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PostPosted: Wed May 22, 2013 4:25 pm 
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Considering the incredable prices asked for old Pit Road USS Halibut (SSGN-587) kits ($200+) you would think the company would re-issue the kit. How might they be induced to re-issue a popular kit? Could this be a subject for a Blueridge 1/350 kit? Leaves a big hole in my SSG and SSGN collection. Suggestions?


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PostPosted: Wed May 22, 2013 8:09 pm 
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I have built three of the old Pit Road Halibut kits (one for myself, and two for the Halibut Crew 2002 Reunion). It is a very accurate kit of Halibut, and indeed would be a good subject for revival or for another manufacturer. You could have both SSGN and later Spec Ops versions.

See: http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/sh ... libut.html for SSGN and Special Projects version of Halibut.

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Tom Dougherty
Researcher for: "Project Azorian”
https://www.amazon.com/Azorian-Raising-K-129-Michael-White/dp/B008QTU7QY
"Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129" Book
https://www.usni.org/press/books/project-azorian


Last edited by Timmy C on Wed May 22, 2013 8:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Corrected link, I think.


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PostPosted: Fri May 24, 2013 9:12 am 
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Location: Minneapolis
Well.....maybe I was at the right place at the right time.
HobbyLink Japan was advertising that kit as available
last December. So I bought one. The price was $72.00.
Brand new, still factory-sealed box with everything inside
nicely bubble-wrapped.

I wonder if HLJ had found a stash of them tucked away
somewhere. I don't think Pit-Road did a reissue. I doubt
there are any of the kits left.

Maybe...just maybe.....Blue Ridge Models might have the
Halibut on their to-do list. I'd buy a couple. I've mentioned
it to Brandon. You could too.


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:05 pm 
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In light of Blue Ridge Models making a new 1/350 Halibut kit, I was wondering if anyone has any idea what the skegs that were fitted to Halibut for "ocean engineering" looked like. Also, many sources say she had two anchors after the refit, but my plans only show one in the bow.

Here are two pages from the Piping TAB, after the refit but before the DSRV simulator:

http://i.imgur.com/GJ4rB9g.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/USWRdcG.png

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 6:43 am 
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Those are great plans - thanks for sharing!

Do you have plans for the SSGN? I'll be building my kit as the SSGN, with the hangar door open and a Regulus round on the launcher.


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:29 pm 
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Peter O wrote:
Those are great plans - thanks for sharing!

Do you have plans for the SSGN? I'll be building my kit as the SSGN, with the hangar door open and a Regulus round on the launcher.


I don't, but there's not much difference. The plans I linked are from the late 60s, before the taller sail, through-hull thrusters, extra anchor (?), and skegs were added. The only things added on the piping TAB diagram are the aquarium and "bow jet" thruster.

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Under Construction:
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1/350 Skate
1/350 USS Nautilus
1/350 Tang
1/350 November
1/350 Hotel II
1/350 Alfa
1/350 George Washington
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 2:56 pm 
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Thanks, Vepr157. I was hoping to find drawings of the missile hangar and gear. Regulus has long been a favorite weapons system of mine.


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 4:54 pm 
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Here's an SSGN drawing (with Regulus II):

http://i.imgur.com/ni2GHjo.png

Navsource also has some good photos of 1/4 scale mock-ups the Navy made of her hangar:

http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08587.htm

You might also want to look at photos of USS Growler's hanger, which should be broadly similar, at least in terms of missile-handling gear. Since she's a museum ship, there are a lot of photos out there.

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Under Construction:
1/350 Typhoon
1/350 Skate
1/350 USS Nautilus
1/350 Tang
1/350 November
1/350 Hotel II
1/350 Alfa
1/350 George Washington
1/72 Type VIIC


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2016 3:18 pm 
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It's very difficult to have a real information on the halibut , I hope you 'll have an answer Vepr !

For the Blue Ridge Models , I'm looking for informations about this sort of skate landing on the special ops configuration .I see some draws but I don't know if this parts really exists .

Pierre

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:00 pm 
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Quote:
I was wondering if anyone has any idea what the skegs that were fitted to Halibut for "ocean engineering" looked like. Also, many sources say she had two anchors after the refit, but my plans only show one in the bow.


Skegs were bow & stern, sort of looked like sled skids. Hal Sutton has a good drawing, which also shows the VDS Aquarium deploy tube. See his page and drawings at: http://www.hisutton.com/images/halibut_1700.jpg. Halibut was updated in two stages. The first was the general rearrangement of the former Regulus Hanger into three levels, as shown. The Univax computer (1224, also designated as CP 818A/U, a "small" computer roughly the size of two old phone booths. BTW, Blind Man's Bluff lists it as an 1124- no such computer existed). You, too can obtain your own copy of Vol. I of the 1224 manual at http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/univac/military/1224/TEM0-377-011A_CP-818A_Digital_Data_Computer_Vol1_Oct68.pdf. At this point, Halibut was part of Winterwind, a secret program to recover "objects of interest" from the ocean floor (like Russian test RVs, etc.). There was no provision for saturation diving; that installation came in Ph. 2. Interestingly USS Seawolf (SSN 575) was also converted to Special Projects in the early 1970's, but in that case she got a 52 foot hull "plug" forward of the sail and a thruster installation.

I believe the sail was raised even before this point, during the Regulus era, although the TAB drawing has the original sail. I have had the Halibut TAB since the early 2000's; note that the reactor area does not show reactor details just the shield area (as it should- reactor details are still classified). Halibut was fairly large with a big wetted hull area but was underpowered with the S3W power plant, which had only half the power of the S5W that was in the Skipjack, Permit, Sturgeon and SSBNs.

In the second stage of modification in the early 1970's, bow and stern thrusters were added below the deck superstructure (2 at each end), the saturation diving chamber was added (disguised as the "DSRV Simulator" ) and a stern mushroom anchor. Later the skegs and a storage gondola system (apparently a net structure) was added. The skeg mounting required that the outer thin hull be partially pealed back and the skews welded to the structural pressure hull before replacing the outer hull.

Many years ago I built up two of the old Pitroad (Seawolf/Torpedo) resin Halibut kits in both SSGN and Special Projects configurations for the Halibut Crew Reunion. That conversion is available here: http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/ships/ss/halibut/350-td/halibut.html

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Tom Dougherty
Researcher for: "Project Azorian”
https://www.amazon.com/Azorian-Raising-K-129-Michael-White/dp/B008QTU7QY
"Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129" Book
https://www.usni.org/press/books/project-azorian


Last edited by Tom Dougherty on Wed Aug 07, 2019 1:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2016 9:49 pm 
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I actually helped Sutton with those drawings, so those skegs are just based on our conjecture (which was based on a photo of a Parche model I saw on one of these sub forums, which was based on.....etc). Even though I had a hand in drawing them, I think they're a little too fragile-looking and I'd want to have a reasonable idea of what they looked like before I start modifying a $90 model.

Any chance you have that TAB scanned?

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Under Construction:
1/350 Typhoon
1/350 Skate
1/350 USS Nautilus
1/350 Tang
1/350 November
1/350 Hotel II
1/350 Alfa
1/350 George Washington
1/72 Type VIIC


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 12:53 pm 
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I am basing the ski like skegs on drawings from the saturation divers. I figure they saw those up close and personal. They are reasonably heavy duty, but they do not have to support the entire weight of the submarine. You take on enough ballast to give the submarine a firm "plant" on the bottom. The skegs were installed some time after the saturation chamber so it is OK to leave them off of the model.

Yes, I do have high resolution scans of the drawings.

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Tom Dougherty
Researcher for: "Project Azorian”
https://www.amazon.com/Azorian-Raising-K-129-Michael-White/dp/B008QTU7QY
"Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129" Book
https://www.usni.org/press/books/project-azorian


Last edited by Tom Dougherty on Mon May 30, 2016 4:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Sun May 29, 2016 11:40 am 
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I've been in contact with the Blue Ridge model guys here (under "Product Reviews"): http://freetimehobbies.com/1-350-blue-ridge-models-uss-halibut-ssgn-ssn-587-2-in-1-submarine-model-kit/. They're going to produce skegs for all the people who ordered the Halibut kit.

If anyone has any additional information or corrections to my guesses about the skegs, now's the time to give them your input.

Jacob

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Under Construction:
1/350 Typhoon
1/350 Skate
1/350 USS Nautilus
1/350 Tang
1/350 November
1/350 Hotel II
1/350 Alfa
1/350 George Washington
1/72 Type VIIC


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PostPosted: Mon May 30, 2016 4:22 pm 
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Well, I did try to add the Halibut skeg drawings I have, but once again received: "the file is too big, maximum allowed size is 200 Kb".

It looks as if you got reasonably close with the Covert Shores drawings; they are a bit longer than you have them and have dual sets of 2 struts at either end of the skegs attaching them to the submarine. They are fairly simple is structure, not too hard to scratch build.

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Tom Dougherty
Researcher for: "Project Azorian”
https://www.amazon.com/Azorian-Raising-K-129-Michael-White/dp/B008QTU7QY
"Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129" Book
https://www.usni.org/press/books/project-azorian


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PostPosted: Tue May 31, 2016 11:07 am 
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You can upload them to http://imgur.com/ and post the link to the image instead of hosting the image on this website.

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1/350 Typhoon
1/350 Skate
1/350 USS Nautilus
1/350 Tang
1/350 November
1/350 Hotel II
1/350 Alfa
1/350 George Washington
1/72 Type VIIC


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PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 4:17 am 
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Vepr157 wrote:
I've been in contact with the Blue Ridge model guys here (under "Product Reviews"): http://freetimehobbies.com/1-350-blue-ridge-models-uss-halibut-ssgn-ssn-587-2-in-1-submarine-model-kit/. They're going to produce skegs for all the people who ordered the Halibut kit.

If anyone has any additional information or corrections to my guesses about the skegs, now's the time to give them your input.

Jacob


Many Thanks Jacob :thumbs_up_1:

Pierre

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In progress :
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1/350 : SSN 687 Richard B. Russell base Mikromir
1/350 : SSBN 626 Daniel Webster Mikromir


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 2:13 am 
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Hello

Some news about skegs for the Blue Ridge model's kit ?

Pierre

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1/350 : SSN 687 Richard B. Russell base Mikromir
1/350 : SSBN 626 Daniel Webster Mikromir


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 6:39 am 
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I'm currently reading Josh Dean's "The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History" and he mentions that the Halibut wore a "black and gray camouflage scheme". Does anyone have any ideas on what that actually looked like?

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PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 10:04 am 
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Devin wrote:
I'm currently reading Josh Dean's "The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History" and he mentions that the Halibut wore a "black and gray camouflage scheme". Does anyone have any ideas on what that actually looked like?


Short answer: the Halibut was all-black at that time. When she was an SSGN, she had black on the horizontal surfaces and grey on the vertical surfaces, but she was painted all black in the mid-60s when she became an ocean engineering boat. I think the Skates (with which Halibut shared many similarities) were painted all-black at Mare Island about this same time.

Rant: That book angers me. It's written by an author who doesn't know what he's talking about. He's a writer for Popular Science and GQ, not a naval historian. Polmar and White's Project Azorian is the superior book on the subject and Josh Dean admits in the acknowledgements that most of the technical stuff was taken from that book. Admittedly it seems like he interviewed a lot of people not included in Project Azorian, but this book didn't need to be written, and it wasn't written well.

Jacob

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PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 1:55 pm 
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First, Jacob is correct about the colors. Some years back, I was in contact with Dr. Roger Dunham, who wrote "Spy Boat", a book about the Halibut mission to find the K-129. I ended up making Halibut models for the 2002 Halibut crew reunion, using the then available Pitroad resin Halibut kits (One SSGN and one as the Special Projects version, scratch building several parts. I had information on the submarine from then that I passed along to Blue Ridge, which along with other research on their part, resulted in their superb model of Halibut.

I have not read the Dean book, but I did research work with Michael White & Norman Polmar on the Azorian book, as well as Micheal White's Azorian documentary film (still available). I can tell you that Michael White spent an enormous amount of time and money chasing down research from first hand sources. Initially, mission participants were reluctant to speak with him, but he managed one time to convey that he wanted to tell the real story (not helping was that the book Red Star Rogue had come out around this time, which presented a classic Conspiracy Theory book about the mission).

Michael who worked on major films in the 1980's, also has an artistic genius for producing (along with his colleague, Markus Cermak) superb CGI renderings of the operation. Pictures online (such as this: http://maritime-executive.com/media/images/article/Photos/Miscellaneous/Original/Glomar%20Explorer%20Moon%20Pool-update2.jpg) are stills from his CGI. He was also kind enough to share with me during the research period large scale drawings of the Glomar Explorer, several engineering drawings of the CV, the HMB barge and the (from Russian archives) Russian Golf I and II classes, as well as B&W video taken from the CV and Glomar Explorer, interview transcripts, raw film interviews etc. over the course of the 3 year period we worked on the documentary. The documentary film trailer is here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h6rGrzD2VY. The documentary film DVD is still available from Amazon.

While I appreciate the comments by Jacob on the Polmar/White Azorian book and the original research done, additional details have come out since then. In my opinion the very best source is now the first hand account of the mission by former CIA engineer Dr. David H. Sharp. He was in on the planning, the engineering, and was one of the technical directors on board the Glomar Explorer during the mission. He gives a blow by blow account of the details. Initially the CIA denied him the clearance to publish any parts of the book, but at least in part due to the Azorian documentary film led to their relenting. The book, "The CIA's Greatest Covert Operation: Inside the Daring Mission to Recover a Nuclear-Armed Soviet Sub" is the best account you will find. Recently, it was opted by Ridley Scott's company for film treatment: http://deadline.com/2017/08/cia-project-azorian-soviet-nuclear-submarine-movie-scott-free-new-sparta-1202153651/

Full disclosure: For reasons I won't go into further, I I am still in weekly email contact with both Michael White and David Sharp. I have been very privileged to work with Michael and get to know people like Dave, who were part of this incredible operation. It's been a long, incredible journey since I was a college student watching from afar the building of Howard Hughes' strange looking ship, Glomar Explorer in Chester, Pa.

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Tom Dougherty
Researcher for: "Project Azorian”
https://www.amazon.com/Azorian-Raising-K-129-Michael-White/dp/B008QTU7QY
"Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129" Book
https://www.usni.org/press/books/project-azorian


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