The Ship Model Forum

With my wife and kids traveling today I started and made pretty good progress on my newest project, a scratchbuild 1/700 Merchant Aircraft Carrier.

For anyone unfamiliar, these little guys were a stop gap measure in WWII to provide air cover for convoys utilizing flat-top merchant ships converted from tankers or (as I'm building) grain carriers. They carried 4 Swordfish aircraft for armament, as well as their merchant cargo.

Model is a basswood hull, flight deck is black .030 Evergreen sheet styrene.


















Thanks for checking this out. Constructive feedback or reference material welcome.

_________________
-- Scott

Nice and quick progress. She's looking good.

great subject to do.

I built a tanker version a few years ago so have an interest in these ships. Where did you find the references for a grainer?

_________________
IPMS Fine Waterline Special Interest Group

Hi Rob -

I found usable GA plans in both "Ships in Focus Record 43" which has a couple of articles on the grain carriers, both in service and post war, with ok photo coverage.

"Selected Papers on British Warship Design in World War II", From the Transactions of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects, (reprint by Naval Institute Press), has the same grain carrier plan as well as some for the tankers. Nothing hugely detailed, but enough for 1/700 with profile and multiple decks.

Also one photo from my own collection, which I have not seen published before:



Also, if you've not run across them, these are very nice:

https://novascotia.ca/archives/EastCoastPort/archives.asp?ID=831
https://novascotia.ca/archives/EastCoastPort/archives.asp?ID=855
https://novascotia.ca/archives/EastCoastPort/archives.asp?ID=904
https://novascotia.ca/archives/EastCoastPort/archives.asp?ID=957
https://novascotia.ca/archives/EastCoastPort/archives.asp?ID=926

Thanks -
Scott

_________________
-- Scott

Is it just me or does the basic hull (apart from the stern) look like the hull of a liberty ship?
Liberty ships were developed from a british grain carrier design after all...
Nice work BTW.

Impressive work!

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Thanks for the kind words.

A little bit of progress today on the "hanger deck", crew quarters, etc. under the flight deck.

In order to get the top of these structures level with one another I used a little wooden jig, with some 320 grit W/D sandpaper attached with double-sided tape and some scrap wood boards to get the sanding jig to the right height.

Sharpie work is to judge where the high spots were while sanding.

Vertical columns around the hanger and rectangles on top of the deck house are hatch trunks to get the grain cargo into & out of the holds.











No serious setbacks so far with the build. I'm please with the way it's coming along.

_________________
-- Scott

Fascinating subject! Looking forward to following this build!

_________________
https://inchhighguy.wordpress.com/

Fantastic scratch building techniques!!! I will watch with great interest!

_________________
Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Genius! A flat deck is a good deck!