Calling all USS Hornet CV-8 fans

[MartinJQuinn]

Hornet model builders

I have over 300 photos of the ship and its planes, which I have been collecting for some time due to the fact my father was on the ship for its entire career. I have separated some of them into a collection intended for model builders so that the camo scheme can be done correctly and that also includes closeup details. I have a similar collection for its planes through Midway that includes closeups of the dual 30 cal MG mounts for the SBD/TBD planes. Some of the ship photos are already on maritimequest, I can put them on a CD for anyone who is interested. I also have some you tube footage saved that proves the existence of a wide dark stripe running the length of the flight deck on the starboard side with the B25s on the deck, and that the wide white inboard stripe for the Doolittle launch actually had narrow black stripes on either side of it.

Fred Branyan
FREDB1048@aol.com

Fred asked me to bump this message for him, as he is having trouble connecting to the forum.

He sent me the disks, and there are a lot of photos in there, some that I had seen before, but a bunch that I had not.

I have the trump 1/350 Hornet. It seems the walls of the hanger deck don't match up with the tabs that are on the underside of the flight deck. Has anyone else had this problem? What were your step to correct this?

I've got this kit and have gotten as far as dry fitting the flight deck and have not run into this problem. Did you glue the hangar bulkheads to the lower hull first?

[wildspear]

Martin,
I would like to get a copy of that picture disk. I solved the problem, when dry fitting I didnt have things lined up right.....LOL...it fits, sorry for the problems. How can I get ahold of fred for a copy of the picture cd?

[MartinJQuinn]

Martin,
I would like to get a copy of that picture disk. I solved the problem, when dry fitting I didnt have things lined up right.....LOL...it fits, sorry for the problems. How can I get ahold of fred for a copy of the picture cd?

His e-mail address is embedded in the text I quoted.

Glad you got it to line up right!

[wildspear]

Martin'
I tried he's email today and it bounced, is the AOL acount he's current one?

[MartinJQuinn]

Martin'
I tried he's email today and it bounced, is the AOL acount he's current one?

Yes, I just received an e-mail from his last week. Send me your info via PM and I'll pass it onto him if your attempts keep bouncing.

[John W.]

Well, I'm out of hibernation and back at it I guess. I've had to put aside modeling projects for the last several months to do some volunteer work. Robotics, if you must know. I helped some High School kids build a robot for competition as part of getting kids interested in Math and Science - Engineering is my gig.

Anyway, I have finished the HORNET hull to my satisfaction. It is now in essentially perfect agreement with the templates and lines from the Webb plans. In other words, it looks pretty much as it should have looked when I opened either kit box the first time. So then I got to thinking. The hull looks awfully smooth compared to the photos I have of HORNET. At any distance, the hull plating strakes are clear to me. Sigh. So I am gridding the hull using the plating diagram in the MD Silver plans. I'm probably about half done drawing the plate lines, then I will apply a combination of 3M tape and .005 plastic to make up the alternating courses (I'll only be doing about half the strakes that way since they alternate above / below as they overlap). I have done something similar on a much smaller model some years back and it has held up very well.
I have also found (as I think others have pointed out) that the sides of the Trumpeter Hangar deck walls are not correct enough for my needs when compared to the plans. I must be nuts, but I'm going to rebuild the sides too. I just wonder what plans they used . . . . . I just want you all to know that I said I would never scratchbuild anything because it is too time consuming. Boy, was I wrong.
Anyway, here are a couple of the most recent pictures. Here's the overall comparison photo of the actual ship to the model:

You can see the pencil lines on the hull for the hull stations. I used these for the gridding (doesn't show here yet) to apply the hull plates.
Here's the side view. Unfortunately, the Trumpeter hangar deck sides are too tall and the ship appears more chunky looking than it will be when I get the right parts made. You can see the trapezoidal-shaped sponson for the for the hangar deck catapult just aft of the forward 5" gallery deck. It doesn't show here, but the deckhouse forward of those galleries is repositioned aft as is the gallery deck itself when compared to the original locations on the Trump and BWN kits I started with.

Finally, here's one more shot that might be interesting.

PA300097.JPG (17.66 KiB) Viewed 3416 times

I'll post some more pictures when I have the plating in place. That should be sometime between one week and five years from now. Exercise and stay fit until then.

[John W.]

Here are a few more shots from different angles. The first is an oblique shot from starboard bow quarter. A couple of things to note here. A. - The hull never actually is parallel to the hangar deck edge except for a short distance well above the waterline. The hull flares up to the hangar deck - a small amount near midship (station 11 is the center of the ship's length) and a lot elsewhere; B. - The shape of the hangar deck catapult sponson (actually just the top deck of the sponson, the 'bumper' portion is not yet installed); C. - The slots for the Trumpeter deck house show how far aft the edge of the gun galleries had to be moved compared to the tip of the bow. Yes, I did use Trump's foredeck. D. - Yes, that is a wall shelf bracket channel screwed to the hull's hangar deck floor. To (hopefully) counteract any hogging of the resin (ex-BWN) hull, I put the channel in. During the launch for the Raid, almost all the roller doors were shut, so I have no plans to show any of the hangar deck internals.

HORNET Hull - top 004.jpg (14.29 KiB) Viewed 3371 times

In the next two pictures, you can see the hull shape as it compares to the roughly parallel hangar deck edge. Again, Station 11 is exactly midships.

Finally, here's a low shot looking toward the bow. Notice there is a knuckle at the height of the foredeck and halfway down the aft edge of the 5" gallery deck, at the step. This knuckle is there in the plans and is visible in some photographs if you look carefully. It is plainly visible on the builder's model of YORKTOWN.

Again, I respect choices others make in what and how they model. I had a great deal of trouble reconciling the Trumpeter and BWN interpretation of the YORKTOWN class hull. As is clearly seen in many pictures, the ship's hull is extremely graceful and fast-looking. To model the ship, I had to capture that look as best as I can within my skill limitations.

[Michael Vorrasi]

John, looking great! Tell us more about the construction method used. I have a BWN kit, so what you did is of great interest. (Just a grind 'er down job?) Re: the knuckle, it is also present at the aft end of the hull, where the hangar deck line meets the aft five inch hull sponsons, and more prominant too. The bow one is a gentle change in curvature. Looks like you nailed it. The aft knuckle is a hard crease. I'm still mulling over the possibility a big scratch built one. The ensconcement in my workshop of 20+ of these little 1/144 gems should offer a clue:. Space is the main issue.

[John W.]

Oh Mike. You're thinking grand thoughts aren't you. Remember the advantage and curse of the larger scale is the opportunity for greater detail.

Looking back on my journey I'd have to say that I wasted a huge amount of time and resources trying to save time and resources. I kept thinking that I could get by shaping the hull by eye, for example, or by bending the plastic hull - with various methods - into submission. After I got pretty deep into the reshaping of the resin hull, I kept thinking how much time I'd lose if I started over with another material. Truth is, I estimate I removed about 35% of the resin by weight in the process of getting down to size. There is NO short, easy, or clean way to do this. I tried every way I could think of. If you haven't joined the bottom of the hull (that below the waterline) you can bandsaw a lot of the resin off instead of grinding. The hard part is removing the undercut areas from the bow almost all the way back to midships. You can try burrs, Surform tools, rattail files, and so forth. I tried taping coarse sandpaper to a large PVC coupling (I think it was about 4" diameter) and that worked OK. Problem is, there is no radius that will fit all or even most of the undercut areas. I can still smell the resin if I think hard enough about it. Not fun. This is why I say I'd use the basswood 'lift' method.
When I finally gave in and realized that I just had to build a hull jig, then things started to move much more quickly in relative terms. If I were to do it again, and I may do so with ENTERPRISE at Midway, I would build the hull jig first. Here's a quick picture of the jig - I posted this picture before back about page 12 or so.

I would use layers of basswood in layer cake fashion. I would carve the hull using the same jig I built, then use other kit parts and plastic scrachbuilding to get the rest of the ship built. The jig ensures the hull is shaped true and fair. One the hull is 'fair and square', the rest of the ship will go along pretty well. I would also take the time and effort to reduce (or blow up) a set of plans to the scale you in which you are building. It is a real pain, even with proportional dividers, to keep going back and forth between the scales. You can lay your parts right down on the plans as you build them. I did this in shrinking the Webb plans to 1/350 and it really helped out a lot and saved time - I'm certain of that.
While you would obviously need to scratchbuild the hull in 1/144 unless there is a hull in fiberglas from the R/C folks, you could still use a variation of the method I describe. At the end of the day, I have come to terms with doing the unthinkable - scratchbuilding - to get what I want. After all, the shipbuilders mostly used large flat steel plates. Evergreen sheet styrene isn't much different . . . .
Hope that answers your question, Mike. Seems like you answer lots of other questions, let me know if I can answer any more.

[Michael Vorrasi]

Oh Mike. You're thinking grand thoughts aren't you. Remember the advantage and curse of the larger scale is the opportunity for greater detail.

Thanks for the briefing John. I'm trying to get inspired. I had originally filled up the Trumpy hull with resin and started grinding. I let it sit for quite a while, and bad things started happening between the resin and styrene. The Trumpy plastic is still all bubbles and soft and that one is a goner. Still have some spare kits, but grinding the shear volume of resin it takes on either BWN or trumpy hulls is not a pleasant thought. I admire your determination! I was down to a belt sander on that mutha before it hocked up a lung. At times, when its quiet, I still get the cold sweats. If I go 1/350, I might do a framework hull. I used to build balsa flying models, so that method is something I relate better to. I hear you about 1/144. Like I said - space. Lets see, 827 feet works out to 5 feet 9 inches. Hmmm. Where would I put it! On the bright side, all the guns and lots of ship fittings are readily available, and stuff like the radar is so big, it's easy to scratch build it. Biggest bugger when it comes to carriers is always the planes.

I cornered the market on the 1/144 B-25B's in Doolittle colors last year. I had them coming in from e-bay purchases for months. Normally they come in sets and you need to buy eight planes (a pair of Ju-88, and a pair of Japanese mediums in this case, plus a desert camo B-25C that is easily repainted) to get the single B-25B you want, but e-bay shops in Hong Kong part the sets out as singles. They are made by F-Toys, big in Japan, not generally sold in the US. They are limited releases of pre-painted semi-assembled planes meant as trading/collector sets. I will disassemble and rebuild them properly with seams filled and better fitting, but they are really quite good, like little zapped down Accurate Miniature 1/48 ones. F-Toys is really made by Platz, which is turning out 1/144 kits that beat what we were seeing in 1/72 just a few years back. Another maker, Sweet, equally good in the scale, has FM-2 Wildcats, and I can easily rework these into close enough for gov't work F4F-4's. Got a bunch. Also have a bunch of Minicraft Avengers, and some SBD's. Only lack of a good 1/144 TBD clouds the aircraft front. But my, oh my, where would I put it!

Those little wheels in my head keep turning. Meanwhile keep up your own good work!

[John W.]

Mike -
Thanks for the kind words. For some of us, this is the classic dilemma: no easy answer if you want it close to right. I am glad I'm on this side of the hull issue.
The problem I had in considering the stringer method you suggest is how to fair the pretty complex lines from the bow back to near midships. The stern isn't really too bad, though it is not the bulbous, rounded version Trumpeter came up with as you know. I think the layer cake method with solid layers is easier to shape and fair the lines. You can get the stations right with either method, of course. But getting the lines faired between the stations where there are multiple compound curves of changing radii can be a bear. With the layer cake method you can pick up the whole block (laminated block) and you can pretty easily see where the lines need to be smoothed in three dimensions for all the compound curves to flow properly. I think - but it's just my intuition - that having the solid block to carve is better. Of course, each layer has already been cut to shape according to the vertical position in the stack, so you get pretty close to start with using a band saw. Then it's a question of blending the layers together rather than carving or grinding out huge chunks of resisting and poisonous material. I am a member of a local ship modeler's club and had a couple members demystify the process for me. Fortunately the HORNET hull has no sheer to it - all the decks are perfectly flat fore - aft, so the layer cake (lift) method is pretty straight forward. Let me know if you want any further info. Hate to see you sit on the fence and keep all your knowledge of the ship class strictly academic.
John

[carr]

..

[John W.]

Hi. I'm John. I'm a ship modeler. I admit I'm powerless over my modeling, that I imagine far too many projects in far too great detail, requiring far too much time and money to complete. I honestly believe that I will finish all the kits in my stash, that there is always room for just one or two more, and that prices for detail parts and accessories will come down in the near future making it possible for me to spend no more than one hundred additional dollars to finish all my models.
I further recognize that detailed photos will become available soon after I complete my model, and they will show I have made incorrect assumptions about areas of the model that will be in the forefront of the model.
I realize that after completing my model, new research will show the colors are not remotely correct, and large areas of the ship, now covered by incredibly intricate details, need to be repainted into a bright primary color to be correct.
I acknowledge that 3/4s of the way into a huge scratchbuilding project, an Asian modeling company will produce an extraordinarily accurate version of the same ship than can (and will) be assembled by a Fourth-grader whose model will beat mine in head to head competition at the next IPMS National.
Finally, despite all common sense to the contrary, I will continue along this path, thinking things will change, and think nothing is wrong with me.

I know, I know. I'm in the right place.

[wildspear]

trying my hand at some detail that my not be seen;

[Cliffy B]

Wildspear, try building it with a removable flight deck if possible. If you're going to super detail the hangar deck then the flight deck needs to be able to come off IMO. Not sure if contest judges frown on that or not but who cares, its a shame to hide all of that detail. Just my $0.02, looks great!

[John W.]

Wildspear -
Great job. I took the coward's way out - my hangar deck will not be visible because almost all the roller doors were shut due to the heavy weather at the time of the Doolittle launch.
Since you are taking the time to add the hangar deck details, I hope you'll consider adding the same level of detail for the forward and aft flight deck overhangs. There are a few reasonably clear photos of these areas, and some of the plans for these ships show generally the location and components - but not the details as seen in the photos. I am posting below some pictures of my work in progress to give you an idea of what the structures look like if you decide to ditch the Trump parts which have limited (an incorrect) detail. On a close view of the model, these areas are quite visible.
First picture is an oblique view of the forward structure painted Ocean Gray (5-O).

From a more sideways perspective, here's another view. Note the boxed in section for the flight deck catapult gear.

Unfortunately, from this angle you can see why I have to start over. The top of the structure should be level with the boxed-in structure behind it. It was on the Trumpeter hull. Unfortunately, the Trumpeter model is that much too tall according to my plans. The White structure is the correct height from the foc'sl deck to the underside of the flight deck. @#$%^^!
Final picture shows the basics of the aft structure which is more enclosed with work spaces. I stuck some angle stock under it to support it at the approximately correct height for the Trumpeter model. I should be able to use this structure over unlike the forward one.

This is a bit tedious, but not hard to do when you set your mind to it. When I started this project I had a standing rule that I would never scratchbuild much of anything complex because it is too time consuming. Boy, did I guess wrong in that.
Both structures were made from Evergreen plastic.
Of course, the supports for the catwalks tie into the ends of the crossbeams, as the pictures show. There are also safety nets strung under these structures so sailors falling off the catwalks toward the center of the ship will land in the safety nets and not on the deck below in a Class A personal mishap.

[wildspear]

John,
I took an easy way out, I went with the Trump hull as is. I may leave the flight deck off (unsure at this point) to show the details. I do plan to detail the entire underside of the flight deck, just wouldn't seem right if I didn't. Your build is looking good.

[wildspear]

Does anyone have some good pics of the 5in guns on the Hornet? I am mostly interested in the mounts and the surrounding area of the gun and not the gun itself. Thanks in advance.

[John W.]

Wildspear -
I haven't seen very many pictures of the 5" 38 open mounts on any of the YORKTOWN class, but there are a couple. Look on Navsource.org at both the YORKTOWN and ENTERPRISE photos and you'll see a couple. The best one is on YORKTOWN - shows a single 5" 38 looking at it from the side, from under the flight deck, looking aft on the starboard side. There is another showing the guns in action at Midway (I think) showing some detail on the inner side of the splinter shields. There is also a picture (or pictures) of the starboard aft 5" gallery deck on ENTERPRISE after being hit by a bomb in late '42 (Santa Cruz or Guadalcanal?) but I couldn't find it electronically right away. I have not seen any pictures of HORNET's 5" mounts that I can recall, but they are the same guns as those on the sister ships. Note that the YORKTOWN class 5" 38s do not have the lower forward shield some other 5" 38 open mounts did. I know l'Arsenal makes the correct guns, but the Veteran models version is the later 5" 38 with that lower shield (for lack of a better term).
Hope this helps until others way in.

[wildspear]

Thanks John