Calling all USS Pennsylvania BB-38 fans

[Jeff Sharp]

This is taken from film footage of President Roosevelt inspecting the fleet in 1938. Notice Pennsylvania has four Seagull planes aboard. Her three have red tails. The fourth appears to have a white tail.

[Mike W]

Just by looking at the pictures of the sprue and instructions, the kit has a fair number of accuracy issues:

1. The barbettes of the B and X turrets are not stepped as depicted. They are perfectly cylindrical. What dragon attempted to depict with step and vertical bars are actually foot rails that protrudes from the sides of the barbettes.

2. The prominent air vents on the former boat deck between the funnel and aft superstructure are completely omitted.

3. There are two boat boom cranes behind the aft superstructure, not one, depicted in the kit as parts A14 and A37

4. Parts A36, k-7, and A67, K-9 And K-6 depict the mast and radar configuration after the June 1945 refit. The rest of the kit depicts the ship before June 1945.

5. There is much wrong with the shape of aft superstructure A43 and A42.

Thanks for that.

I can fix some of the errors with the Model Monkey forward and aft superstructures, which will also better represent the ship after the Jul 45 fit. I've also noticed what looks like a twin Bofors, in place of the old rangefinder on the front of the forward superstructure, which is easy enough to fix.

thanks
Mike

[taskforce48]

White tail and what appears to be a dark blue fuselage. This looks like a CAG color scheme, Was Pennsylvania a Flagship at this time and was this a "Guest's" Plane?

Matt

[chuck]

Just by looking at the pictures of the sprue and instructions, the kit has a fair number of accuracy issues:

1. The barbettes of the B and X turrets are not stepped as depicted. They are perfectly cylindrical. What dragon attempted to depict with step and vertical bars are actually foot rails that protrudes from the sides of the barbettes.

2. The prominent air vents on the former boat deck between the funnel and aft superstructure are completely omitted.

3. There are two boat boom cranes behind the aft superstructure, not one, depicted in the kit as parts A14 and A37

4. Parts A36, k-7, and A67, K-9 And K-6 depict the mast and radar configuration after the June 1945 refit. The rest of the kit depicts the ship before June 1945.

5. There is much wrong with the shape of aft superstructure A43 and A42.

Thanks for that.

I can fix some of the errors with the Model Monkey forward and aft superstructures, which will also better represent the ship after the Jul 45 fit. I've also noticed what looks like a twin Bofors, in place of the old rangefinder on the front of the forward superstructure, which is easy enough to fix.

thanks
Mike

Yes. The optical range finder for the original main battery fire control was removed and a new twin bofor installed in its place. At the time the USN was rushing a program to give warships more AA guns that can track a target crossing the ship�s bow as part of the anti-kamikaze measure. Not too much could be done on the Pennsylvania due to available space restrictions, The twin 40mm bofor was it.

Another part of anti-kamikaze measure was to add two new MK-50 dual purpose directors to the rear superstructure above the boom cranes for the boats. The Pennsylvania was modernized to carry 16 gun 5�/38 battery in 1942, but because her superstructure was only partially rebuilt, there was no room for 4 mk-37 director as installed on other modernized old battleships whose superstructures were more thoroughly remodeled, such as the West Virginia, or the Nevada. The MK-50 was originally developed as a lighter, simpler tachymetric director that can be easily fitted to ships still carrying the WWI vintage 3� AA guns. It development was much delayed, and the project was cancelled after just a few directors were built. Two of the few built were installed on the Pennsylvania to make up for her having 2 few Mk-37 directors.

Around June 1945, the following others changes were also made:

1. The flat mattress SK radar on the foretop was replaced by the round dish SK-2.

2. The MK3 fire control radar on top of forward director was replaced by an experimental mk-21 fire control radar

3. The original rear director with its MK-3 fire control radar was completely replaced by a new mk-34 director originally intended for one of the Cleveland class light cruisers that was converted to light carrier. The new director carried mk-13 radar.

4.The number of search lights around the rear director was reduced to 2.

5. The SG surface search radar on the main mast was replaced by a SP Height firing fighter direction radar

6. Two small director towers were added midship. The had mk-57 radar directors for the 40mm bofors.

7. A whole series of electronic countermeasure antennas were added to the lattice yard arms of the forward superstructure.

The scope of modernization undertaken in June 1945 seems to make it clear the Pennsylvania was intended to continue to serve as a major front line unit during invasion of Japan, possibly continuing in a flagship role of some kind.

[Jeff Sharp]

Here is a great look at her starboard side main mast leg and the details around at the break in the deck. Notice also that the top of her veggie locker is wood planked.


Her port side leg was different than this. I�ll post some pics of her portside later.

[MartinJQuinn]

Those are some great finds, Jeff!

[Jeff Sharp]

Here is the port side. The mast leg was attached to the projector booth. The only access to the leg was to climb up a ladder on the backside of the booth and access the mast leg from the roof of the booth.

[Jeff Sharp]

Silly me! Let�s just call them attached to each other like a happily married couple.

Here are a few more shots with some great detail.

[Jeff Sharp]

Here's another unique feature about Pennsylvania's vegetable locker area. On the starboard side of the locker she had a triangle shaped platform added to the top deck for additional deck space.


This overhead shot shows the angled deck with railing.


This shot from underneath shows the support brackets.

[Jeff Sharp]

This is a view of Pennsylvania on Nov.4, 1940 during her refit at Puget Sound. In this shot you can see that she just received her birdbath on top of her mainmast. You can also see her gun tub on the main deck and the 5" gun splinter shields on the boat deck. Neither have been painted yet. The workers are in the process of adding the large gun director poles and platforms to her superstructure. Her lattice yardarms on the forward fighting top have not yet been installed.


In January '41, the ships of BATDIV 1 completed their refits and headed south to California and then to Pearl Harbor.

On April 1, 1941 a film crew was aboard USS Arizona and filmed scenes of the ships conducting battle practice and flight operations. The majority of the footage is of USS Arizona and USS Nevada. Only a couple of glimpses of Pennsylvania was captured. This still shot of her is from outtakes from that film that did not make the final version. She was a month and a half away still from getting painted into MS-1 camouflage when this footage was filmed.


She was once again filmed in August '41. By this time she was in MS-1 Camouflage and a CXAM radar was installed to the top of her Forward Fighting Top.

[airfan]

First of all, I want to thank everyone who contributed in this thread.

I started building the USS Pennsylvania 1: 200, the year of service 1944-45. Of course, I chose the USS Arizona Trumpeter kit on the same scale as the basis. The kit isn't the most accurate, but it doesn't matter due to the extensive redesign that will be made. I came across this photo. The modeler made four auxiliary keels at the bottom of the fuselage. Supposedly because of the dry dock. But I didn't find anything like that anywhere in the drawings. I ask, therefore, it's possible that the ship had these keels?

[Tracy White]

Unfortunately the Booklet of General Plans I have posted for Pennsylvania don't show anything, but this sheet of Arizona's BOGP shows them in the midships section transverse view at top. It shows frames 75 and 93, which are severely midships and flat on the bottom, so not a lot.

The BOGP I have for BB-37 Oklahoma and BB-40 New Mexico show them and maybe given the similarity of the hulls you can interpolate.

[ModelMonkey]

Here you go. Yes, Arizona had the auxiliary keels, called "docking keels" which were likely similar if not identical to Pennsylvania's.

Arizona's docking plan shows the docking keels with dimensions. Here are scans, reduced in size to be able to be posted here. The originals are 7 MB each and are on NARA's website.

[airfan]

Thank you to all for your quick reply. Today I will start a new thread and I will continuously show the progress of work on this beauty.

[ArmchairAdmiral]

I recently picked up the Dragon 1/700 1945 Pennsylvania, and after studying photos, I'm curious about something. What are the two little structures at the base of the fire control top as shown in the first two pics? They are not on the model and not there in the third pic (and most others I've seen.)

[airfan]

I think it was the boxes for the flags, which were placed here after another small reconstruction in 1944. Previously, the flag basket was placed impractically from behind the fire control top. But that's just my opinion, there are real experts who will surely know exactly what it was.

[Tracy White]

Kind of looks like a platform with railings - top two photos could have canvas dodgers on the railings.

[ArmchairAdmiral]

Kind of looks like a platform with railings - top two photos could have canvas dodgers on the railings.

If so, it's sort of odd that the coverings only show up in photos taken in late 1944. Not before, not after.

I'm debating about whether or not to model them, as for the longest time the late '44 pics were all that I'd ever seen, and I got used to them being there. But now that I know they were a brief aberration, I'm not sure what to do.

[MartinJQuinn]

Here's that spot in January 1943, just for an idea for some of the details. Maybe that was a platform added later on?

[MartinJQuinn]

A few more. I believe these were also 1943