USS Oklahoma City CLG-5

[DrPR]

Bruce,

Email me through my Contacts page:

http://www.okieboat.com/Contact%20page.html

I can help with some of the Talos system parts. Don't know if I want to take the time to try to create STL files though. It can be very time consuming and frustrating, and I don't have a lot of extra time to spare.

Phil

[DrPR]

The last major subassemblies on the OK City were the Mk 6 28 foot personnel boats. There were three of them, and fortunately they were the same Mk and were almost alike. So there is only one big modeling job and several small detail differences to deal with.

The 7th fleet had the Admiral's barge (top) and the 7th Fleet staff boat (middle, used mainly by the Chief of Staff), and the Oklahoma City had the Captain's gig (bottom). The major differences were the paint jobs and some of the decorative details at the bow and stern.

I looked for plans for this boat for years with no success. Recently I discovered the Barbour Boat Co. collection at East Carolina University. Barbour built just about every small boat, landing craft, yard auxiliaries, tugs, etc. that the Navy used, plus some larger vessels like destroyers. All of the plans are in this collection:

viewtopic.php?f=52&t=155093

The cost is trivial - $2.00 per sheet to digitize and $10.00 to put them on a DVD and mail it. Scan quality was excellent (as good as it can be for 60+ year old blueprints) and the small print is very legible.

Now I am working on the cabin. It is almost the same for all three boats.

Phil

[DrPR]

Not much happening on this part of the Forum so I thought I would post an update. A lot of things from the real world keep interfering with activities in the virtual world, so I have only a minor update.

I'm working on the 28 foot personnel boat canopy. It has lots of smooth curved surfaces and some details. Working from the blueprints makes the work go faster - not as much guestimation.

The boat has forward and rear enclosed cabins. I don't want to have to model the interior so I make the windows a dark blue, similar to how they appear in photographs. Besides, put one transparent piece of transparent glass in a large drawing and rendering times increase between 10X and 100X. And this boat will eventually become part of a one gigabyte file with millions of objects. Rendering will be an all night process without any transparent parts!

So far I have been working on only the forward canopy, although the rear canopy was the same shape and used the same molded aluminum skin.

Most parts were the same shape on all three boats, but they were painted differently.

Phil

[Roscoe]

Excellent work as usual Phil, I look forward to seeing this project all put together.

Take care,
Dean

[DrPR]

Dean,

Thanks.

Here is a bit more progress. The canopy is almost finished except for a few details (searchlight, side lights, etc.). This is the OK City boat. The two 7th Fleet boats had slightly different details and paint jobs.

Then the fun part begins. These boats had beautiful wooden decks. The wood stained like dark mahogany, and the grout between boards was white. The boards were narrow, with something like 19 boards on each side at the bow, all properly cut into the center board. That is going to be tricky to model! I think I have figured out how to do it. The proof will be in the pictures!

Phil

[lothar79]

I really enjoy following your thread

That is going to be tricky to model!

I have the same problem to solve when dealing with the wooden deck. I am pretty sure you are going to do it very simple way.

Cheers -Zdzislaw

[DrPR]

The 28 foot personnel boat canopies are done - I think. Now I just need to create the deck and all three boats will be finished!

The amount of detail in all three boats varied according to the unit's status.

The OK City Captain's gig is pretty plain vanilla. It doesn't have as much chrome (rendered here as a very light bluish gray because these images were made without ray tracing), fewer hand grabs and simpler detail. Looks like it had a horn from a motor whale boat. It had no window trim.

The 7th Fleet Chief of Staff's boat was a bit fancier with more chrome and hand holds, and a different light mast on the forward canopy. But this mast was painted white, as was the horn body, but the horn "horn" wasn't plated. It had a different steering wheel from the Captains gig. The windows had a chrome trim around them.

The Admiral's barge had all the features of the 7th Fleet Staff boat, but the light mast and all of the horn were chrome plated.

Rank hath it's priviliges, and on a ship full of megalomaniacs and egomaniacs trivial details were very important.

Phil

[DrPR]

The hull, canopy and deck are finished (I hope) and assembled into the three boats.

Just a bit of deck detail left and the boats will be done. Then I need to do the boat cradles.

Phil

[Ian Roberts]

This is a really fantastic thread - I love reading the interesting observations, stories, and technical details around each small part. It's great to see someone with such dedication to a project, and it's even better that Mr. Hays is kind enough to share it with the rest of us. I have learned a lot just from reading the Okie Boat website. As an Oklahoma State University grad I spent a lot of time in Oklahoma City and it's great to see the namesake ship represented in such detail.

Bravo sir.

[DrPR]

Thanks.

I think it is more of an obsession that normal ship modeling. It's a great way to spend a rainy day. If it's sunny I'm hiking.

Phil

[Rick_H]

Please forgive me if this is nitpicking. I believe the boats you are showing at 33', not 28'. In your virtual drawings, that 5' difference may matter. Both the Personnel Boats (as used for barge and gig) and the open Utility boats should be 33'.
Rick

[DrPR]

Rick,

The Navy did have 33' personnel boats, but what we had on the OK City in 1971 were Mk 6 28' personnel boats. The original 1950s blueprints for the USS Little Rock CLG-4 - which were also the basis for the OK City - show either 33' or 28' personnel boats in movable dollies on top of the missile house.

The 28' and 33' boats look a lot alike, but the 33s had the helm on the starboard side and the Mk 6 28' had the helm on the port. I have a dozen or more photos of the boats on the OK City and the helm was on the port side. 33s had three segments to the windshield, like the 40' boats, but the boats on the OK City had two segments, like the 28' boats. 33s had a hatch in the forward deck, 28s didn't, 33s had three windows in the front of the forward cabin and 28s had two, and there are other small differences.

But the best argument can be seen in this photo:

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/imag ... h98692.jpg

If you measure the lengths of the two boats in the port side boat nest you will see that the personnel boat is too short to be 33' long. For example, I measured the 40' utility boat to be 5.15" and the personnel boat to be 3.6".

X/3.6 : 40'/5.15
X = (40' * 3.6)/5.15
X = 27.96'

Pretty close to 28 feet!

I am curious why you thought they were 33' personnel boats?

The port side utility boat was 40' and the starboard side personnel boat was 40'. These are shown in the blueprints.

This document shows the many types of boats used by the Navy in the 60s and 70s.

http://hnsa.org/doc/boatcat/

There were 26', 28' 33' 40' and 65' personnel boats, and 26', 33', 40', 45', 50', and 65' utility boats.

Phil

[Rick_H]

Whaddya know? My sea time was in the 80's and 90's, and all the ships I saw had either 26' or 33' personnel boats. I was First Lt on Jouett, and we had a 33' Utility Boat, which looked exactly like the virtual boat you drew. And we had two covered 26' Personnel Boats and a 26' motor whaleboat.

When I was on CV-62, we only had 33' boats for the larger size - nothing bigger.

I see what you mean with the details of the boat in that photo. Guess this means then when I build that CLG kit I will need to start without preconceived notions about the boats.

And oddly enough, I do have a paper copy of that "Boats of the US Navy" book that is digitized on the website you provided. I just never gave enough though to the boats that I was not familiar with. Sorry.

Rick

[DrPR]

Rick,

I understand. By the 80s and 90s most of the WWII vintage ships were out of service, and the multitude of boat types were gone. I knew the small boats were different, but I have never paid much attention to the boat types on the newer ships.

Phil

[DrPR]

I have finally found time to work on the CAD model again. I have finished the Captain's gig. This is a Mk 6 personnel boat. It is mostly the same as the Mk 6 blueprints, but a few of the deck details are different. I used my photos of the boats while I was on the ship to make the modifications.

I'm not sure if the Admiral's barge and the 7th Fleet boat are Mk 6 or a later mark. They have different life rails and deck fixtures from the Mk 6 so they may be a later version. Of course, the Admiral's staff had influence, and the boats were tricked out quite a bit, so they may just be modified Mk 6 boats.

Phil

[DrPR]

The whole point of modeling the boats is to place them on the ship model.

The 28 foot personnel boat was stacked over the 40 foot utility boat on the port boat deck. The personnel boat cradle served as the hold down for the utility boat.

The 28 foot Captain's gig rested in a cradle that hinged up after the gig was lifted away to allow the 40 foot utility boat to be lifted out of the nest.

This part of the model is a 23.7 Mbyte file contaning 1,578 solids, 66,185 drawing entities and 514,661 points.

Phil

[DrPR]

Here are pictures of the Captain's gig nested over the 40 foot utility boat on the port boat deck, and a view of the midships deckhouse.

The Captain's gig was the last large item for the midships deckhouse. The midships radar tower stood on top of the highest deckhouse and it has already been done, but I haven't placed it in this drawing yet. The drawing is getting really large - 235 Mbytes - and the tower is another 17 Mbytes. I still need to draw the cables and waveguides to the tower, and then finish the ropes to the boat booms.

Phil

[DrPR]

I have finished the details for the Admiral's barge and the 7th Fleet personnel boats. Both are 28 foot boats, Mk 6 I think. The 7th Fleet staff boat has more chrome and hand rails than the OK City's Captain's gig, and the Admiral's barge has even more chrome.

Phil

[DrPR]

The 7th Fleet boats were carried on portable dollies that were stowed on the aft end of the missile house roof. I think this is a fairly accurate model of the dolly. I was working from several photographs. I haven't found blueprints for these dollies.

The boats were pulled to the forward end of the missile house using block and tackle and the snaking winches. There they could be lifted from their cradles and lowered to the water using the boat booms.

Phil

Note: I am pretty sure these dollies had diagonal bracing, but I have no drawings or photos showing just how it was done. To be continued ...

[Fritz]

Beautiful work on the Mk 6's Phil!

I look at the hull form and am reminded of the hulls for an Eldredge-McInnis designed bass boat/launch (currently produced by Fortier) from the early fifties. The resemblance is so uncanny, can't help but wonder if they had a hand in the design. I know they did several boats for the Coast Guard between '38 and the Korean War.