1/350 CVL-23 USS Princeton

[Dan K]

The hangar deck looks really good, crisp.

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Tracy and Dan! Here are the first finished Hellcats, after some meddling with the wing position.











I still don't understand why I had to redrill the prop centers, the resin axles simply wouldn't fit. Drilling a painted prop is no fun... Some damage will have to be repainted.

[StevenVD]

I ordered the North Star Models microfigure "boxing match set". It should be even better than the L'Arsenal figures, which can now be used on the less conspicuous places. I'm not going to be including a boxing match though, I chose this set because it shows a good variety of standing, sitting and moving figures. I need the sitters for the guns and the planes.



Now the wait for their arrival is pending. Meanwhile, on the Princeton, the barbettes for quadruple Bofors are being detailed up.



I improved some detail with silver wire.





A dryfit of the front deck. The L'Arsenal ammo rings greatly improve the barbette finishing. The two gates facilitate the fitting. The shackles below are not clearly located.



Compare the nice WEM anchor chains to the overscale Dragon offerings, but you won't see much of the results anyway. All is tucked away under the Bofors barbette.



I painted the chains gun metal and washed them black. I put the two PE doors ajar and painted already where I wouldn't get to afterwards.



Because of a slight disalignment, the right hangar wall is shifted 1mm to the rear, prompting me to fill in one of the small barbette walls.



Logically the same problem exists on the other side of the ship, its not much of an effort to fill in. Also, the large barbette is slightly smaller than the front one, so I had to reshape the rings a bit. Luckily, L'Arsenal also had some lengths of straight ammo brackets.

[Nino]

Really nice work on this kit.
I will be in the balcony watching intently.

And really great job on arranging that PE Anchor chain. I touch'em and they all re-bend back to a flat surface.

[StevenVD]

Thanks for the attention, Nino! With the bow built up, the railing can be fixed.



Sadly WEM has included in its railing some chocks that are already in the kit. I had to remove these, because they shouldn't be flat.



Glue went on still easy but repair work will be necessary.



The gaps in the hangar wall are also filled in by railing.



Using my reference pictures, a large piece of railing on the port torpedo blister was located. Again 4 chocks are removed.





The dryfit I did yesterday. Today some more railing was added and a setup for the planes on the deck was done with the front lift up.





2 resin Hellcats were first shown behind the front hangar doors.



Probably they couldn't stay there because of the elevator shaft. Then they would move almost to oblivion.



At the back the planes are closely stashed per 3. Pictures show this is was practiced sometimes.



foto:http://www.armouredcarriers.com/debunki ... ier-essays



On deck there are 3 zones in this setup: at the front are catapulted planes, in the midsection are Hellcats and in the back sit the Avengers. This is all placed quite arbitrary.

[Tracy White]

At the back the planes are closely stashed per 3. Pictures show this is was practiced sometimes.



foto:http://www.armouredcarriers.com/debunki ... ier-essays

This is not a US Navy CVL, but a Royal Navy carrier - likely Illustrious class.

That said, I don't have any good hangar bay photos or diagrams showing typical spottings of aircraft.

[StevenVD]

I realised that it were British planes, but for Princeton to contain 45 planes it probably had to be like this. One question, Tracy, the decal for the elevator shaft seems missing on the sheet? It got nr. 19 in the instruction sheet, but this is used for roundels. The other propeller caution sign is for the island.

[Tracy White]

I don't have my Princeton kit (loaned it out for a review when it came out and haven't got it back yet) so I can't verify, but it looks like you're correct. Disappointing if so.

There was a fundamental difference between how the US and Royal Navy saw carriers and operations but I don't have any hard documentation any way. The USN believed in striking as much of the air group on the main deck as possible, so I don't feel that three-wide parking would have been a thing in cases other than ferry operations or "typhoon's coming!"

[StevenVD]

In that case, I'll put the aft ones 2 wide and maybe put the last one in front of them with a deck tractor, occupied with towing the plane to the elevator. Like that I can leave the space to pass through for the other planes collected on deck.

@David: that's probably the elevator demarcation line. There is a space near the nr.19, but I can see no white lettering. Maybe I'll try adapting a spare piece of white decal with some bluegrey paint so that it looks like lettering and then apply it to the wall.

[StevenVD]

I discovered that the decal nr.19 was present on the Independence decal sheet, having black lettering and did not make it onto Princeton's. It's also present twice, for both elevators probably.

http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/sh ... al-01b.jpg

[Nino]

At the back the planes are closely stashed per 3. Pictures show this is was practiced sometimes.



That said, I don't have any good hangar bay photos or diagrams showing typical spottings of aircraft.

Here is a shot of CVE-30 USS Charger with Planes spotted on hanger deck:


More than likely, these were being transported. That may be why they are parked so close. I suspect Photo is from it's ACV-30 days before it was an escort Carrier (CVE).

[StevenVD]

Thanks for that pic, Nino! In the mean time, I solved the decal problem. It appears that Pontos has foreseen my trouble and provided the needed dry-decal in white lettering. I didn't try this on models yet, but I knew the principle, be it easier to perform on a flat surface.





When I sealed the decals, I noticed another issue with the elevator shaft.



Looking into the shaft, you see quite a thick girder supporting the deck. In the kit, only the sides of the shaft are closed off (and the parts for that on the front elevator are not switched in the instructions like they should).



Therefore I scratched this part in Evergreen.





I guess the L'Arsenal Hellcats are a tiny bit too high on their toes, touching the girder with the propellor tips. I won't be adressing that problem, it doesn't stick out if the Hellcats are recessed a bit behind the girder.

[StevenVD]

I was able to turn the props after all, though I see some on Nino's picture are pointing upwards. Now the elevators had to be adapted to the Pontos wood deck.





Looks nice on picture, but I think the wood deck will lack an obvious feature of the wood deck.



The partitions on the planking can probably not be replicated, or does there exist a PE set to replace a plank with a sling hook rail?

[MartinJQuinn]

Nice work on all that PE. Looks great.

[Tracy White]

For what it's worth, the Navy called these "transverse girders" and they were the top of a structure built to support the flight deck and sides of the hangar. You can see them on the Booklet of General Plans, both as the "girder over" on the Gallery Deck level sheet:

But also as the dashed lines on the flight deck sheet

These vertical and horizontal girders protruded into the hangar space and the areas in between were often filled with storage or equipment such as fueling stations, foamite (fire fighting) stations, etc.

Just information for those interested in super-detailing a space few will see!

[StevenVD]

Thanks for the info, Tracy! I see now that the elevators are charged with drop tanks on the underside. Is that only the case in the aft elevator? The underside of the front one will show, but for the moment it's flat. This should be hollow, but if it holds these drop tanks, that would be hidden for a bit.





I painted the deck edge to the elevator shafts yellow on a white primer. The deck will cover the untidy part.



One of two sublime Clarctors, that can't be improved with PE.



I painted them grey, accentuating some details with a black wash. The tow bar is also nice with some structure on it.



Weighting down the tractor to adhere to the wood deck.



You should imagine also some personnel on the platform, I'm still waiting on confirmation that the North Star figurines are shipping. In the mean time, I idled for a while on http://www.armouredcarriers.com/. This is a fantastic site for any carrier enthusiast, combining well written action reports with analysis of the armour used and a lot of pictures in a bloggy style.

[Tracy White]

Thanks for the info, Tracy! I see now that the elevators are charged with drop tanks on the underside. Is that only the case in the aft elevator?

Drop tank storage evolved over time and the set I posted those snips from (available here about a third to hald the way down) is from 1950 and I'm not sure how applicable it would be to 1944. The hangar bays of US carriers evolved as much as the outside did, but there are far fewer photos and I have almost nothing on the CVLs, not for lack of trying.

http://www.armouredcarriers.com/. This is a fantastic site for any carrier enthusiast, combining well written action reports with analysis of the armour used and a lot of pictures in a bloggy style.

Despite his obvious bias against US carriers, I agree that it's a good site. I send him photos of the RN armored carriers I come across at US Archives.

[Tracy White]

I just came across a copy of this photo (alternate here) I have that's not quite as cut off. Just above the tip of the prop, cropped out, I can see the bottoms of three drop tanks hanging next to the transverse girder - there is just a hint of one at the very top to the left of the prop tip. It's unclear as to where in the hangar bay this is, however CVL-22 had a specialized night group and during this time (and maybe for the rest of the war) the sections fore and aft of the elevators was painted a very dark color, likely black. At least 2-3 girder sections fore and aft. I believe that because the girders in teh background are so very much darker than the foreground ones that this is the rear of Independence's hangar, around frame 101. The CVL-26 Monterey plans I linked to above don't have 100% corresponding catwalks / crawlways to this photo, and there's no openings nearby to make this a good place to detail, but I thought I'd show another hint of how drop tanks were stored for those interested.

[StevenVD]

I had seen this pic earlier but didn't make out these drop tanks on them, in fact I'm still groping for them after your description. Are they the dark mass behind this kind of stanchioning to the ceiling? And what is the object suspended to the far left? Anyway, thanks for the clarification about the earlier material you posted. I have now closed down the hull anyway, so further detailing will have to happen through the cargo door and elevator openings. For reasons shown further down, I'm happy I didn't elaborate things further already on the inside.



I had to scratch some extra bitts. The kit contains 4 identical ones, the instructions show at least 6. Two more can be found on unused sprues, but these seem out of scale.





Closing down the deck on the glue-covered hangar walls. This didn't work out as smooth as I already suspected it wouldn't, when dry-fitted.



The deck fixing victims lined out on a row. Most of the interior Hellcats, some deck PE and part of a walkway went down the drain. One large PE particle was crumpled due to a wayward Wolfcraft clamp, the smaller type. Nothing that can't be repaired, though.



The Clarctor and 1 Hellcat remain. To look for some parts, I inserted a little mirror in the front elevator shaft.



I suspect a plane wing got stuck on the floor after touching some deck glue. I'll fish it out later with some wire.

Now what's behind all this mayhem, you must wonder?



All is caused by the construction method of the hangar walls anchored to the hull. The walls are straight until bent on the hull, causing distortion along their upper edge. To counter this, the deck has four guidance rails to the underside. These don't go the entire length of the deck, just as far as the walls must be clamped. But the actual distance between the walls is almost 1 cm in excess. They have to be pinched thus, creating such tension that the release reached once you push them behind the extremities of the guidance rails, the shock sent through the model will loosen anything that is too heavy, like the planes. One of them subsequently started to wander, losing its wings.

The rest of the damage are consequences of the closing operation. Some railing was pushed off the blisters while pinching and the front catwalk barbettes also went. These will have to be adapted anyway to fit. The two front plastic walkways between the catwalk and the hull had to be removed, these seem to be misplaced on the instructions. And lastly, the fit of the front elevator girders to the deck is bad, probably because of the tiny hangar wall misalignment mentioned earlier on. This is about half a mm, but enough to warp the girders. It can probably be adressed by removing and filing them shorter.

Moral of the story: first glue the deck, then upgrade the outside of the carrier. Any planes on the inside have to be fixed more taut, maybe with an extra pin through the deck, as the release shock is unavoidable.





Notice at the extreme right a ventilation grate being covered partly by a walkway, this may be a tiny design error in the walkway layout.



Because the Avengers on the deck will be shown in the process of being rearmed, I orderd this:



These are improved Mk.13 airplane torpedoes. The kit shown to the right makes me wonder what brand they had, it's not one I currently own.

[StevenVD]

The new set of torpedoes arrived today from Sockelshop:



They didn't arrive alone, most of these goodies will probably soon be used in other projects.



To compare the set to something more standard than a matchstick, here a picture taken on the cutting mat.



I recovered every plane part from the hangar, after locating everything with my mirror. These wheels were so fix that a metal wire hooked around them couldn't dislocate them. Luckily they could be reached with a pincer.



All the planes were soon remade and repositioned. The innermost one was shoved in without glue for a few centimeters and then glued though the middle hangar door to avoid smearing on the floor.



You can install the hoist mechanism of one elevator with the WEM photo-etch.







The wooden deck tends to curve up at the seams, maybe I'll add a drop of glue.



Repositioning the gun platforms on the bow, after engraving the outlines to assure a good fit.