Calling all USN, RN Escort Carriers (CVE) fans

[Tracy White]

Did Casablanca class carriers ever UNREP, and if so which side of the ship, port or starboard?

Everything UnRep'd.

[gtbred]

look in my closet and forgot i had this. stop working on it 4yrs ago. working on my supercarriers. but lost the instructions and some parts. gonna have to talk to the main man from Yankee Model Works.

[Sr. Gopher]

What vessel would that be?

[Cliffy B]

Looks like a Casablanca-Class CVE. Which ship/era will she be Red?

[gtbred]

Looks like a Casablanca-Class CVE. Which ship/era will she be Red?

1944 maybe Midway before she had to change her name.

[maxs75]

Very interesting informations there.
Do you have data for other US Navy ships, in particular for the Casablanca class. Some of them were already completed in october 1943.
Thank you very much
Max

Found some info at the San Francisco Archives that might be of use to the Royal Navy CVE Fans. This is a US Navy list of "allowed" and "installed" radars; if it is underlined it is installed, otherwise it was merely allowed. So, for example, Battler was ALLOWED a SP, but since it's not underlined, she wasn't actually carrying one. This was from an October 1943 report and doesn't cover the entire war:

http://www.specwarnet.net/MW/1943OctUSN ... nsCVEs.jpg

[Tracy White]

Do you have data for other US Navy ships, in particular for the Casablanca class. Some of them were already completed in october 1943.

Here's the other sheet:

http://www.specwarnet.net/MW/1943OctUSN ... CVEs02.jpg

[maxs75]

Thank you very very much! very interesting!
Strange that later Casablancas were authorized with SC-2, even if some of them already got the more modern SK.
I had a look at navsource.org and it seems that all ships from CVE-59 Mission Bay to CVE-97 Hollandia got SK, but later ships had the better SK-2 instead. Maybe, but I'm not sure, also Anzio (CVE-57) and Corregidor (CVE-58) got SK after refit.

Do you know if Sangamon class carriers received a more modern radar than SC-1 or SC-2 later in the war? They were refitted in late 1944/early 1945. navsource had no late war photo of them. The similar Commencement bay class at that time was receiving SK-2 and SP. Maybe they were scheduled to have a similar outfit.

Max

[maxs75]

Interestingly I found the following from http://www.carrierbuilders.net/element/ ... php?id=447 :

According to the plans which I had, Sangamon should have carried SK, SG, and YE radars, but even in photos of rather poor quality, it was clear that Sangamon did not carry SK, but the much smaller SC-2 and in a different position than in the plans as well. According to some books, no Sangamon-class carrier had the SK Radar installed at any time and there were no really good photos available where I could see which antennae were installed in early 1945. Once again, though, I only had to contact Don Schroeder about this problem and he got in contact with former radar operators on Sangamon who identified for me which radars were installed in 1945. There was still the problem that on one photo it seemed that there was another antenna, which I could not identify. Finally with the help from an old friend, carrier expert Stefan Terzibaschitsch, we were able to identify this mystery radar as an SP, with a so called 6 ft. cut antenna. Where the normal round dish is cut off on the top and bottom forming a rectangle with curved sides. The SP was a fighter director radar, which was needed by the Sangamon, because during her last major overhaul in Bremerton she was designated a night-fighter escort carrier, the first CVE used in this role.

It is not right that "..no Sangamon-class carrier had the SK Radar installed at any time ..." but it seems logical that she had SP. Now the question is if the sisters had SP as well.
Anyone knows?

Max

[Tracy White]

I have some photos of CVE-26 radars in 1945 but won't have time to dig for them until next week.

[maxs75]

Thank you very much. I'm interested also in photo of Suwannee, Chenango and Santee.

Max

[Tracy White]

Holes... HOLES I SAY!
52 drilled so far with at least another 50 to go

[Tracy White]

One thing I've come across for builders of the Hasegawa 1/350 Gambier Bay; as per page 28 of the "Anatomy of the Ship: Gambier Bay" book, the 2.5m optical range finder on top of the island (part AP20, step 16) was removed and replaced with sky lookout stations (similar to the ones I posted a memo on here but later models). It looks like there were three of them; one on the starboard side of the platform facing forward and two on the port side (forward one facing starboard and aft one facing port).

Yankee Modelworks might make them as a separate set of photo-etch but their web site menus are unusable so I'm not going to try and look to see.

[Tracy White]

Final tally is 81 holes drilled in the structure underneath the flight deck overhangs. I probably could have skipped 6 with no one other than me and God knowing (center support on the bow, behind the main transverse girder).

A couple items of note to watch out for:

The raised hull plating lines will mess up parts fit as Hasegawa continues them regardless of whether or not a part fits over the top or not. So far I have had to mark and cut away these lines underneath the propellor shaft skegs and sponsons as tey would have otherwise left gaps where the piece contacted the line and not the hull surface.

The hull is three pieces; left, right, and the flat stern surface. The fit of this last part into the first too was a bit vague and needed a lot of testing & work to get right. Even with that, it was slightly off, so that when I glued the supports underneath the aft 5" tub in, they were slightly misaligned due to the stern piece not being true. The essential effect would have been to have a parallel lean to each one when the alignment hole on the stern piece pulled the pieces to one side. After the first one, I just cut off this alignment piece and hand-aligned it to eyeball.

[Tracy White]

If you want to be REALLY anal about your Gambier Bay build:

1) drill a hole on both sides of piece C17 where the blue spot is. This was present on all of the ships but missing on the part.
2) The red area was added as a ShipAlt starting with CVE-94 USS Lunga Point. I don't know if it was retrofitted to Gambier Bay but I can see from the AOTS Gambier Bay book on page 27 that she did not have it originally.

Unknown CVE, possibly CVE-94

[Tracy White]

I actually need to add eight holes to my tally (total of 89 now). There are four each on the two forward side pieces for the catwalk galleries; you can see them in the photos above on the left side.

[Firecaptain]

Tracy,
Would you post some pics of this work when you get a chance?
Thanks

[Tracy White]

It's a build for Internet Modeler, so they have first rights to the photos. That said, Chris hasn't been as interested in build photos, so I might be able to post some here.

[jep1210]

Wait, Hasegawa makes a 350th Gambier Bay?!?!?!?!?!? How did I miss that? I should crawl out from under my rock every once in a while.

[maxs75]

Hello,
It seems that during the second half of 1942 the production of Bofors 40mm guns didn't reach the desired level, and not all the ships (new building or refits) could be fitted with the 40mm Bofors.

I asked myself if the early escort carrier conversions were built with 1.1" instead of 40mm guns.
Friedman's US carrier design history says that

early conversions had four quadruple 1.1" guns scheduled for replacement on a one-to-one basis by twin 40mm.
Late in 1942 however the 40mm envisaged for C3 were doubled, and those for the Sangamons increased to 9 twin 40mm guns.
About a year later the Sangamon battery was set at seven twins and 2 quads.

Now I'd like to know which ships actually carried the 1.1".
From photo at navsource.org, it seems that the following ships were completed with only 4 positions for quad 1.1" or twin Bofors.
In each case the positions were: two on the fantail and two on both sides of the fore flight deck.
ACV-9 Bogue
ACV-12 Copahee
ACV-16 Nassau
ACV-18 Altamaha
and the four Sangamons
Probably some or all of them could have the 1.1" fitted.
The question is: any info about that?
Copahee was commissioned first so she is the most probable one.

Card, Core and all ships commissioned in 1943 had 8 twins before going to combat. By that time the 40mm availability was better than in 1942. For that reason I guess that they had Bofors as built.
The earlier Long Island and Charger porbably never carried neither 1.1" nor Bofors.

Thank you in advance for any answer.
Max