Hello, all. I have some questions regarding the dolly and catapult cradle arrangement for the ISE. As far as I can tell, the ISE had catapults installed so that the top of the catapult, I'll call it the catapult track, was at the same level as the flight deck rail system. In IJN ships such as cruisers or conventional battleships, the catapult track was elevated above the deck rail system by virtue of the entire catapult structure being mounted to the deck. In these other ships, it seems that the dolly used to move the aircraft on the rails held the transferable cradle at the same height as the catapult track. I believe that in that configuration, the cradle in which the aircraft rested could then have been directly slid from the top of the dolly onto the rear end of the catapult track. With the configuration of the catapult track and flight deck rail system being at the same level on the ISE, I'm inclined to believe that the sort of raised dollies used on other ships would have been irrelevant. So, were ISE's dollies and cradles in fact a single integrated unit, rather than two separable units? Or was perhaps a very low profile separable dolly used with the cradles? I see that in the Fujimi ISE PE set for 1/700, only what looks like the over-sized ISE cradles are included, whereas in the 1/350 Fujimi PE set, it looks like both the ISE-type cradles and separate elevated dollies are included. Would the inclusion of the dollies in the 1/350 PE set be an error on Fujimi's part? Flyhawk's 1/350 ISE PE set, FH350128, appears to provide both the dollies and the cradles that were typical for other ships, but then also the ISE-specific cradles. Huh? On another note, the plan was for ISE to carry both float planes and wheeled dive bombers. Of course, the wheeled aircraft could be moved around, from hanger to flight deck, without the use of dollies. This is how many people have modeled the wheeled aircraft on ISE's flight deck, with the seeming implication being that the transfer of the wheeled aircraft from flight deck to catapult cradle might have occurred just before the rear end of the catapult (How about that picture of what appears to be a wheeled aircraft on ISE's flight deck with tail lifted, perhaps being loaded onto a catapult cradle just as the picture was taken?) So it seems that the extensive track system going from the hanger to flight deck to catapults would have been needed primarily for handling the float planes, not so much for the wheeled planes? Hmm. What do you all think? Separate dollies and catapult cradles or integrated units? Both wheeled aircraft and float planes riding on dollies all the way from the hanger, or just float planes? (With my questions, please realize that I don't have access to the best reference material, as do other modelers, so forgive me if my questions seem naïve.)
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