The Ship Model Forum

Nice work

Found the strut work awsome

Roy

Hi Steve "under structures" or supports are one of my "must look for" on any model and its great to see this incorporated in such detail .
Dave Wooley
Dave Wooley

Thanks everyone for the kind comments.

wr wrote:The best thing that I can suggest is to obtain from the NMM the "as fitted "plans. THese will give you accurate information, but at the same time it may make you wish to consider major alterations.
If I remember correctly the Ough plans show the ship before the 1930s refit.
I have heard recently that there is a project to produce a large scale kit of one of the Counties using Oughs plans, but NOT of the Dorsetshire.
I mentioned that this would produce a badly inaccurate end product. I believe however that my advice was/has been ignored. I find this to be a very unfortunate state of affairs when the correct set of plans is readily available.

Might the reason for using the Ough plans be commercial restrictions placed on the use of NMM plans? The NMM website states the following:

Customers intending to use the plans for commercial purposes should declare this in their initial correspondence with the Museum. 'Commercial purposes', includes activities such as commercial model making, exhibition, artist�s reference, publications (including electronic), media usage and vessel repair/certification.

The National Maritime Museum is under an obligation to protect the ethical integrity of the archives that it holds, as well as protecting the intellectual property rights. Any material supplied for use in a commercial enterprise must therefore be accompanied by written permission from the Museum. When requesting permission to use copied Plans material in a commercial venture, full information must be provided on details such as retail prices, print runs, distribution, duration (applicable if applying for television, film and video rights) and country or countries of distribution.

Such "full information" suggests that the NMM charge royalties for commercial users of their plans. Is this correct?

Things have slowed down a bit on the build for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the pesky day job, but also because I�m starting to add detailing to some of the previously constructed superstructure blocks and that is presenting some difficulties. While the as-fitted drawings are very useful and have shown me many details and fittings I was previously unaware of, at times they pose more questions than they answer. The problems are exacerbated by the relative lack of close-up photographic coverage of the ship, at least that I have been able to find. A case in point is the torpedo parting space which I have been working on for the last few weeks.

The torpedo parting space is in a stand-alone piece of superstructure, located amidships between the two banks of torpedo tubes, that also serves as the base for the airplane catapult. With the torpedo tubes trained 90 degrees outwards, the torpedoes can be withdrawn from the breeches of the tubes and transported through roll-up shutters into the parting space with the aid of hoists, which are mounted on a system of overhead rails. At each side above the shutters is a frame work which supports the rails as they exit the parting space through the shutters. Both the Ough plans and the as-fitteds gave only the vaguest idea of how all this worked and Ough�s plan and elevation drawings were in conflict with each other.

As it happened however, in my quest for anything that could provide me information on Dorsetshire, I had discovered a book published during the war with the purpose of providing funds for a Dorsetshire replacement. The internet ad for the book stated that there were many photos and much information on the pre-war history of the ship. When the book finally arrived it turned out to be a very thin pamphlet indeed, with exactly one useful photo in it and most of the information being from a 1935-37 cruise book that I already owned. But the photo (shown below) did provide some much needed clues as to the torpedo hoist system, seen at the right behind the crew. It was possibly taken at the same time that this one was: Both photos were probably taken immediately after the Bismarck action and were meant to commemorate the men and weapons that were thought to have delivered the death blow to the German ship. I had also found this photo of the ship�s Walrus flying boat and catapult. The results of these photos, as applied to the model can be seen below:

I've pretty much run out of superlatives at this point...what you guys can do with some plastic card boggles the mind.

It all looks very very catapulty!!



Jim Baumann

Excellent Steve! ...with a bit of steam an aircraft could also take of from that jewel!

Good I'm glad that catapult photo was put to outstanding use! tremendous scratchbuilding!

Here's an excellent one of Norfolk, which might be of use or just a good bit of inspiration!
HMS Norfolk departing Valletta 16-11-1937:-



I cannot locate anymore ondeck photos on the pc of Dorsetshire.
Are these of any use?
HMS Suffolk handling her aircraft in 1942:-



HMS London before major rebuild, Oct 1936



I can look for more of course in my references, but not until the weekend.

Laurence,

I forgot to mention the catapult drawing you posted in the Exeter thread was also a great help.

My 'as fitted' plans for Exeter have been returned to me since then.
I might be able to take a digital photo of that catapult?
Let me know and I'll sort something at the weekend.
I also have some for Kent in the loft, but then again you have the Dorsetshire 'as fitteds' already.

Steve, during searches I came across these all of Dorsetshire, perhaps of some further help?
The 2nd and 4th ones I thought most interesting:

Laurence your "photo pusher" has first quality goods, and Royal Sovereign, in 1942 camo scheme, in your signature is a pearl!

Dino

Dino Carancini wrote:Laurence your "photo pusher" has first quality goods, and Royal Sovereign, in 1942 camo scheme, in your signature is a pearl!

Dino

One does his best!

stunning, your catapult!!!

Laurence,

Thank you for the photos. I've been trying to put together a time line for Dorsetshire's movements from mid-1937 to her loss in 1942 so the one in Sydney with the date is particularly helpful to me.

I'm at the point in the build where I need to decide on the exact time frame and colors for the model. I had originally thought to do her in China colors with buff funnels and masts and white hull and superstructure, but while I have seen photos of Norfolk in this scheme I have seen none for Dorsetshire, so I'm not sure if that would be correct.

The period of the Sydney visit is somewhat interesting because, although she appears to be painted light gray overall, I believe she does carry elongated union jacks painted on the roofs of B and X turrets for air recognition, which would add some color and interest. The other option is, of course, the two-tone Bismarck action scheme, but there is the issue of possible modifications that were never documented on the as-fitted plans (I know of one for sure) and the placement of any 20mm mounts, which may, or may not have been present. Unless there is some hard evidence for the China colors I may opt for the Sydney scheme.

Thanks as always for the interest and kind comments. I apologise for the lack of updates lately, but my real job is requiring a bit of travel lately, so the modeling time has been limited.

If she was a destroyer I could give you a complete breakdown day-to-day of her entire pre-war and war-time movements.

For RN cruisers I only have that for Kent unfortunately.

Off the top of my head I cannot remember if she was ever posted to the China Station, I know Kent was for a few years as Flagship.
If Dorsteshire was then she would have undoubtedly have been painted white hull with buff funnels etc.
I know in 1939 she visited Aden also, sometime in the 1930s she went through the Kiel cannal and her having Spanish Civil War Markings meant that sometime in 1937-38 she must have operated on those patrols.

The dry-dock photo we both have of her, that drydock to me looks like Shanghai?

Dorsetshire was on the China Station from 1935 to early 1937, when she returned to England for refit-the refit depicted by Ough's famous drydock model. From what I can gather she returned to China in late 1937 and remained there until sometime after the outbreak of the war in September 1939. The neutrality stripes may have been applied to B turret for her transit to China from England through the Mediterranean to Suez (that was her route in 1935, I assume she went the same way in 1937.)

Her visit to Sydney occured while assigned to the China Station and she was apparently not wearing white and buff at that time. She was in drydock at Singapore immediately before the Australia visit, I believe that's where the photo you refer to was taken, where she appears to be in overall light gray.

I have read that only the China Station flagships were painted the white and buff scheme, that there was another scheme of white hull, light gray turrets and superstructure and buff funnels/masts and that some ships wore overall light gray.

Thanks Steve there's a lot there that is new to me!