Calling all USS Hornet CV-8 fans

[Zach P.]

Hornet was a gallant lady and deserving of her own thread.

I am still grinding out the Tamiya kit into something like an accurate if undersized model. Picked up the Midships models Waepons set for 20 mils and 1.1 inch mounts. However the 5 inch 25's seem grossly too large for the spnson positions on the Tamiya kit. Is there a better source for these somewhere, er you know slightly less accurate and smaller.......

[Gordon Bjorklund]

Hi, Zach. We do have a small (large) problem when trying to add aftermarket pieces to our Tamiya kits. Here is what I have done with my "Santa Cruz" Enterprise. I ordered both the Midship Models and the Skywave/Pit-Road sets to see what each was like. Apon examining both sets side by side I found the Skywave sit to be a little smaller than the Midship set. I used the the 5"/38's out of the Skywave set. They also seem a little big, the barrels seem to long and the guns set a little to high, but I am happy with the way it looks. I'm going to use the 5"/25's on my "Tokyo Raid " Enterprise. The barrels are a little shorter and by sanding down the top of the guns they won't set so high. When I get to the 1943 post Bremerton Overhaul I will sand down the raised area in the 5" gun galleries which will also lower the height fo the guns. Even though the guns are a little to big, they sure look alot better than the Civil War cannons that come with the kit. I also used the 40mm and the 1.1" guns and they seem a little large on the kit.
To take your eyes off of the the the oversized parts try adding some kind of action on your flight deck. The forward flight deck of my Enterprise is full of planes and crew. Two separatre crews working on the two bomb holes in in the flight deck. The no.2 elevator is stuck in the down position and I have planes being pushed past the elevator by part of the deck crew. The action on the deck will draw your attention to it and not the oversized parts.
HTH
Gordon

Yorktown Class Carriers: The Right Ships..The Right Crews..The Right Time

[Zach P.]

Gordon,

Yeah last night I discovered that the Midship 5" 38's fit into the forward 5 inch galleries and look alright but they just don't fit in the aft galleries. They are too tall and the flight deck gets in the way of allowing them to sit in the gallery.

I guess I will get the skywave set and see if they fit in the aft galleries.

[TuveB]

Hi. Better ask the questions in the correct threads

Did Hornet have any planes down below during the Mitchell transport/launch and if so how many? How many of the various types? Wich types? Devastator, Wildcats and Dauntless's? Any others? I don't think 90 planes will fit inside or do they? Or how many did the "original" Hornet normally carry? Yes i'm planning on having all doors open.

Regards,

Tuve Bo�thius, Sweden

[johndon]

She did have her airwing in the hanger for the mission (although I don't know how many aircraft of each type there were) as it was brought up to the flight deck once the B25's had been launched and the Hornet had turned for home.

Earlier on in the mission, 5 Wildcats had been kept on the flight deck forward of the forward elevator. Also, the navy were prepared to push the B25's over the side had the mission been compromised and there had been a need to get fighters in the air.

HTH

John

[TuveB]

What colour should i paint the hangar deck on my Hornet in? The CV6 thread mentions 20G deck gray but WEM lists 20 as deck green??

TuveB

[JSJH]

'Long ago, 'heard she had a squadron (or two, Scouting and Bombing?) of SBC-4s aboard during the Japan Raid instead of SBDs or SB2Us...

...anybody heard similar?

[MartinJQuinn]

What colour should i paint the hangar deck on my Hornet in? The CV6 thread mentions 20G deck gray but WEM lists 20 as deck green??

TuveB

#20 Standard Deck Gray is the correct color for the deck, the bulkheads were white. The White Ensign Colourcoat equivilant for Deck Gray is item # US 02

'Long ago, 'heard she had a squadron (or two, Scouting and Bombing?) of SBC-4s aboard during the Japan Raid instead of SBDs or SB2Us...

...anybody heard similar?

I was watching the USS Hornet DVD recently, and it showed an SBD warming up on aft part of the deck, nestled amongst the B-25s as the task force steamed west. IIRC, Hornet landed her SBC-4s in San Diego, before heading up to Alameda to pick up the B-25s.

[Devin]

'Long ago, 'heard she had a squadron (or two, Scouting and Bombing?) of SBC-4s aboard during the Japan Raid instead of SBDs or SB2Us...

...anybody heard similar?

None are listed in Lundstrum's "The First Team" tables at the end of the book. I too believe they were landed in California, or even in Norfolk.

-Devin

[Guest]

Gentleman;

The Hornet Air Group was not at full strength during the Doolittle Raid because there were not enough combat ready aircraft available for her squadrons on the East Coast and West Coast at the times of her respective departures. On departure from the USA, her Air Group consisted of 65 planes: 30 F4F-4 [folding wing] (VF-8), 25 SBD-3 (12 VS-8, 12 VB-8, 1 CHAG) and 10 TBD-1s (VT-8).

All the individual plane numbers are not known. What I do know are:

CHAG: CG
VF-8: F-1 through F-30
VS-8: S-13; no S-9, S-12, or S-18
VB-8: B-1, B-2, B-4, B-4, B-5, B-7, B-8, B-10, B-11, B-12, B-13, B-14
VT-8: T-1, T-2, T-3, T-5, T-7, T-9, T-10, T-11, T-13, T-16

Hope this helps;

Mark E. Horan

[RNfanDan]

Slightly off-topic, but would this problem (the 5" mounts, that is) occur with an Enterprise or a Yorktown build, or is it just limited to the Hornet kits?

[Gordon Bjorklund]

RNfanDan, The problem is with the Tamiya kits. The kits are undersized.
Michael Vorrasi posted last year that the "Enterprise" and "Hornet" kits scale out 1/719 scale. So if you're using the Tamiya kits for a Yorktown build , then the aftermarket will be a little too big. The good news is that they will fit with a little work.

HTH

Gordon

[Captain Morgan]

Actually calling them 1/720 is probably a little off, they seem more like 1/740 or 1/750. My CA CV-4 Ranger and CV-7Wasp kits are wider and almost as long as the Tamiya kits. And when I checked those 2 kits against my drawing for them they were pretty much the correct size. My Hiryu and Soryu kits are about the same size as the Hornet and Enterprise kits. That why I wish Trumpeter had gotten the hull shape correct like Tamiya did. It's real funny, Trumpeter could have bought a Revell and Tamiya kit and gotten a much more accurate hull than they did.

[Michael Vorrasi]

I just remeasured the Tamiya kit. I once worked out the math on what the measurements would be if Tamiya had used the oft quoted erroneous O/A length when scaling the kit, and found that this was just what they did. I just reconfirmed my earlier notes. It is 1/719th scale. The original ship's O/A length is the problem. Many sources incorrectly quote 809 feet as the O/A length of the entire ship. The 809 ft. figure is actually the O/A length of the HULL only. Tamiya used the wrong O/A length of 809 ft. for the entire real ship, instead of the correct O/A length of 824.5 feet as built, or 827 feet in Hornet and Enterprise with the 20mm tubs on the aft ramp corners, and scaled the rest accordingly.

Because Tamiya thought the entire ship was 809 feet, and not 824.5 feet, the model came out undersize. In 1/700 scale, they should measure 14.177 inches long. Instead, they are 13.875 inches long. This works out to 1/719th scale for a 825 foot ship, (but it works out perfectly to 1/700 for an 809 foot ship!) If you use this 1/719 scale, the rest of the hull is actually quite correct for that scale. The waterline beam (83 feet on the real ships) measured out to 1.3853 inches, and, in 1/719th scale, that is exactly what I calculated. The Max Breadth at the flight deck measures 1.819 inches. If converted to 1/719 scale this equates to the correct 109 feet. The hull has the proper shape and flare at the sides. In fact, I compared the model to views of numerous shots of various Yorktown class ships, and the lines of the hull are right on, even capturing the subtle flare between hangar deck and waterline under the stern 5 inch batteries.

The island is still too narrow overall, even given the underscaling. Compounding this error, the pilot house on both the Hornet kit and the Enterprise kit is far too narrow (both should overhang to port) and the associated bridge platforms are also too narrow, and somewhat erroneous, as a result. Hornet's pilot house is also shaped wrong, as is pri-fly. Both ships need revisions in the secondary armament, with Hornet being the closest to the mark. Enterprise is a well known horrible armament and island configuration mis-match of different time periods, and of course, Hornet needs to have the forward flight deck widened and squared off. Most of the rest ship measures exactly right for its actual true scale of 1/719th. If the island was thickened up, and all the various detail errors corrected, Tamiya's kits can be built into accurate models for the true scale (1/719) that they are. They are better models than they are given credit for. What is interesting is that they got some very good details right, suggesting they actually did some research, but either missed some things, or used faulty research material (the incorrectly located portside aft five gun 20mm battery directly opposite the midship elevator, instead of abaft of it, as well as the CV5/6 forward flight deck shape, comes straight out of Warship Profile #3).

They are still more accurate models in 1/719 scale than Trumpy's is in 1/700 scale. They would go perfectly in a 1/720 scale collection!

Michael Vorrasi

[Michael Vorrasi]

Actually calling them 1/720 is probably a little off, they seem more like 1/740 or 1/750. My CA CV-4 Ranger and CV-7Wasp kits are wider and almost as long as the Tamiya kits. And when I checked those 2 kits against my drawing for them they were pretty much the correct size. My Hiryu and Soryu kits are about the same size as the Hornet and Enterprise kits. That why I wish Trumpeter had gotten the hull shape correct like Tamiya did. It's real funny, Trumpeter could have bought a Revell and Tamiya kit and gotten a much more accurate hull than they did.

See my post above. They are 1/719, not 1/740 or 1/750! Actually, a correctly scaled 1/700 Wasp or Ranger SHOULD be wider than a 1/719 Hornet. All three ships had the same overall maximum breadth of 109 feet! A Wasp in 1/700 should measure 12.707 inches and a Ranger in 1/700 should measure 13.182 inches. The proper maximum breadth of 109 feet for all three, in 1/700, should be 1.869. This is wider than the 1.819 that the 1/719 Tamiya Hornet measures, so your observations on the relative sizes of your models bears these number out.

[SeanF]

Something I've been pondering for a while... might as well get the question out there and see if anyone knows...

Given the color schemes and airwing markings of naval aircraft in-use up to early '41, and given that the Hornet was well under construction at the time, did the USN have a tail color selected? I know good and well that Hornet never carried yellow wings, but I suspect that originally (under 1939-40 regs.) she was intended to. Does anyone know? (I'm doubly curious since all 6 element/airwing colors had already been assigned to other carriers - would they have gone with a new color that didn't match any of the element colors - purple or orange, perhaps? Or start on two-tones or patterns?)

From what I can tell from some of the really early photos, it seems she was completed with a pre-war style "H N T" designation on both ends of her flight deck, too. Just considering the possibility of a hypothetical mahogany-decked CV-8... as if I don't have enough other stuff in mind to build...

- Sean F.

[Michael Vorrasi]

Something I've been pondering for a while... might as well get the question out there and see if anyone knows...

Given the color schemes and airwing markings of naval aircraft in-use up to early '41, and given that the Hornet was well under construction at the time, did the USN have a tail color selected? I know good and well that Hornet never carried yellow wings, but I suspect that originally (under 1939-40 regs.) she was intended to. Does anyone know? (I'm doubly curious since all 6 element/airwing colors had already been assigned to other carriers - would they have gone with a new color that didn't match any of the element colors - purple or orange, perhaps? Or start on two-tones or patterns?)

From what I can tell from some of the really early photos, it seems she was completed with a pre-war style "H N T" designation on both ends of her flight deck, too. Just considering the possibility of a hypothetical mahogany-decked CV-8... as if I don't have enough other stuff in mind to build...

- Sean F.

I can't recall ever coming across any reference to a pre-war color scheme reserved for CV-8 in my considerable cache of CV-8 materials. Remember that the HNT letters you see on her original Measure 12 commissioning shots were 251-N light gray on a 250-N blue deck. (Lexington wore similar LEX letters in gray on blue in October 1941 color film footage.) Hornet never wore a Mahogany stained deck.

Battlling brown flight deck syndrome and saving Sean from his lesser impulses, I vigilantly remain!

Mike (Note the BLUE smiley face!)

(DEFINITION- Brown Flight Deck Syndrome- The curious maledy among WW2 ship model builders and artists who, in face of clear color photo evidence, refuse to accept the fact that USN Flight Decks were actually BLUE! These curious types will sometimes fudge by telling you their nearly tan decks are "weathered" - to the point, of course, that would have a USN Captain facing court marshal charges for failure to protect government property! )




More here: http://shipcamouflage.com/specialtopics ... Decks.html

[SeanF]

I can't recall ever coming across any reference to a pre-war color scheme reserved for CV-8 in my considerable cache of CV-8 materials. Remember that the HNT letters you see on her original Measure 12 commissioning shots were 251-N light gray on a 250-N blue deck. (Lexington wore similar LEX letters in gray on blue in October 1941 color film footage.) Hornet never wore a Mahogany stained deck.

Battlling brown flight deck syndrome and saving Sean from his lesser impulses, I vigilantly remain!

No suffering from brown flight deck syndrome here, actually. When it came to those shots of Hornet during builder's trials, my assumption was that either a) the yard had already stained her deck mahogany with yellow markings before the fleet orders came down to make them blue, and they just left it that way until after builder's trials (it not being wartime yet for the USN), or b) they had done the aforementioned, but did stain it blue and the letters I was seeing were bleed-through. Hadn't considered an option c, as I hadn't ever heard about them actually painting the letters in light gray on the Lexington - I thought the yellow letters got sanded off at the same time they colored the deck blue. Thanks for the info!

As for the hypothetical tail color, I just figured that with the effort the Navy put into color-coding everything, they must have put some thought into what to do if they got a 7th active carrier. As of yet, it remains one of those elusive bits of inconsequential information that I nevertheless seek.

[Michael Vorrasi]

Sean, glad to hear you are not sufferring from that curious affliction! Be sure to click the link to the article I wrote on the Ship Camo website, just under the Lexington photo in my above post. When I wrote it, I speculated that given the info on Ranger's blue deck applied at Norfolk in mid-1941 that had emerged, it was probable that Norfolk finished Hornet in a 250-N blue deck. Since I wrote the article, I was contacted by a researcher who had seen original color slides (albeit damaged ones) of Hornet's commissioning ceremony. He confirmed that there was no doubt. She had a blue deck from the start. I'll keep checking on any info on possible prewar color assignments though. I've got a book stashed somewhere that covered navy schemes and went into the prewar color codes.
Cheers,
Mike

[Gordon Bjorklund]

1/700 Tamiya USS Hornet. "Tokyo Raid" Hull is primed. Island is ready to prime. Flight deck is ready to prime

Update 1-28-07 Flight deck painted blue. A/C painted interior green. Masts and radar under construcion.