may do a full on Porter, Farragut or DE, hull and all, if the insanity grabs me. No more work on the conversion as I had my first physical therapy today to rehab after some major surgery. Man, I'm wiped out.

I thought the Clevelands only came in two versions, round and square bridged. What was the third? I prefer the round bridged ships, personally. That bridge just gave them a more streamlined, classic look.

Bob

Okay, the funnel received its cap today. I'm not sure about the shape, though., Thoughts?

http://s231.photobucket.com/user/aptiva ... t=4&page=1

Moment of Inspiration rocks, even for a neophyte like me.

Ideas? Thoughts? The gussets are there, as is the funnel cap. The piping will naturally be extended and all, but what about the basic shape? Does it look proper to you all?

Bob,

Some say there were four versions of the Clevelands - counting the Fargos, but the Fargos were a pretty drastic variation from the Clevelands, just as the Clevelands were extensively redesigned Brooklyns.

The first variant was the Cleveland CL-55 and Columbia CL-56. And these two ships had some significant differences. But in the engineering plant they had a cruising turbine for long slow cruising to save fuel. They had a relatively small anti-aircraft battery.

The second version, CL-57-CL-63, were basically like the first two, without the cruising turbines. The war had started and the Navy figured they wouldn't be doing much slow steaming. Removing the cruising turbines freed up space in the engine rooms and reduced overall weight. They had additional gun positions, radars, etc. that weren't on the first two ships.

Version 3a, CL-64 and CL-65 had the armored pilot house removed to reduce topside weight. This allowed more anti-aircraft guns to be added. The square front pilot house was added and the bridge wings were cut back drastically to allow for greater arcs of fire for the anti-aircraft guns. Version 3b, CL-66 to CL-105 had the aluminum superstructure of older versions replaced with steel. Aluminum was needed for aircraft production, and using steel eliminated the galvanic corrosion of an aluminum/steel structure.

Of course there were a lot of significant modifications made during wartime production. There are some good discussions on the Cruisers Forum/Cleveland thread, and there is a brief history of the Cleveland class here:

http://www.okieboat.com/Cleveland%20Cla ... story.html

Phil

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Interesting, thanks, I hadn't known about the cruising turbines, nor about steel being subbed in for aluminum in the later ships. That couldn't have helped their top weight problems as AA weapons and radars were added later in the war.

Cleveland is a particular like of mine because my family is from there. Someday, I'll build a model of her early in the war, wearing MS. 12 modified.

Bob

Working on the whistle platform. The little attachments linking the piping to the front of the funnel were apparently little pieces of sheet metal, among other things, so I've had to simplify things to make it (hopefully) printable.

Here's the forward piping. As I can't find any pics of how those forward pipes terminate, I just carried them down to the main deck level and placed a little reinforcer there to better allow it to be glued to the main deck. The reinforcer isn't canon at all, but it will need to be there for printing. Otherwise, those pipes are viewed as "hanging wires," and they usually won't print.

Can anyone offer suggestions on this solution? Does it look okay or totally wonky?

Thanks,

Bob

Bob, I would post some of your work in the CASF thread since you're asking questions of historical accuracy - destroyer specialists like Rick keep an eye out up there more often than down here.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

Thanks, I had considered it but as this is a CAD file I was worried that it might not fit into the category properly. Thanks for the okay, I shall do so.

Bob

Working on the whistle platform. A lot of details have had to be simplified for clarity and for printing. Plus, I don't have any plans of the platform itself, so I'm going off of photos. Any scaling or detail errors are my own.

Bob,

Do you have any photos showing details of the whistle and siren? I suspect they are pretty generic across the fleet.

I have posted some images of the whistle/siren on the Clevelands here:

http://www.okieboat.com/CAD%20smoke%20pipes.html

If this is what was on the Sims class I have blueprints for the whistle, siren, and condensate collection system. The whistle and siren used steam from the boilers, and this was double distilled boiler water. Each device had a steam source pipe and a return pipe for condensed water so it could be reused.

Also, the pipes were insulated, so they were much larger outside diameter in most places, but the lagging was missing where the support clamps fit around the pipes.

Phil

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

Thank you, you rock. Yes, I have some pics but they're a tad blurry so I'm freelancing some details to make them fit the photos, although I must admit that they're interpretations as much as anything else. Also, there were differences between ships, so a generic whistle platform is what I've come up with. It is similar, with the cutout in the center for crew access, and whistles to both sides. What you have is absolutely gorgeous, but the way. Beautiful work. Someday, that will be printable and then look out. What a wonderful day for modeling that will be.

Bob

Actually, what's on the Sims-class looks like a mini version of what's on the Clevelands. Super!!!

Thank you!

I will have to sacrifice some details to make it printable, but that clears up a ton of details!!

Thank you again,

Bob

Great looking work on this, as always, Bob. Really excited to see this!

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We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

I'm not sure if these will help or just add to the confusion. One as you already know, the configuration of these destroyers changed during the war and some variation took place depending on where the yard work was done at and WHEN. The Pacific and Atlantic based units had fairly noticeable differences. Finding detailed views of the area between the bridge and stack on almost any destroyer type is a REAL CHORE. It just wasn't an area that got much attention in making Mods. Also, you will find that this area seemed to have a variety of added on platforms intended for walkways and for stowage. The stowage platforms can REALLY vary from ship to ship since they fell more into the "crew-desired" modifications category.

In an effort to address your questions about the "Steam Whistle" pipe routing and configuration in general, I have posted some close-up views of DD-411 and DD-413 in 1943 post upgrade overhauls at MINY. The Photobucket views show profile views of the area between the bridge and stack including the Whistle. I tried to locate a good OVERHEAD view or a view from FORWARD of the whistle area taken in a yard somewhere, but I couldn't locate a good one that was in focus or very close-up. At the bottom are two overhead views of the same two destroyers taken in 1946 just prior to their use in the Bikini Tests. DD-413 was the only SIMS class unit to complete the Anti-Kamikaze Mod.

It looks to me like the steam lines follow the contour of the stack forward face and then go down just aft of the mushroom vent positioned between the two forward "legs" of the uptakes. I have drawings for these ships, but they don't really show this detail very well. The "vent" located there shows up on the 01 deck level of some drawings, but the vent passage on the main deck doesn't show nor the steam line entrance below decks. The attached view shows the location of the mushroom vent and you can assume that the steam line passes through the deck just aft of it.

One of the interesting things that these views show is the starboard side walkway from the bridge area aft. There isn't a corresponding walkway on the portside.

Thank you so much, everything helps. The differences between the steam lines has me stumped, and is the reason I've decided upon a more generic look. In 1/350th, the small differences hopefully won't be too noticeable should the builder decide to use the funnel for a different ship than Sims or Hughes. I can see where the two outboard pipes change in contour as they near the platform, but I can't get this danged CAD program to replicate that.

Bob

Looks like there is a center hot steam supply line with lagging, and two outboard condensate return pipes without lagging.

At the top I think I can see a whistle and a siren, but I can't enlarge these off-site images to get a better look.

Below the platform is some stuff wrapped in lagging - possible the steam separators.

Phil

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

It also looks like the center pipe doglegs away forward from the funnel about 2/3rds of the way up. I'll need to redo the design to reflect that. Currently, that center pipe just touches the forward curve of the funnel lip where is shouldn't. My new PC is coming soon and the current one keeps crashing whenever the CAD program gets fired up, so I may not make any changes for a few days.

Bob