John W. wrote:
Mike -
Roger. Looking aft and along the starboard side, I'm planning to use a 30 degree angle for about the first half the divergence, turning outward to a 45 degree angle until the forward edge meets the side of the box structure. As you've beat into my head, I will paint it 5-O. I will mix the paint for that 'new' area to a slightly darker shade to reflect the number of months it is newer than the 5-O already painted on at commissioning. (Just kidding.)
I'm assuming the photo you posted was from the movie unless the organization of the flight deck had broken down badly. Pri-Fly looks like a set fixture.
What is most fascinating about the whole story of the Raid and the aftermath is that it is not the product of a fiction writer's mind. All the twists and turns, narrow misses, and flat luck happened as they did - they were not invented to make a movie riveting. There were certainly several points at which the outcome could have been substantially different - for example, if the picket boat's report mentioned Army bombers on (HORNET's) deck (as if a fisherman would have known, but he could have) the Japanese might have prepared for the strike earlier -they were expecting short-range carrier aircraft.
In this face-paced world, there is still time to read the story and fully appreciate its complexity and drama. I recommend "I Could Never Be So Lucky Again" or "The First Heroes" as two I think do a good job. I haven't read "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" since High School so I don't remember how good it is.
John, I was just studying a blowup of that color shot. I think it is way more acute that 30 degrees for the first little section, say maybe 10-15 degrees. I think it is far less than the halfway point where is goes to 45 or so degrees. (Are we going at it from opposite directions? I am looking at it from outer edge of box structure going in. 10-15 degrees oriented against a port/stbd cross-ship beam line for first few feet increasing to about 45 until it hits the hangar bulkhead.)
The shot is a clip from Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, but I am fairly certain it is the actual "real" footage as they weaved in several real takeoffs into the movie. If you see it running, you'll realize it was not all movie set footage. Pri-fly and flag bridge have the right modifications that the set model did not. It was more "as built." Added key features to note, there is a man in prifly in second window back, and the canvas wind dodger around the roof of prifly, and the angled signal light bar on outer the edge of prifly, all not in the movie set models. It is grainy, but you can also see some camo pattern in prifly structure. Also, note the wet deck reflections next to the island. They may have grained it up to blend with set footage. I must have gone through that movie frame by frame! They did a good job for the time. Some set footage and model work is hard to spot. As for those books, read them all! If you last read TSOT in high school, you might want to get a recent printing. I got a hard cover recent print and it is a More lame spammers, please ignore, the moderators will delete version than the abridged youth oriented version we all read in the school library. Also, Ellen Lawson has added a nice postscript with lots of info in it.