Continued...
Going back to the ships now...
Hull damages:
Here begins a fascinating part of this project (the very part which determined its choice, I must confess): this is entirely based on the so called �Damage Reports� the US Navy produced throughout the War for every damaged ship.
A large number of them are available on Web and they show real "autopsies" of every ship.
Thanks to Tracy White at:
http://researcheratlarge.com/Ships/
Also :
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/WDR/index.html
Along with report text, they include damage pictures and some very detailed plans of damages.
Minneapolis suffered two main damages this night:
1- Her entire bow, forward of capstans was demolished and bent downward to an angle of 70�.
Damage description:
After cutting-off the bow:
In dry-dock, showing the damaged section:
And � Minnie � underway for Mare Island with temporary steel plates bow:
2- A torpedo hit in the no2 boiler room vicinity :
The damages:
A spectacular opening to the Sea:
The opening is right under the armour belt (of which one full plate is missing). It will show easily through the
diorama transparent resin.
Now the build:
Scribing the damaged areas:
� THE � frightening moment� was cutting out the bow:
Both halves are shortened up to the next undamaged bulkhead.
Those sections are then scanned to get the correct shape and dimensions to design a PE bulkhead section.
And there goes another custom PE!
First I designed the PE simply by directly CAD drawing on the original plans:
Same for boiler room area: (I�m using USN official plans of Tuscaloosa as a guide)
Building (!) the damaged areas (PE, plasticard and cyano glue bonded paper -thanks to Jim Baumann for this later trick)
First comes the #2 boiler room structure:
Digging the hole into the hull:
Dry fit:
Et voil� !
To be continued...
_Bruno
arghh!! 
