Calling all Liberty Ship / Victory Ship fans

[reigels]

Sure. Any dark gray that compliments the colors around it would be my recommendation, although I suspect there was wide variation in colors. Likely dyed, but the references I�ve seen have mentioned canvas tarpaulins being water tight when wet, so assuming not generally painted or linseed oiled.

Nice color reference here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=78zu7hSXS-k&t=1174s with very dark gray hatches on Hannibal Victory. 8:20 and 19:15

[Intreno]

Very useful movie. And very useful suggestions. Today i tried 2 different grades of grey, the darker was the more realistic, i guess. Anyway i need to refine several points tomorrow. I made more wrong brush touches than i thought.

[Intreno]

Today i spent some hours that are hardly justifiable to anyone who is not a modeler. Cutting rings less than 1mm of diameter, closing them again, passing the rope inside (i took more than 1 hour to find a way and to do the activity, since the usci van der host rigging rope is so thin that breathing alone moves it), gluing a nylon wire to the ring. The overall result is not excellent, but really i was not able to find a better way to simulate the pulleys that hold the lifeboat.

[Intreno]

I have one question. I found a picture showing a possible loading pattern for a Liberty (see below). Many items are called �DO�. I tried to understand its meaning, but there were no references in the picture nor in sites about the meaning of �DO�, that is probably easy once one knows, but obscure to me. Can anyone help me?

[Intreno]

I had to give up the idea of improving the lifeboats area since the tension of the fishing nylon and of the rubber of usci van der host wire are very different and the nylon simply decided what to do, forcing the rubber in unrealistic shapes. Yesterday i focused on the covers: they still appear too much dishomogenuos, but after 5 passages i give up and keep them. I also added ladders and started to assembly the whole deck.

[Intreno]

Not many improvements today. Scratchbuilding the two boxes in the bow area was challenging because they had to have the same shape and size and be enough squared. And the handrail in the area had a very peculiar shape. But in less than 2 hours i did both.

[Intreno]

what size gun is that in the bow tub?

It should be a 3� 30 calibers (see the picture below)

[Rick_H]

I think that is a typo. Should be 3" 50 cal.

[Intreno]

I think that is a typo. Should be 3" 50 cal.

I think you are right. Indeed 30 calibers should be very short and there doesn�t seem to have been made / produced a 3� 30. Sorry for not realizing it before posting my image and thanks Rick_h.

[Intreno]

After all i was very unsatisfied with the hatches. The color was uneven, irregular, despite all trials. And the closing stripes were too large. So today i decided to remove them (luckily the glue is not so strong), sanded them till flat and airbrushed them. Next step, in future days, the re-building of the stripes. I will try both a plastic solution and a kitchen aluminium solution.

[KimmerWerft]

For what it is worth, a reference that I have showing hatch coverings of that era describe the batten bars (represented on the model as the stripes running athwartships on the hatch covers) as "made of mild steel about 3/8 inches thick and 2 1/2 inches wide."

[Guest]

In answer to your question about "Do". This is just a shortened version of "Ditto" meaning "the same". Hope this helps !

[Intreno]

Dear all, many thanks to guest and Kimmerwerft.
The DO issue was really puzzling for me. Indeed it explains why something was detailed and something not

One hatch cover stripe (batten bar) of 2 1/2 inches in 1/350 is more than challenging. It is less than 0.2 mm. Doing it with a fishing nylon wire creates problems of thickness. I tried cutting aluminium stripes, but the blade simply destroyed anything wide less than 1.5 mm. I then tried with plastic, the thinnest i found (from a pasta envelope). There are problems with paint, but anyway i was able to cut it a bit less than 1 mm wide. Not too close to reality, but i think much better than the model base (moreover it allows to show somewhere some space between the stripe center and the hatch cover, that sound realistic).
Below the picture of the present status, with the pieces still quite troubled by cyanacrilate and the plastic sheet used as a base for the stripes).

[Intreno]

Days of hard work. I cut a PC sheet i had found on the road years ago creating the base and edges of the diorama that will host the Martin Van Buren i am making. Then i worked again on the stripes that close the hatches covers. I made thinner stripes using a 0,105 mm nylon fishing wire, twisted it, glued with vynilic glue, painted it in grey. Then i also added the joints, cutting 2,5 mm pieces of thin metal wire. And put again the hatches in place. Moreover i glued 2 of the emergency rafts, while 2 more have been scratchbuilt and will be put in place soon, shifted from the position suggested in the instructions since Martin Van Buren had the torpedo nets.

[Guest]

Torpedo net. Well, it seems that everyone, or at least any modeler, is somehow attracted by something in particular. So, as soon as I saw a Liberty with a deployed torpedo net, I was attracted by that particular device. Indeed I think that it is the unusual that strikes our imagination and the challenge that drives us. Therefore, limiting the argument to the Liberty Ships, someone is attracted by radar pickets, others by oil tank conversion or to AK or other conversions. Unfortunately the Liberty Ship itself is a topic extremely wide, much more than I even suspected when I first bought the kit and started working on it. So, even though more than 2700 ships were built, their being sisters did not translate into being twin sisters and it is difficult to find two ships looking the same (ditto, as just learnt).
Ok, beyond philosophy, in terms of torpedo nets, I spent some time, indeed a lot, investigating about it (may wife, who did not appreciate it, would have said that i wasted a lot of time). It seems that it was something covered by secret at war time and very little can be found about it. I wanted to understand also the effectiveness of them. But finding an answer about how many torpedoed ships used a torpedo net was not so easy. I started creating a database with all the Liberty Ships and crossed it with all the ones that had been somehow damaged. Then, for all those ones that were hit by torpedoes, 122, I searched at least one picture. And I found images for 44 but only 5 showed torpedo net. In particular nr 338 Richard Hovey sunk on 29.03.44 by a Japanese submarine, 1209 Edward M. House damaged on 29.06.44, 1795 Horace Busnell lost on 20.03.45, Martin Van buren lost on 14.01.45 and 1951 Jose Navarro damaged on 26.12.43.
For sure there are other units that received the torpedo net, like 1001 Pierre L-Enfant, 1215 Arthur M. Huddelll, 1074 Louis A. Godey, 2420 Charles Morgan, 1061 Hoke Smith, 1936 Sam Houston II and others, but I did not find any logical connection. Such nets were used on units in different theatres, in different years, on units built by different yards and so on.
Even in terms of narrative, I found only two mentions, one about the Richard Hovey, that surely had the net deployed when torpedoed, and another about the Dwight L. Moody, that deployed them at least twice, but was not attacked.
Does anyone know if there was a specific logic behind the adding such devices to some ships and not to others ? For sure the net itself reduced the speed of the ship, maybe up to 2 knots, therefore it could not be deployed for long periods. Any contribution is welcome.

[I am intreno]

The above post was mine (intreno). I do not know why it appears as guest.
Today i tried to work on the rigging of the booms in rest position. Still do not know if it works and if i am able to replicate the feature 10 times.

[Intreno]

The above message is mine. I did not realize that i had logout and that is why it appears as guest.
Today i worked on the rigging of the boom in resting position. I do not know ifi am able to replicate it for 10 times

[reigels]

Does anyone know if there was a specific logic behind the adding such devices to some ships and not to others ? For sure the net itself reduced the speed of the ship, maybe up to 2 knots, therefore it could not be deployed for long periods. Any contribution is welcome.

Well the fact that SS Martin Van Buren was fatally torpedoed while nets were equipped (if not actually in use) speaks to their effectiveness.

In a few of the biographies I've read, they appear to have been unpopular with Captains and crews due to the loss in speed you mentioned as well as reduced maneuverability and limited usability in any kind of rough seas. Looking through photos, they seem to have been somewhat uncommon, although many Liberty Ships were built with the larger cross-trees for boom storage and cut out gunwales along the mainmast for net handling, even if booms, nets and catch baskets were never actually installed.

Edit: Regarding Edward M. House damaged on 29.06.44, "A True Yarn, Liberty Ship Captain's Deeds and Follies", Dan Cornwell mentions her torpedo nets being installed in 1945 (after V.E. Day!). They were so poorly regarded that they were jettisoned over the side two days later, as soon as the ship hit blue water on the way to the Pacific, in spite of the ship having herself been previously torpedoed a year earlier. (pg 150)

Recommended: https://www.amazon.com/True-Yarn-Libert ... 1469968762

[Intreno]

Below a couple of images showing the torpedo nets with my comments typed on. They are the best i found in terms of resolution.

[reigels]

Love the progress on your Liberty Ship -

To depict the torpedo net equipment, in addition to the net booms, be sure to add the longer cross-trees on the fore and main masts, catch baskets by the main mast, and the cut outs in the gunwale where the nets were drug onboard:



More photos by PM.