Calling all Atlanta-class & Oakland-class (CL-51) fans

[Guest]

Phil if that's what you're after you need to get your hand on the 3-4" thick manual for the gun mount itself. Try online for digital or paper copies.

-Cliffy B

[DrPR]

Cliffy,

Thanks. I have the following pubs:

NAVPERS 10111 "The 5"/38 Gun 1965
OP 805 5 INCH TWIN GUN MOUNTS 1957

I also have dozens of drawings for single and dual mounts, and some of these give me some basic dimensions.

I really don't expect ever to find the blueprints. I plan to visit the USS Little Rock museum ship again some day, and spend a day in the dual 5"/38 mount taking photos and making sketches showing as many measured dimensions as I can. These, along with the drawings and illustrations in the pubs should allow me to "guesstimate" the dimensions of any of the parts I didn't measure. For modeling I really don't need the dimension for every part - just the ones visible from outside. But it would be nice to have the blueprints and create an accurate animated CAD model showing how the gun worked.

Then I'll spend another day in the triple 6"/47 turret. I have found nothing for this gun in the 12 years I have been looking except a few sketches of the turret. This is odd because there were hundreds of these in the Brooklyn and Cleveland class cruisers. It usually is only briefly mentioned, or not mentioned at all, in the Gunners Mate training manuals.

Phil

[Cliffy B]

Well, see if CLG-4 has a copy of the 6"/47 turret manual and a Xerox. Just bring a bag of change and ream of paper

There is a rather large manual for the actual gun mounts though. Something like "5"/38 Mk-28 Gun Mount" written on the cover that has diagrams and pull out plans for every single component in them. I can get the pub number for you if you'd like as we have one aboard BB-64. I could Xerox some pages for you on site if need be but I can't take it home.

[DrPR]

Cliffy,

That would be OP 805 "5-INCH TWIN GUN MOUNTS MARK 28, 32 AND 38 ALL MODS DESCRIPTION AND INSTRUCTIONS."

It is available on line here:

http://archive.hnsa.org/doc/fiveinchtwin/index.htm

It has a lot of good drawings and photos, but there are no dimensions. Without dimensions it is difficult or impossible to relate the size of objects in one drawing or photo to the size of objects in another drawing or photo.

It is just what you need for the CLAAs.

The equivalent for the 6"/47 is OP 833 "6"/47 TRIPLE TURRETS CL 55 CLASS." I haven't found that yet.

What I really need to know are the drawing numbers for the 5"/38 guns and the 6"/47 guns.

Phil

[DrPR]

YES! Thanks!

The drawing number GUNS 182839 is likely one in a sequence of drawing numbers for the 5"/38 gun. This give me a place to start looking.

Where did you get the drawing?

While looking through the mound of drawings I have accumulated over the years I found some 5"/38 single gun mount drawings I got from the Floating Drydock. They are drawing series:

Mk 30 Mods 1&3 - BuOrd ASSEMBLIES 233390-93
Mk 30 Mod 33 - BuOrd ASSEMBLIES 244779-82
Mk 30 Mod 41 - BuOrd ASSEMBLIES 246627-30
Mk 30 Mod 48 - BuOrd ASSEMBLIES 247790, 93 & 94

These are not fully dimensioned drawings but they have some dimensions that can be used for reference, and I probably can make a fairly accurate CAD model of the gun from them. However the gun support frame, elevating quadrant and other details are mostly obscured and pretty sketchy.

Phil

[CL52]

These pictures area from a dealer that has the full set of drawings from the USS Des Moines. I sent him a message, but he didn't get back to me yet. unfortunately the gun barrel one is very blurry.
.

[Mogami]

[Rick E Davis]

Here is the 5 November 1942 Noumea Photo he got from USNI.

Below are the full image, a cropped view of just the ships, and an annotated of identifiable ships.







USS WASHINGTON (BB-56), USS SOUTH DAKOTA (BB-57), and USS ENTERPRISE (CV-6) are readily identifiable. The CVE may be USS NASSAU (CVE-16) since she was operating in and out of Noumea. Identifying the ATLANTA class cruiser may be possible from the War Diary/Deck Log for NASSAU if she was at anchor on 5 November. The two stack destroyer beyond ENTERPRISE is unknown, but appears to NOT be one of the few FLETCHER's in the area by that date. Likely one of the BENSON-GLEAVES class units. I can't make out the any of the other images well enough to ID even the types with confidence. The images go into pixels when I try to expand the image.

A higher res copy of this image and/or additional images taken at the same time would be required to ID any of the distant ships.

[Tracy White]

I checked on Fold3 and they have War Diaries and War Histories, but no deck logs.

[Cliffy B]

The small ship astern of the South Dakota could be a net layer?

[Rick E Davis]

I had typed up a longer post and somehow accidentally closed out the web browser and lost it. Anyway, what I mentioned in the earlier deleted post and forgot to add when I reposted, is that it looked like TWO ships tied up together or anchored near each other and one was a CVE. There appears to be maybe a longer ship, larger than a destroyer(?), but not as high a freeboard as the CVE. Enlarging the image degrades this "pair of ships" image as it goes to "little" squares.

[FRED BRANYAN]

Thank you Rick for posting the photos above.

Trying to enlarge the photo they sent me I think there are 2 cruisers behind the DD which is behind CV 6. Pure guess but the one further back seems like it might be a CLAA but the photo blurs so much when you try to get detail to be sure of that guess that it is impossible to be 100% certain.

I heard back from the Co Editor of the CV 6 Bulletin who tells me Arnold Watson died 2 years ago. She is going to relay my request for Juneau photos to his widow and other members of her organization.

[FRED BRANYAN]

I neglected to mention above I used Google Earth to try to match the ridges and other ground features in the photo above. No luck. I think I came close but am not positive. There must have been some serious post war changes to the neighborhood or else GE does not correctly show the terrain especially the ridges, peninsula/island etc. visible in the photo. One would think they did not change but perhaps they did. From GE photos it appears the port does some possibly extensive cruise business. I was hoping to ID features for possible photo searches at NARA but no luck.

[scratchshipbuilder]

As an FYI. If you ever see a Mars Models 1/700 US "Destroyer" Atlanta, with a dazzle painted Fletcher on the box. Inside is a flashy repop of most of a skywave San Diego, for about ten bucks.

[Rick E Davis]

Fred,

I forgot I had this aerial view of Nouema Harbor dated from January 1943 until a little while ago. It was the first overall view of Noumea I had ever come across at NARA. The distance didn't allow me to ID many of the ships, but there is a CVE and A BB that I think is USS WASHINGTON (to the left foreground). The 8 November 1942 photo "may" have been taken from the hill to the right ... there is a road leading up to the top. It may help you to line-up with Google Maps. There were several anchorages at Noumea, so I don't know which one this is.

[FRED BRANYAN]

The terrain visible at the lower part of the photo seems to be a pretty close match to the GE photo of the entrance to the modern harbor, but hard to match the rest of the photo to the modern harbor. I suspect they are the same but am also guessing so much changed post war it is hard to confirm. The modern harbor does not seem large enough to be parking a lot of large warships in as is seen in the USNI photo and the one above. Pure guess on my part.

[Rick E Davis]

Fred,

I think I have figured out where the photo I scanned was taken from. Here are two maps I found on-line; First one is what Noumea Harbor looked like during WWII, Second image is what the Harbor looks like today.

On the Noumea "Today" Map I placed an arrow showing the "APPROXIMATE" angle that the photo was taken from and towards where it was looking. You can see that they have filled in some of the area that use to be open water in the "Port of Noumea" and a smaller bay to the North. Plus, from this map you can see that Dumbea Bay, which I have found often mentioned in War Diaries as an anchorage, is much larger than the "Great Road" bay that is shown in this photo and the Noumea WWII map. So many more ships could be anchored there. Plus there is another bay up the coast that looks like it could have been used as well.

The photo from USNI was taken from a different aspect, that I have yet to figure out. I was thinking that the photographer could have been on "Isle Nou" and was looking North towards Ducos Peninsula given how the ships are oriented for berthing in the photo I scanned and how they are oriented in the USNI photo. But land features don't look right for that.

[DrPR]

Looking at the Google Maps image of Noumea I suspect the two photos were taken from the positions indicated in the photo below.

Position 1 would be from the peninsula across Dumbea bay from the anchorage. Rick's post on the 16th.

A clue is the small island at the end of the Ducos Peninsula that is visible from viewpoint 1, more or less lined up with Ducos Peninsula with the Great Road beyond. The battleship on the left (USS Washington) is moored in Dumbea Bay near the small island and outside the Great Road and the battleship on the right (USS South Dakota) appears to be moored near the end of Isle Nou in Dumbea Bay. The carrier (USS Enterprise) is moored in the Great road about even with the long peninsula beyond the three-pronged peninsula (from this angle the three prongs appear as just one headland).

Position 2 is the aerial photo from Rick's post on the 17th.

A clue to view 2 is the three-pronged peninsula on the north side of the Great Road. It is visible the aerial photo and there is nothing else around like it. Also the hook at the end of Isle Nou and the pointed head midway down the island are visible on the right side of the Great Road.

Phil

[MatthewB]

The Island at the right in the Photo is Isle Nou.

The built-up-area along it's length, opposite it is Noumea Harbor.

The image is taken looking approximately East (roughly E-SE), and you can see the shadows from the Washington pointing almost directly to the East, indicating that the sun was nearly behind the photographer (who is in an aircraft pretty high up). That is where you want the sun, behind you.

Being nearly on the Equator, the sun would fallow an almost east-west path regardless of the season (I could ask my brother, who knows how to Navigate, how to determine where the sun would be given the Latitude - I can't get my head to work right now, or I could probably figure that out).

But that Island to the Right IS Isle Nou.

Your arrow should be pointing slightly more to the East, and moved down just a little bit over the tip of that point on Noumea itself to the Left of the image.



MB

[FRED BRANYAN]

Gentlemen

Good finds on the maps and the analysis of them. I was focused on the body of water N of the acquariam which looked way too small to me. Looks like my guess on a lot of post war changes was confirmed.

Rick I did not search either 80G or 19 LCM vs Dunbea Bay although I too saw it mentioned before my last trip to NARA. i did search both vs Noumea and Espiritu Santo. If you have time and it matches your searches a quick check of the indexes vs Dunbea Bay just might be productive on your next visit there.