Calling all USS Hornet CV-8 fans

[MikeSills]

in the bottom photo it's two F4F-3s (you can see the right mainmount on the second F4Fat the extreme left margin of the photo).

John,

Not to quibble, but the F4Fs would be -4 models with the folding wing. VF-8 was the first unit to receive the new version, and the folding wings allowed them to man up from 18 to the new establishment of 27 fighters. They had 30 aircraft available when Hornet left San Diego for Alameda to pick up the B-25s. I haven't been able to find out how many were aboard during the raid, but it's academic, since only a few could have been spotted on deck with the B-25s aboard. (Lundstrom, The First Team)

Cheers, Mike

[John W.]

in the bottom photo it's two F4F-3s (you can see the right mainmount on the second F4Fat the extreme left margin of the photo).

John,

Not to quibble, but the F4Fs would be -4 models with the folding wing. VF-8 was the first unit to receive the new version, and the folding wings allowed them to man up from 18 to the new establishment of 27 fighters. They had 30 aircraft available when Hornet left San Diego for Alameda to pick up the B-25s. I haven't been able to find out how many were aboard during the raid, but it's academic, since only a few could have been spotted on deck with the B-25s aboard. (Lundstrom, The First Team)

Cheers, Mike

Mike -
Quibble away! That's how we all learn.
When I looked at the picture in question, I did not see any evidence of a wing fold which would clearly indicate the -4. There is a bump in the upper surface of the wing about a third of the way back from the leading edge of the wing. I don't see the bump but it could well be obscured by the tie down line under the B-25's starboard wing. I did go back and look at a couple of references, one of which did state that HORNET sailed for the Doolittle Raid with 30 F4F-4s. I can't convince myself the cowl flaps are the larger ones characteristic of the -4 because the wing hides the lower edge. I saw several pictures of F4F-3s that appeared to have the four cowl flaps per side as did the -4. I did notice in this picture that there appears to be a circular vent at the forward edge of the sliding portion of the canopy. I did find that vent on pictures labeled -4 but not on any pictures labeled -3 variant. I did find the vent on pictures labeled -3A variant, however. Based on the picture alone I'd vote for the F4F as being either a -3A or a -4. The additional information seems to say it is, in fact, a -4.
In earlier shots of HORNET in February of '42, the F4Fs are clearly -3s since no wing fold is visible and the wings contain only two guns on each side. However, on page 55 of Wiper's YORKTOWN Class Carriers there's a photo of five F4F-4s,with wings folded, on HORNET's bow forward of Doolittle's aircraft. No MODEX numbers are visible to nail down if 8-F-26 is one of those five in the photo. But it would appear 8-F-26 is a -4 as Mike says.

[Hippy Ed]

Ok, I just received 2 more 1/700 CV-8 Hornets (One is the Tamiya, the other is the Minicraft.) I'm thinking of building one up at the time of her last battle & the other, I'm contemplating on converting to one of her sisters CV-5 or CV-6. Which would be the easier of the two to make from this? I'm thinking of converting the Minicraft kit.

Thanks,
Eddie

[jerryb]

3 day after after your first post and not 1 comment
i don't think so
this ships sailed
by by

[PeteM]

I tried looking through the thread but gave up after 5 or 6 pages trying to find the answer to this question. What period does the Tamiya 1/700 Hornet kit represent? I know that the only aircraft included are B-25's but does the fit match the Doolittle Raid time period?

[Michael Vorrasi]

I tried looking through the thread but gave up after 5 or 6 pages trying to find the answer to this question. What period does the Tamiya 1/700 Hornet kit represent? I know that the only aircraft included are B-25's but does the fit match the Doolittle Raid time period?

Pete, the Tamiya kit is more or less the correct rig for the first half of 1942, albeit with some errors in the kit. The flight deck is the wrong shape, being the CV-5/6 version, not the CV-8 version of the forward deck. Photos abound of the proper shape. The entire island is too skinny, as is the pilothouse, and there are some minor bridge platform errors because of this. Pri-fly is a bit wrong and mislocated. Other errors regarding the rig are a few mislocated or missing 20mm batteries. The portside aft set of five are too far forward, and need to be located where this five gun battery is on the CV-6 version of Tamiya's kit. The aft ramp corner 20mm tubs, and the four alongside the island are missing, and the aft catwalk single tubs aft of the 5 inch batteries are not in the right spots. There might be a tiny tick or two more I forgot. The hull is pretty good. Main issue with Tamiya's kit is that it is not 1/700 scale. It is 1/719 scale. See my posts earlier in this thread regarding the longstanding issue of the correct length of the Yorktown class ships and how Tamiya muffed it.

[Michael Vorrasi]

Ok, I just received 2 more 1/700 CV-8 Hornets (One is the Tamiya, the other is the Minicraft.) I'm thinking of building one up at the time of her last battle & the other, I'm contemplating on converting to one of her sisters CV-5 or CV-6. Which would be the easier of the two to make from this? I'm thinking of converting the Minicraft kit.

Thanks,
Eddie

Eddie, I think most of us have never seen the Minicraft kit, hence we cannot compare. The word was that is was a Tamiya knockoff, but I don't know for sure. Is is underscale as the Tamiya kit is?

[PeteM]

I tried looking through the thread but gave up after 5 or 6 pages trying to find the answer to this question. What period does the Tamiya 1/700 Hornet kit represent? I know that the only aircraft included are B-25's but does the fit match the Doolittle Raid time period?

Pete, the Tamiya kit is more or less the correct rig for the first half of 1942, albeit with some errors in the kit. The flight deck is the wrong shape, being the CV-5/6 version, not the CV-8 version of the forward deck. Photos abound of the proper shape. The entire island is too skinny, as is the pilothouse, and there are some minor bridge platform errors because of this. Pri-fly is a bit wrong and mislocated. Other errors regarding the rig are a few mislocated or missing 20mm batteries. The portside aft set of five are too far forward, and need to be located where this five gun battery is on the CV-6 version of Tamiya's kit. The aft ramp corner 20mm tubs, and the four alongside the island are missing, and the aft catwalk single tubs aft of the 5 inch batteries are not in the right spots. There might be a tiny tick or two more I forgot. The hull is pretty good. Main issue with Tamiya's kit is that it is not 1/700 scale. It is 1/719 scale. See my posts earlier in this thread regarding the longstanding issue of the correct length of the Yorktown class ships and how Tamiya muffed it.

Michael, Thanks for the quick response. There's a lot there that I'm not sure I have the capability to fix, although if I'm going to try some first time scratch building I guess this as good a project as any. My plan was to build to build her as she appeared at Midway, which was why I originally asked the question. I did stumble across the size discussion and I guess there really isn't much that could be done about that. I have the Classic Warships Yorktown book. Are there any other references you would recommend if I actually decide to take a crack at this?

[Hippy Ed]

Ok, I just received 2 more 1/700 CV-8 Hornets (One is the Tamiya, the other is the Minicraft.) I'm thinking of building one up at the time of her last battle & the other, I'm contemplating on converting to one of her sisters CV-5 or CV-6. Which would be the easier of the two to make from this? I'm thinking of converting the Minicraft kit.

Thanks,
Eddie

Eddie, I think most of us have never seen the Minicraft kit, hence we cannot compare. The word was that is was a Tamiya knockoff, but I don't know for sure. Is is underscale as the Tamiya kit is?

From the minimal cross checking I've done with the 2 kits, ie: sife by side comparrision of the Tamiya & Minicraft kits, it does appear to be a knock off of the Tamiya. When I get a chance to be more thorough, I will post pics of them side by side with the Trumpeter kit which I am currently working on.

[MartinJQuinn]

I've been reading "Black Shoe Carrier Admiral", and just finished the chapters on Midway (great book, BTW). One passage about Hornet piqued my curiosity - on June 4, 1942, when Hornet launched her first strike, some of the TBDs were still in the hangar, waiting for the planes spotted on the flight deck to get off. Does anyone know which TBDs were on deck (T-1, T-3, etc), which were in the hangar, and what the order of the deck spot for the TBDs on the flight deck was?

[Michael Vorrasi]

I've been reading "Black Shoe Carrier Admiral", and just finished the chapters on Midway (great book, BTW). One passage about Hornet piqued my curiosity - on June 4, 1942, when Hornet launched her first strike, some of the TBDs were still in the hangar, waiting for the planes spotted on the flight deck to get off. Does anyone know which TBDs were on deck (T-1, T-3, etc), which were in the hangar, and what the order of the deck spot for the TBDs on the flight deck was?

Martin, so far, I've determined that Hornet launched in two waves due to the number of planes. First the F4F-4's, then the SBD's, VS-8, then CHAG and two wingmen, then VB-8, followed by six TBD's. The second wave consisted of the remaining nine TBD's. The first wave circled while the second took off to join up. Don't have specific plane numbers, but I'll keep looking. Ens George Gay was the first TBD to take off in wave one.

[Jake hernandez]

For those building the 350th kit and want to detail the hangar, you may be interested in this proposal from the Resin Shipyard:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=39288

Does anyone know what happened to the link listed in the above post? I was using it as a reference for modeling my Hornet interior and now its gone. Any help would be great Timmy C. thanks, Jake

[Timmy C]

The thread probably got too old and was automatically deleted. You might try asking the guys at Resin Shipyard whether they may have the pictures from that thread.

[wildspear]

You might want to send an e-mail right to the company. The kit isn't listed in their cataloge. But I received mine from them and they did fantastic molding and the instructions are very straight forward.

[jake hernandez]

Thanks guys, I found the photos; For anyone unaware like I was;go to PICTURE POST at the front page of the Forum then to WORKS IN PROGRESS then just click on to USS HORNET and there all there. Whew! Jake

[Michael Vorrasi]

I posted this on a thread in the main forum on US DD classes, but you fellow Horny Maru fans might find this of interest:

There is a longstanding confusion regarding the Yorktowns. Fahey's and the original DANFS may have been the source. When Hornet was ordered, CV8 was to be very different class (what would become Essex). The urgency of getting a new carrier built caused the many changes planned for CV8 to switch over to CV9. CV8 was built as a repeat Yorktown. Initial reports of her being a separate class may have been a wartime smokescreen, or just stale info, predating the decision to go with a repeat Yorktown. The USN has long acknowledged that there are three Yorktowns. Her plans make it clear that she is a Yorktown, as most of the sheets are labelled CV5/6 and reissued with CV8 stamps. Just visit the page on the NHC and you will see that she is referred to as a Yorktown class by the USN today. Her battle damage report also makes clear that the Navy regarded her as a member of the Yorktown class all along. The odd thing is that DANFS was never corrected. Fahey's 1945 Victory Edition lists two sister ships Yorktown and Hornet as war losses in the Enterprise entry, so somewhere along the way, they got the word. The big postwar 1951 Janes also does the same.

I wrote to the NHC earlier this year with a lot of corrections in the data (backed up by plans and hard info) they needed to make on the Yorktowns, including Hornet being listed as a separate class in DANFS, but not on NHC proper. I did get an acknowledgement that they would be taking my data into consideration when DANFS is updated. DANFS is the probable source of the longstanding error in the OA length of the Yorktowns as well, wrongly listing 809.75 feet, rather than 824.75 feet as the OA length. The error is traceable to the original 1934 plans for Yorktown, which did not have the flight deck overhanging the fantail. They were all built with the extra 15 feet of length due to the overhang, but DANFS sourced the data of the 1934 "original" plan, not the as-built 1937 plan, hence decades of errors in histories of these ships. Just goes to show you, even the Navy can't get it right all the time.

[John Doherty]

How wide are the islands on the Hornet and Enterprise supposed to be. I am a little confused. I think I read 13.5 feet at the base of the islands. Is this correct?

[denstore]

How big is the difference in the basic shapes (not size) of the Essex and Yorktown hulls?
I�ve been sitting trying to compare Trumpeters 1/350 kits, and even if the Essex might not be perfect, it seems a lot better than the Hornet. Still, it seems to have a bit of the same bulky shape. Any opinions?
I�m trying to decide if I should try to correct the Hornet hull or not. Since it will be a waterline kit, I might get away with it as is, but I know in my heart that it annoy me forever if I won�t at least attempt to fix it.

[Dick J]

How big is the difference in the basic shapes (not size) of the Essex and Yorktown hulls?
I�ve been sitting trying to compare Trumpeters 1/350 kits, and even if the Essex might not be perfect, it seems a lot better than the Hornet. Still, it seems to have a bit of the same bulky shape.

That is part of the problem. The Yorktown hull had a bit of curve vertically in the sides. The hull flared out a bit at the hangar level, so it was narrower at the waterline than at the hangar. The Essex hull was more "wall sided", a feature which they unfortunately incorporated in the Yorktown hull. Also, the Essex's had a fuller hull form while the Yorktown's were slimmer forward. I have the 1/700 version, and I don't believe it is correctable. I am still working on the best way to replace it. (And I am hoping the Tamiya or some other company will step up with a better version before I have to go that far.)

[dick wood]

Hi all:

I am in the process of building the Trumpter Hornet, and I have a question concerning the funnels. Did they have splitters, and if they did can anybody give me a descriptopn so I can install them?

Thanks in advance.