Dick J wrote:
The original Essex design had a more vertical bow. By the time she commissioned, a single quad 40MM mount had been added there. Another was extended from the stern on a small sponson. After 10 of these "short hull" ships had been started, there was a desire to increase the number of 40MM mounts, so the bow was extended (making the "long hull") and widened to allow 2 quad 40MM there. A new. larger sponson was designed for the stern to allow 2 quad 40MM there. To increase the arcs of fire for these new mounts, the forward flightdeck was shortened by 11 feet and the after end by 7 feet. Additionally, there was a "notch" cut out of the forward end of the port side flightdeck overhang (just aft of the forward 5" gun sponson) to allow for a third MK-37 director. The director would have interfered with flight ops, and so no ships were completed with it, instead adding 2 more quad 40MM on the sponson. Hancock and Ticonderoga both commissioned that way, but the air departments on the ships hated the flightdeck changes. Hancock deployed that way, but Tico had the notch filled back in and the forward 11 feet of flightdeck restored before leaving the east coast for the war zone. Tico had the after 7 feet of flightdeck added back when she was repaired in 1945. Hancock had some repairs done at Pearl, when the notch was filled in, but the flightdeck was not lengthened. Randolph and Shangri La launched with the shorter flightdeck, but both commissioned with the full-length deck. I can't say if they had the notch when launched, but neither had it upon completion. All subsequent Essex's had the full flight deck.
Dragon mistakenly put a shorter flightdeck on their Randolph kit, but it was only shorter at the forward end. They also made the forward deck of their Antietam kit shorter. I also think the Boxer deck was short. So the shortened decks in their kits are not correct for any ships of the class, and were often included on the wrong ships of the class. Tracy and I both tried working with Dragon to fix this, but (obviously) we got nowhere.
Do any of the trumpeter short hull kits have the full length deck? If not, doing some math, that means I would need to add a little more than 3/8 inches (or 9.6mm) to the bow end of the flight deck and a little less than 15/64ths (or 6.1mm) to the aft end. I have access to a CNC machine and a Bridgeport milling machine, so if the Yorktown Franklin or Essex kits don't have it then I think what I might do is mill a 1/8 inch slot to cut the ends of the flight deck pieces off, then using styrene sheet, add the necessary length plus 1/8 to fill it in. I can build these "lengthening inserts" as we might call them by either building them up using evergreen styrene sheets or CNC'ing it from a solid piece of styrene. I can get a custom wood deck with the extended length from Scaledecks.