When I go through photos in 80-G at NARA II I love dead overhead views of almost ANY SHIP and will scan the photo. While at NARA in October, by pure coincident, I came across two overhead photos of IOWA taken at different times early in her career.
One photo shows her on 7 April 1943 and the other one shows her after her yard period at Boston on 27 August 1943. Note that they put the WRONG year date on the Boston Navy Yard photo!!! An interesting study of the changes made to her from an OVERHEAD VIEW POINT.
To preserve all the great information in this thread, I'm going to merge it with the Iowa Class Fans thread at some point.
Martin
"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne
No problem. I put it here so it would be easy for people to find.
With the new 1:700 and 1:200 scale models out I was thinking this would help those working on a Iowa project.
On your photo of the Iowa, it shows drain 'scuttles' on the side of her hull. I was not aware that any Iowa class ship had these installed during WWII. I only knew this as a post war feature...
The Tamiya 1/350 USS Missouri kit for instance, has these molded on the hull and I've read more than a few articles that suggest one should remove them for an accurate WWII kit. Maybe Iowa is the only ship of the class that had them at the time? Do you know the time frame of the photo?
After studying the above photo in its enlarged state, I'm leaning towards this - that these were extensions of the overboard discharge els (90 deg. pipe elbows) rather than the type of overboard discharge COVER that was added in the class '80s refit. These fit over the discharge pipe elbow and directed the flow downward. I believe they were welded to the hull itself and consisted of a larger diameter "half-shell" - if there was an actual pipe inside it, I'm not aware of it, but it could very well be present.
Obviously, this is just one more point to the fact that the 4 ships were NOT identical from start to museum ship!
Hank
HMS III
Mocksville, NC
BB62 vet 68-69
Builder's yard:
USS STODDARD (DD-566) 66-68 1:144, Various Lg Scale FC Directors Finished:
USS NEW JERSEY (BB-62) 67-69 1:200
USN Sloop/Ship PEACOCK (1813) 1:48
ROYAL CAROLINE (1748) 1:47
AVS (1768) 1:48
So I know that New Jersey is nicknamed Black Dragon and I know it's because of the MS21 she was wearing during 43-45 & the fire out of her main battery. My question is, WHO came up with the nickname? Was it the Japanese or was it USN sailors?
So I know that New Jersey is nicknamed Black Dragon and I know it's because of the MS21 she was wearing during 43-45 & the fire out of her main battery. My question is, WHO came up with the nickname? Was it the Japanese or was it USN sailors?
It must have been WWII because I never heard her called that during her Vietnam Service. That's a new one on me!
Hank
HMS III
Mocksville, NC
BB62 vet 68-69
Builder's yard:
USS STODDARD (DD-566) 66-68 1:144, Various Lg Scale FC Directors Finished:
USS NEW JERSEY (BB-62) 67-69 1:200
USN Sloop/Ship PEACOCK (1813) 1:48
ROYAL CAROLINE (1748) 1:47
AVS (1768) 1:48
It is strange, she got those and fair water vents on the turrets, the New Jersey which was overhauled right after her didn't.
It may be because different yards did the work.
But the New Jersey had the most extensive WWII modifications of all the Iowas.
Hey guys, I was going back to the time RandyM was doing all his CAD work and printing his hull mods. I wanted to see some detail on a couple of his images, but imagine my surprise when not a single one of them are still here. Anybody know what happened to them? He didn't get mad and take his toys and go home, did he? I sure hope not. There was a lot of good info there.
Larry Steiner
Completed: 1:200 USS Missouri (Monster Mo)
Next project: Definitely NOT another big ship!!
An interesting comment/reply - it doesn't surprise me that the YAMATO hulls have more detail than the IOWAs do. I believe the reference you were making to Pontos hull plating was the MISSOURI model completed by Kim in the Gallery - his model (once again - my opinion here) overstated the hull plating, esp. the vertical plate lines. Unless you are within 5-10 feet of the ship, you won't see this on the real ship, why would you depict it on a model? I can see lightly scribing the vertical lines representing individual plates, but not as his model shows. It's (once again - my opinion) simply overkill. The horizontal lines, however, are a different story - they actually are visible from a moderate distance as they are NOT in the same plane as the row of plates either above or below. As such, they are visible and worth showing on the model. With all the other detail that the model company has put into these kits, I'm quite surprised their hulls are as nondescript as they are.
Adding the vertical butt plates (these are available as a 3rd party add-on) also improves the overall hull appearance. I can see that once you get into the smaller models (scales less than 1/350) it becomes harder to properly show or mold these types of detail. But, for those of us working on the larger models, I think the manufacturers could do a lot better in this respect.
Any pictures of your YAMATO would be nice to see.
Hank
Hank,
Sorry for the very late reply. All my pics of my 350th Tamiya Yamato is on a hard drive which has become corrupted...
Hope this pic will give you an idea of the detail Tamiya added to the hull.
My, the HD crash genie seems to be visiting others (been there last year, done that!)
Well, it looks like those of us building IOWA variants got cheated!!!
Thanks for posting the pic!
Hank
HMS III
Mocksville, NC
BB62 vet 68-69
Builder's yard:
USS STODDARD (DD-566) 66-68 1:144, Various Lg Scale FC Directors Finished:
USS NEW JERSEY (BB-62) 67-69 1:200
USN Sloop/Ship PEACOCK (1813) 1:48
ROYAL CAROLINE (1748) 1:47
AVS (1768) 1:48
The Haynes model of Missouri, currently in the wardroom, has excellent representation of the hull plating. I wonder if he attempted to scale this from photographs or actually was able to obtain a hull plate plan. Interesting that more information is available about (for instance) about Bismarck.
Since Trumpy didn't get the hull shape right, plating would be a real disaster!
Fliger747 wrote:....Since Trumpy didn't get the hull shape right, plating would be a real disaster!
Cheers: Tom
I would bolster that statement by saying that no scale model is accurate to the real 1/1 thing. None, zero, zilch. Certainly we can come *close* to scale accuracy but it's really just chasing the wind.
steinerman wrote:Steve, would they be the same place on the Missouri?
Missouri didn't carry Mk.49s so, no, unfortunately, they aren't.
Round bridge and square bridge aside, there are several other subtle differences between the bridges and armored conning towers of the two ships (aft bulkhead orientation, location of view slits, etc.). Most of the differences show up well in photos. I have a good idea how big and where the Mk.49 gun tubs were located from photographic evidence but authoritative 2D plans might confirm their dimensions. Much better to have dimensioned 2D plans than try to scale from photos.
Here's a photo that shows one of the tubs up close:
