The Ship Model Forum

Post-commissioned 11-19-41

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Southern by Birth, Tennessean by the Grace of God!

I have been working on a model of HORNET for many years now. Very painful, but trying to get it right. I have the FD YORKTOWN plans as well as another set from an Australian whose name escapes me right now. The vast majority of the time spent has been my on again, off again battle to get the hull shape correct. To make a long story short, I have used the BWN HORNET as a resin plug donor. (no, I wouldn't do that again, but here I am.) I am comfortable that with my set of body plans and templates and a base plate jig I am converging on the right hull form. Beats me how some people think the BWN or Trumpeter hull seem close, but I'm not looking to start a fight. My point here is that I am going to get it right at all (or most) costs. I also have access to the YORKTOWN builder's model, all sixteen feet of it. It really helps to see that model and the three-D perspective it adds to the blueprints. The catwalks are much easier to undertstand, especially to the port side since most plans and photos only show the starboard side.
I think I have most of the best references available including the HORNET damage report, Wiper's book, Friedman's carrier book, and a few others as well as Navsource of course. My problem is making sure I account for all the changes to HORNET from the YORKTOWN plans. It took me awhile to realize that the forward 1.1" tubs were moved forward and the forward clipping room is bigger, for example. It also appears the second pallisade is wider (port to starboard) and further aft than on YORKTOWN. Since most of the plans I have are for YORKTOWN, is there some reference someone can point me toward to help me do a good job? I'm not really asking for a lengthy list here, just some help heading to the source. I suspect many have been down this same road and I don't want to get an 'Aw Crap!' sinking feeling after I finish and spot something I should have caught.
Thanks for any help.

John, you want to get the USS Hornet Blueprint book from Maryland Silver Co. It has Hornet as commissioned. From there, the yard photos taken in Norfolk in Feb 1942 will guide you through the changes made, including 20mm armament, prifly, and flag bridge mods, as well as other island platform changes and other details. The Australian Yorktown set you have is by Webb Warships and is one of the best CV5 plans available from a modeling point of view. Hornet's hull was identical, save fewer portholes. Your description of the hull inaccuracies on both Trumpy and BWN is well known and has been holding me up as well. I have a fully resin filled Trumpy hull awaiting attack with a Mototool! See my article with Jeff Herne on this site dated 2/14/03 in the What's New section.

The Blueprint book will give you the correct flight deck changes, including the forward 1.1 locations you aptly discovered. It will also give you the correct pilot house shape and shape of the forward face of the island at flag bridge level. (It is curved). E-mail me if you need help and I'll try to keep you off the reef. (Forty plus years of research on these ships under my belt!) http://www.marylandsilver.com/http://www.modelwarships.com/features/current/hornet_v_yorktown/hornet_yorktown.htm

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Mike

Mike -
I respect your postings on the subject and hoped you would respond. I saw those plans you mentioned, but didn't know of anyone who'd used them. The Webb plans are indeed good. However, if you are using them I'd suggest comparing a dimension in several views before transfering them to a model. I found that the body plan templates for the aft stations (12 -21) did not agree with the fore stations (1-11) in their half-width of the main (hangar) deck. Neither of those half widths agreed with the same dimension in the plan view. I found this out when I noticed about .060 difference in the deck half-width between stations #11 and #12. Not much, maybe, but noticeable in 1/350th. Had to alter all the templates appropriately. I cannot explain any copying process that would stretch and shrink those dimensions - I think the drawings are just not exact.
I'll get in touch with Maryland Silver - located in West Virginia I think. Thanks.
John

Might not be a copying issue. The paper itself can expand and contract with moisture content. I'll check my old browned copy and see what it shows. I'm at work now so it might be a few days before I can dig them out and measure.

Mike

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Mike

Mike -
I don't think the problem is a moisture issue because the errors are all on the same sheet in both X and Y directions and involve both larger and smaller close to one another. It is the same body plan as I think you used in the BWN / Trump comparison. Anyway, forewarned is forearmed. Ouch, hate getting forearmed.
While I'm at it, I'll blame you and Jeff for this project taking years. I was reasonably happy tapering down the BWN hull casting to fit what I thought I saw in photographs until I saw the Revell model's hull form compared directly. I also had a friend in my local ship modeling club point out there is essentially no parallel midbody at all in the hull. Maybe two stations long (#11 to #12), but certainly not a parallel midbody equal to half the waterline length.
Anyway, I hope you feel guilty.

LOL! That Revell hull is a killer ain't it? Nothing like seeing the real shape side by side with that supertanker tub! Actually, there is a fairly decent mid section run where the main deck (hangar) comes pretty close to parallel. Certainly more than two stations. Also, the Webb drawing has many lines merging in the mid section and in the scale of the plan, the lines themselves are nearly a scale foot wide. Possibly, the lines aren't fine enough to deliniate any subtle non-parallelism. I'll take a look at the official USN plan in the Hornet blueprint book later. Meanwhile, I have been thinking the Revell kit may still be the better choice. I'd rather correct all the details than make a whole new hull. Lack of 1/487th scale planes is the issue. Here is what an exceptionally well done Revell kit can look like: http://www.smmlonline.com/articles/yorktown/yorktown.html

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Mike

A question: you guys have mentioned points where the main/hangar deck runs "parallel". Do you mean that the kit parts correspond to the plans, or that the vertical sides of the hull are parallel to each other?

I have a Trumpy and BWN kit and I've always planned on just cutting everything below the hangar deck off of the hull and framing the lower hull in with styrene. It won't be 100% accurate, I'm sure, but it'll be closer. Is the actual hangar deck, when looked at from overhead, fairly close to the plans?

Thanks,

Devin

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

Devin,

I wasn't refering to the verticals of the hull, but the overhead view of the hangar deck. In short, the overhead view of the Trumpy hangar deck is pretty good. Everything from there down is wrong! If my fill it with resin and grind away plan fails, your solution of framing out a hull from hangar on down will be my next route. The forepeak flare may still need a bit of correcting as well, but most of the issues are hangar on down.

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Mike

John,

I have the Hornet's huge blueprint book open as I type. There is indeed a substantial section of hangar deck amidships where the edges of the port and starboard sides run parallel to each other when viewed from above. Page 31 shows the midships hangar deck overhead view. The ruler gives the same exact width measurement (4 and 1/8 inches) from just forward of the island to a point just in front of the midship elevator. From there aft the taper is very shallow, narrowing to 4 inches wide at the start of the aft elevator pit. Don't give up the ship just yet on Webb (which is the only plan set I know that has these type of easy- to-convert-to-model-template cross sections) . I cannot account for the slight demensional variance you encountered, but there are several midship stations where the lines at the hangar deck should merge, indicating the same hangar deck breadth.

The previous was me, not a guest. Not sure how I got logged out...never signed off from Devin's post...




Mike

Nice. Thanks for the info. If the hangar deck is close then I can work with it to my satisfaction. That was my biggest concern. Hopefully I can actually start building one or both of those kits within the next year or so. I have the Webb plans (still need to reduce a copy to 1/350th) and I filled out the order form for the Maryland Silver CV-5 plan book last week. I can see myself eventually doing 3 versions of CV-5, and maybe one each of CV-6 and -8.

Thanks again. I haven't sat down and done a line-by-line comparison with the kit because the plans are not he same scale, and your info on the hangar deck being close makes my ideas seem plausible.

-Devin

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

Okay, gang--

Since this mind-boggling discussion has me thoroughly cactused, I have what might seem a really, REALLY stupid question for you; if you have answered it already, I cannot detect it within all the encoded text that precedes this post!

I have on hand, a Trumpy 1:700 CV8 Hornet. I don't especially care for that particular ship, but thought I could turn it into a Yorktown CV5 (preferred) or possibly Enterprise CV6 without much trouble.

Given what you gurus know about the Hornet, am I in for major problems with such an undertaking? Are the differences between the ships significant enough to perhaps get hold of a Tamiya kit and possibly combine parts? I want to build it full-hull not W/L, so I would be especially curious as to the differences between the hulls of the ships, themselves---not the easier-to-alter superstructure and flight decks.

Can I "bury" a few skeletons and just leave the Trumpeter hull as-is, and stick with the superstructure/hangAr modifications?

Thanks,
Dan

I also have the Maryland Silver Co. Hornet plans. Excellent resource. The only thing I don't like is a lot of the dimensions are hard to read.

I have been working on the Trumpy 1/350 Hornet off and on for about 4 years now. Same frustration with the hull and almost everything else that is wrong with the model.

I was thinking about doing a scratchbuilt hull until I found this website on the Calling all ship fans CV-6 thread the other day with a good fix for the hull http://web.mac.com/davidgatt/iWeb/The%20Carriers/CV6%20Enterprise.html . I have gone a little further since I saw this. I cut back the lower hull (starting about 1/16" from the front to have something to use as a guide) to a point about 1/2 way back where the hanger deck starts to curve towards the bow. I had already cut off all of the cross braces on the upper hull. This allows the sides to angle in. I then cut the mounting lip off of the lower hull stopping about an inch from the stern for alignment/support and installed .030 thk styrene strip on the original mounting face of the upper hull so that it mounts inside of the lower hull. I still need to build the new section and then shave/sand off about .030 off the sides of the lower hull to get everything to match. Not exactly correct but so far it does give the impression of the upper hull angling inwards before it meets the lower hull. I will post some pictures once I figure out how. Do all of this BEFORE the hanger deck is glued down. I had already started work before I decided the hull was a major eye sore so I got some cracks in the upper hull that I need to patch.

Several other things I am changing on mine are:

Island. It should be .463" (13'-6") wide according to plans. It measures .537" (15'-8").

Flight deck: Using Nautilus wood deck but it is to short. Should stick out over stern 15' including rounddown. Overall length should be 27.91" (814'-0"). There are a few other flaws with it also.

Lengthening hull: should be about 27 3/4" (809'-9") measures out about 27 1/2". It appears that the forecastle deck is short.

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David Sewell

Mike -
There's no question the main deck / hangar deck is parallel over a considerable length, and that the Trumpy main deck / hangar appears to be very close to right. But the hull flares up to meet that deck, so if you look on the plans at the next waterline down from the main deck (on the Webb plans, #9 or #11? - don't have them handy here at work) and put a straight edge along it, it is not parallel for very much of its length. This shows in the body plan. That flare is what Trumpeter did not add, and likewise they just carried the side down vertically from the parallel hangar deck to produce the hull with a long 'tanker' parallel midbody. I couldn't see whether this was done correctly to the Revell model or not, but I suspect it was. My biggest 'Aw Crap' (well, not those exact words) was when I noticed that a very deep flare up to the hangar deack carried well aft of the hangar deck cat sponsons. Again, I blame people who shall remain nameless, but whose initials are MV and JH.
Mike, Dave, and others -
Unfortunately, I have tried several other ways to get the hull right before settling on the carved resin option. If I didn't have so much invested emotionally in it, I would use basswood lifts and carve the hull. I tried removing the braces on the Trump hull and squeezing the waterline inward and holding it with new braces and massive amounts of superglue and clamps. It seemed to work at first, but stress cracks developed in the plastic, and the hangar deck took a noticeable twist. At that, there was just no way to get the bow narrow enough to be acceptable. I thought of filling the Trump hull with resin, and did so in the bow area, but I just couldn't get the whole assembly square, so I returned to the donor BWN hull and started grinding and sawing away. I refused several suggestions that I just use the lift method to carve a wood hull. I should have done that. When I go to build ENTERPRISE in 1942, I will do just that. Anyway, I expect to use much of the Trumpeter kit above the hangar deck. While I'm at it, I should point out that there is a knuckle in the flare that supports the forward 5" gun galleries. It does not show up in any other plans I've seen. If you look carefully on good photographs,you will see it. It is clear on the builder's model. It occurs at the forecastle deck level, on the aft third of the flare supporting the gun gallery. It reflects a change in the angle of the flare up from the waterline to slightly more vertical at that point.
All is not lost, as I am determined to see this through. The frustration I have is the amount of time spent to get the hull right before even doing the detail work. I feel like a blacksmith sometimes.

I only lightly dabble in 1/700, so the particulars of the Tamiya kit are foggy to me. I have read, though, many times, that the Tamiya kits are a bit under-sized for 1/700 scale. Also, there are issues with the island as well, I believe it's far too narrow. The hull shape is supposedly perfect, but it is only waterline. Trumpeter did a knock-off of those kits back in their early days that included a lower hull, so you could probably find one of those on the cheap to do the full hull.

Going from Hornet to Yorktown or Enterprise will require some surgery. The flight deck is different. 1.1" gun placement is different. AA loadout is different - I think that Hornet kit has 20mm mounts. Yorktown when sunk still had a large number of water-cooled .50 cal machine guns. There are also differences in the islands between the ships.

So, yes, you can do a conversion, but you will need plans and photos and the desire to sit down to some serious cutting and fabricating.

-Devin

p.s. those are just my thoughts. I don't claim to be a guru, just someone who is really into Yorktown.

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

RNFanDan -
To answer your question best, I'd suggest going back to the link Mike posted on this thread in response to my first post - the comparison between the BWN resin kit and the Trumpeter kit. In that posting there is a body plan of the YORKTOWN class hull showing the half-width cross sectional templates for the hull shape. Your angst level will determine how far you want to go. I'm not familiar with the 1/700 offerings, but have heard the Trump HORNET uses the same wrong hull as the 1/350 version Mike reviewed. In simple terms, the flight deck and hangar deck - the reason for the ship's existence, are as rectangular as possible to maximize space available. The hull part which is necessary to get the ship through the water at thirty knots has different constraints. On this particular ship class, below the hangar deck there are virtually no flat surfaces anywhere. There is a noticeable flare from the waterline up to the hangar deck everywhere along the side of the ship - not rendered in the Trumpeter hull in the mid section between thw forward and aft 5" gun galleries. Even the bottom is not flat over most of the hull bottom once you get away from the keel. Study at the cross sections carefully and you'll see what I mean. Think of it as a topographic map. At the waterline, the bow starts off very sharply pointed and takes a long and narrow wedge shape (which is slightly concave under the forward 5" gun gallery), then it curves convex as it passes the hull midpoint and continues back around the stern. Frankly, some of the curves may not be noticeable in 1/700, and/or if you choose to waterline it. If the ship were mounted on its base so as to appear to be rolling or pitching in a heavy sea, it would be hard to see much of this as well. But, if one chooses to build a full hull, it will be much harder to disguise it or distract the viewer. Look again at the Revell hull and you can see that under the forward gun galleries the hull has a pronounced 'U' shape in cross section - not a flat bottom.
These ships have very graceful hull lines. The BWN and Trumpeter hull castings do not do them justice. Sigh. Trumpeter did a much better job on the LEX hull. Sigh again. I have chosen to duplicate the hull as best I am able to do. I took several shortcuts that I hoped would save time and produce an acceptable result. It did not for me. I thought I could 'eyeball' it close enough, but that didn't work either. So I finally bit the bullet and took a flat board, marked it for each of the hull stations, put two brass pins on the centerline so I could place the hull in the same location every time, and cut out individual templates for each hull station. I am homing in on the proper shape. As tedious as it is, when I compare the Trump hull next to my work in progress, I know I am doing the right thing. By volume, I have removed at least one third of the resin on the BWN hull casting - maybe more. That's why I will do the wood hull routine the next time. Once the layers are cut and glued, there will be much less material to remove by grinding, carving, sanding, cursing.
HTH.

I appreciate the tips.

The trumpeter 1:700 kit I am receiving this week, will be a full-hull version, but what concerns me the most is whether or not the hull is divided bilaterally along its longitudinal axis, or at the waterline, or both--the worst case I can think of, is that it will be in five pieces (L/R above waterline, L/R below waterline, and that red plastic horizontal waterline plate so often found in WL-only kits).

As this kit is not the 1:350 version, I am just as uncertain as you guys, whether it is a reduced "carbon copy" of the defective hull form found in its larger sibling. My primary concern is whether or not there were significant real-ship differences other than overall length--i.e., the plan sets and data I have on hand are nearly identical for Enterprise and Yorktown, but I have no idea if Hornet's dimensional disparities were primarily in the superstructure/hangAr/flight deck, or altered from the keel-up when compared to her sisters.

I can handle anything in need of change from the hull-up---including scratch-building an entire hangAr and FD--but alterations below the flared hull line at the base of the hangAr sides, although I can do these, I really don't want to spend that much effort on.

The whole point for me, is whether the kit is faithful to Hornet's correct form--if not, rather than simply correcting errors, I can accomplish two objectives at once by morphing the kit into CV5 or CV6; I won't waste the effort to correct the model as Hornet, itself, but will gladly do so if I can, at the same time, produce the others.

I may even pilfer the lower hull from the Trumpy 1:700 Hornet kit, and adapt it to another brand's WL-only version of CV5 or CV6, provided that the other brand is otherwise good-to-go. On a side note, I am aware that the older Revell 1:540 kit has a very good and accurate hull form--the bilge keels, hull taper, shaft locations and U-bottom are very faithfully reproduced--and perhaps, in the absence of 1:700 information, I can scale-down the sectional dimensions of that hull to 1:700, as a reference "jig".

In most of the postings and articles I have reviewed, the inaccuracies are with non-1:700 kits. At this point, I'll just have to wait for the delivery man to provide the unknowns. I will be more than happy to post any information on this newer CV8 from Trumpeter, it might just turn out that the 1:700 is a good-to-go kit OOB. I'd rather model CV5 or CV6, based on the historical records of those fine carriers, especially if the CV8 kit is in need of corrections.

Dan -
As Mike has said, the hulls are identical in all three ships as long as you do ENTERPRISE before her hull had the blisters added. When it was becoming apparent we were going to war, the USN ordered a third carrier of the CV-5 class in 1939/40 with minimal changes. The USN reasoned - correctly in view of the events of 1942 - that it was better to knock out one more ship, even with known deficiencies, that wait at least an additional year for the redesigned ship (ESSEX) to get commissioned. The changes to HORNET above the main deck are noticeable, but I don't think they are really major changes. Reversing them should likewise not be as major a change as redoing the hull. I fully subscribe to the idea that the modeler will decide how far he/she is willing to go. By my decision to redo the entire hull I am learning new techniques. Wish it had been a shorter, straighter path than it has.

Dan,

I totally missed that you said TRUMPY 1/700 kit and thought you said Tamiya. My bad.

Yes, the 1/700 kit has the same hull problems.

-Devin

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