Calling all Iowa-class (BB-61) fans

[Russ2146]

You might want to check page 7 of http://www.hnsa.org/doc/plans/bb62.pdf
These are plans of the 1984 configuration of the New Jersey's main deck. If you check along the starboard edge of the deck, you will find four + marks labeled "50 CAL MACH GUN POS / P/S".
The + marks are also on the port side but unlabeled. P/S means Port and Starboard.
The 50 Cal and salt water/spray do not play well together. Thus the guns are not mounted unless potential use is anticipated, which is why they do not appear in many photos.

The "crane like" device is called a King Post and carries fuel hose for Underway Replenishment (Unrep) Photos without the black hose indicate that the ship was not rigged for deployment.

[NoobisHelped]

Thank you very much for the information. I will rig the fuel lines with some wires.
As for the Guns, I guess I would leave them be, since they are not usually mounted as you said.

[Cliffy B]

No problem Tom. I got shots of our boats and davits for you. I took about 100 photos of the interiors of the Flag and Nav Bridges as well. I just need some time to sort through them and upload for you.

[Fliger747]

Thanks Cliffy! The davit area is hard to photograph as it is so tight. What one needs is a quad or octacopter with a camera mounted to get an appropriate viewpoint. Someone would have a fit. With Missouri they are so concerned (paranoid?) about security that one cannot even carry a small camera bag for an additional lens, or for women a purse. This is a heavily armored Battleship.... Missouri currently has the boats on the main deck level but not the ones above.

Cheers. Tom

[kiwi96]

Just an update on my refit.
Bow section now complete. The 20mm mounts will be replaced n a few months with ones I have designed myself and figures will be added to put the ship at ACTION SATATION.







Just need to install the catapaults to the aft deck area and then finish the railing and all done. Move from drydock to allow access for the Richelieu build.

[Haijun watcher]

Just curious, has anyone here actually visited the Iowa on display at the Port of Los Angeles? Anyone got pics?

Isn't she a full operating museum?

Just wondering because even though I live in Vancouver, Canada, I did my high school years and my undergraduate university years in California.

I also got to visit the liner Queen Mary and the ex-Soviet Foxtrot submarine on display at Long Beach when I was there. Considering a return visit is very much on my mind.

[Fliger747]

Yes Iowa is a full museum, she is located a couple of miles NE of Queen Mary, North of Terminal Island. You can see her easily on Google Earth. There should be a web site for the ship you can check out. I have not visited her as last time I explored down there only Queen Mary was available. However I have visited Missouri numerous times over the years. If you have interest I highly recommend visiting one of these ships, all four Iowa's are in some museum status and a great throwback to the industrial analogue era.

Cheers Tom

[Fliger747]

Question for whoever might know....

My scratch 1:192 modern B 63 has should have brackets for gas bottles but of course no bottles are currently on the ship. Anyone have an idea what bottles were stored where and appropriate colors?

Even WWII data might be helpful.

Tom

[Cliffy B]

Here's a link to my BB-64 Photo Thread with my latest round of shots:

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=153523&p=617501#p617501

Boats/Davits, Flag and Nav Bridge interiors totaling almost 200 shots, enjoy!

[ZALADIS]

You may find this interesting.....It is a 360' virtual tour of the USS Missouri .....Hope it comes in handy for you.... ENJOY!!!

http://battleship-missouri.s3.amazonaws ... souri.html

[OS1880]

that virtual tour was sharp

[Channell]

Just curious, has anyone here actually visited the Iowa on display at the Port of Los Angeles? Anyone got pics?

Isn't she a full operating museum?

Just wondering because even though I live in Vancouver, Canada, I did my high school years and my undergraduate university years in California.

I also got to visit the liner Queen Mary and the ex-Soviet Foxtrot submarine on display at Long Beach when I was there. Considering a return visit is very much on my mind.

I have... I posted a bunch of pictures earlier in this thread.

Most of the Iowa is still closed to tourists however, with plans to open more of the ship up in the next few years. Don't feel bad, the Iowa isn't going anywhere will be a better visit in a couple more years than it is now!

[Cliffy B]

Most of you probably know about this but maybe not. I just noticed this little detail while rooting through some photos.

BB-63 at least, had Bushmasters aboard during the Gulf. See this photo of a nighttime bombardment of Kuwait: http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/0163010.jpg

Look closely at the saluting gun platform and you'll see one 25mm Bushmaster and no saluting guns.

Enjoy!

[navydavesof]

Most of you probably know about this but maybe not. I just noticed this little detail while rooting through some photos.

BB-63 at least, had Bushmasters aboard during the Gulf. See this photo of a nighttime bombardment of Kuwait: http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/0163010.jpg

Look closely at the saluting gun platform and you'll see one 25mm Bushmaster and no saluting guns.

Enjoy!

Thanks for the post! I had noticed when I was a docent aboard Wisconsin that the saluting battery positions looked an awful lot like the base rings of the Mk38.

[Fliger747]

Also thanks! I finally get to see what the raft packs looked like loaded!

Cheers. Tom.

[RandyM]

[NOTE: If someone's already done this, please disregard!]

Had to hang out around the house this weekend looking after a sick pooch, so I thought I'd do something a little different. After reading so much about inaccuracies in Trumpeter's Missouri, I decided to see what could be done to "fix" it, assuming it's really that bad. But first I needed to - accurately - determine if/how bad it is. Sooo.... using some 1/96 plans from Floating Drydock, I set up the loft lines and scaled them to 1/200 (and yes, I spent a considerable amount of time ensuring accuracy). Then I imported the loft drawings into SolidWorks and started tracing (and tracing, and tracing...). One and a half days later I have a pretty reasonable 3d model of an Iowa hull in 1/200 scale.

Next step will be to use my contour gauge and measure corresponding sections on the kit hull, and input that data into the 3d model. Then I'll be able to graphically represent both hulls overlaid onto one another.
(Note that my real motivation is to get back into my Montana model - I started that process by redesigning and modeling the superstructure, but that's for a different topic )

Randy

[Fliger747]

Thanks for tackling this project, I am sure it will receive a lot of attention.

Cheers. Tom

[BB62vet]

Randy,

Your Solidworks rendition is very timely and well received!!! I will be looking forward to the comparison between your two models. As I'm building the kit as BB62 (1967-69) I'm very interested in your results.

I do MicroStation 2D professionally, but haven't had time to get into anything but the basics of 3D.

Thanks,

Hank

[stevegallacci]

Second the interest in the comparison. I'm looking into correcting the hull as well. The limited refs I got seem clear that the rear third of the hull is pretty punk, with the kit having slab sides well aft while the real thing starts tapering much further forward and having much more blending of skeg to hull.

[RandyM]

Preliminary results, but first, in case you're wondering...

For the record, I honestly could NOT care less about whether or not a model is "accurate." In my book "If it looks like the prototype, that's good enough." I've been waiting many, many years for someone to produce a big-scale Iowa, and I am not about to start bagging on this kit. Having said that, I love a good challenge (witness my USS Boston build documented elsewhere). For this kit I am considering whether to build a more-accurate hull from the maindeck down. Wait... what? I thought you didn't GAS about accuracy??? Well, the truth is, the Iowa's hull is beautiful. So it's not that the kit isn't good enough in my book - but maybe I can make it better.

Ok, so now a word about accuracy. First, I am not a mechanical engineer and I am not a SolidWorks expert (in fact I only just started learning it a week ago). However, I do have access to a bunch of really smart MEs, and they are helping me learn the basics. Since I am most concerned about "building" a 1/200 3D model of Iowa's hull, I am concentrating on the accuracy of translating the Floating Drydock drawings into SolidWorks (and FWIW, Mr. Walkowiak's drawings are works of art). Obtaining accurate profiles/contours of the trumpeter kit hull is a time consuming process, and having a super-accurate 3D model of it is sort of a waste of time, especially since I have the real thing sitting next to me. So while the perfectionist in me will force me to do reasonable work, I will not claim that the kit profiles are "accurate" - but they are close-enough for this comparison. Remember, this is really a study to determine the feasibility of grafting an accurate hull onto the kit from the maindeck down.

Finally, a word about the drawings. The profiles shown in the images correspond to "stations" on the FDD drawings (which in turn correspond to actual loft drawings of the prototype). Stations are spaced 21-1/2 feet apart, or in 1/200 scale, 1.290" apart. Starting from the forward perpendicular, they are number 1, 2, 3, and so on. As you can see, I have accurate models for all stations shown in the FDD plans. Including the two perpendiculars and overhangs, there are 52-total stations (there are some stations spaced at half-intervals).

If you have any questions or see an error in my work, please don't hesitate.

On to the fun stuff...

Tonight I focused on the kit hull, specifically beginning to get data for the stern. I started by scanning the kit hull by placing it upside down on the scanner. I got the image into photoshop, rectified it, then imported it into SW. From there I scaled it to it's actual size, then traced it into the 3D model of the FDD blueprints. When I re-enabled the blueprint profile, I was pleasantly surprised: the kit's stern overhead profile E*X*A*C*T*L*Y matches that of the blueprints, as shown in this image:



To give a bit better idea of what you're looking at, here is a perspective view of the same area:



Next, I picked a random station from the blueprints and carefully set up the kit's hull so that I could obtain a reasonably-accurate profile of the same location. I then import that data in much the same manner as above (although using a contour gauge instead of scanning the actual hull piece), lofted this image into the correct location in the 3D model and re-enabled the FDD blueprint data. This gave me the first hull comparison. The results were not as pleasant as earlier...

This location is a slice through the hull 3.01 inches from the extreme stern of the ship.



As you can see, already a significant difference between the blueprints and the kit. Again, to give another view, here is an off-axis perspective of the same area...



It's not all bad news: I'm fairly excited that the overhead profiles match (so far). I think building a hull is within the realm of possibility, but if I have to start reshaping the maindeck, that's where I call it quits.

That's it for tonight.