Calling all Atlanta-class & Oakland-class (CL-51) fans

[DrPR]

Fred,

Are you referring to the National Archives Record Group 19 and Record Group 80, or are they some other collections?

If so, I am familiar with RG 19. What is in RG 80?

Phil

[FRED BRANYAN]

Phil

RG 80 is the card index that is to the right of RG 19. If my memory is correct it has way many more photos in in alphabetically by name of ship. I used an independent researcher to locate the RG 19 photos I ran out of time the last visit there. Going back in a few months for another attempt to locate MIA photos.

Fred

[DrPR]

I looked it up in the Archives and Record Group 80 is Navy records 1798 to 1947.

http://www.archives.gov/research/alic/t ... sters.html

I live on the west coast and trips to the Archives are very inconvenient for me, so I haven't had the opportunity to search through them.

Do you know if Record Group 74 (Bureau of Ordnance) contains any plans for guns? Specifically, I am looking for 5"/38 and 6"/47 drawings to use for modeling these guns (the guns, not the turrets/gun houses). I have photos, but no dimensioned drawings.

Phil

[Rick E Davis]

The Photo Record Group (RG) Fred is talking about actually is 80-G which basically is a collection of MISC USN photos started by the USN Photographic Center. The photos at NARA date from the first photos to about 1957. The total 80-G sequence goes beyond what NARA has, well into at least the 1960s. There are several stories about where the "missing" 80-G photos beyond 1957 are or what happened to them. Some of the high number 80-G photos are at NHHC. The USN Photographic Center started numbering these photos I believe in early WWII and added more photos to the number series post-WWII. There are 2866 boxes in the group. The photos include aircraft, ships, survey photos, Island Invasion Photos, Officer "Head Shots", and misc subjects. They are filed in no particular order ... you can go through photos taken in WWII, jump to the 1950s, and then have a group of photos from the 1920-30s. There will be whole boxes of "Head Shots" and ONE ship photo. There is a card catalog by subject (ships are cataloged by hull number), but many photos of a given ship are not listed in the card catalog or even on the mounting card captions, they are simply "unnamed" ... like "Destroyer alongside USS IOWA". I have found many gems in the 80-G collection not listed in the card catalog. I have made it through about 46% of all the boxes. I hope to live long enough to get through ALL of the boxes.

The RG 19-LCM (BuShips photos of ships) does have a separate card catalog as well. But 19-LCM is just as easy to go through by hull number since the boxes are filed in hull number order. There are other RG 19-xxx Record Groups, plus other RG categories of photos at NARA most of which I have yet to be in. Example is the Army Signal Corp has many ship photos.

There are Record Groups for mostly Textual Records, although photos can be found in Textual Records as well; RG-80 (Misc), RG-19 (BuShips), RG-74 (BuOrd), etc.

[KevinD]

I then put the navsource camo photos that are usable onto the bottom of the page. I already emailed it successfully to a model friend. If anyone wants it let me know.

Fred, sent you an email several days ago re underlined above? Did you receive?
Kevin

Fred, if your reading this I did as you asked in your PM to me several days ago, and resent you another email message and also replied to your PM on this board. Did you still not receive?

Kevin

[FRED BRANYAN]

Kevin

I never got the email. Suggest you send to both mine and lbranyan. Better yet go to my page on MW and send it from there.

[KevinD]

Kevin

I never got the email. Suggest you send to both mine and lbranyan. Better yet go to my page on MW and send it from there.

It's OK Fred, if you didn't get my PM or my emails then I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Thanks anyway

[CL52]

I looked it up in the Archives and Record Group 80 is Navy records 1798 to 1947.

http://www.archives.gov/research/alic/t ... sters.html

I live on the west coast and trips to the Archives are very inconvenient for me, so I haven't had the opportunity to search through them.

Do you know if Record Group 74 (Bureau of Ordnance) contains any plans for guns? Specifically, I am looking for 5"/38 and 6"/47 drawings to use for modeling these guns (the guns, not the turrets/gun houses). I have photos, but no dimensioned drawings.

Phil

Does this help?
http://www.maritime.org/doc/guncat/index.htm

[DrPR]

CL-52,

Thanks. What I am looking for is blueprints for the guns - that give dimensions, etc. I have found these for the 20mm and 40 mm guns, but nothing for the 5"/38 or 6"/47.

Phil

[CL52]

CL-52,

Thanks. What I am looking for is blueprints for the guns - that give dimensions, etc. I have found these for the 20mm and 40 mm guns, but nothing for the 5"/38 or 6"/47.

Phil

I'll look around a bit more, but I just want to ask if dimensions listed on each diagram are not helpful or detailed enough?

[DrPR]

I want to model these guns in 3D CAD and then in 1:96 scale real world models.

The diagrams you referenced are good for basic dimensions (I already have several versions of the turret side view diagram and a complete set of blueprints for the turrets themselves - less guns).

I need blueprints showing length, width and depth of every part of the guns. These are ordnance drawings so they aren't in Record Group 19 (BuShips drawings).

The problem is that these are 1930s gun designs that were in use until the '70s and 90s. So they could be in the newer Bureau of Ordnance drawings or older Naval Ordnance drawings.

I live on the west coast so it is very inconvenient for me to drop in to College Park to search through the Archives, especially since I have been unable to find out if the drawings are there. They may be in the Navy's archives but it seems that site has been down forever.

Phil

[ModelMonkey]

CL-52,

Thanks. What I am looking for is blueprints for the guns - that give dimensions, etc. I have found these for the 20mm and 40 mm guns, but nothing for the 5"/38 or 6"/47.

Phil

Hope this helps, if you haven't already seen it or have it.

I may be able to get to USS North Carolina BB-55 this spring. If so, I'll try to measure the features of an existing Twin 5-inch mount, Quad 40mm Bofors and single 20mm Oerlikon. No promises as my schedule this spring is still very much up in the air. But I'll try.

Notice that the 5-inch bun barrels are not centered in the slot.

[ModelMonkey]

Steve, DrPR is looking for the dimensions of the gun barrels themselves as he has the blueprints for the gun mounts already.

Got ya. Sorry for the red herring.

[CL52]

DrPR, if you are on Facebook, try sending a message to this guy, he has the USS Des Moines 5/38 blueprints. Hope it works out for you.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 338&type=3

[Fliger747]

Just a note on drawings: Per consultation with my photographs of the twin mounts aboard Missouri: The 5" barrels are centered in the opening and are not stepped, per se. Indeed the mounts are not exactly the same as mounted on the CL's but so far I have not encountered and photos showing the barrels of twin 5" mounts not centered

[DrPR]

Fliger, what does "stepped" mean?

CL52, I don't do Facebook. Is there any other way to contact the guy?

****

OP 805 has 626 pages of information about the dual 5"/38 mounts. The mounts were produced in (at least) the following Mk/Mods:

Mark 28 Mods 0, 1 and 2
Mark 32 Mods 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 12
Mark 38 Mods 0 and 1

The Mark numbers represent variations in the basic gun mechanisms, primarily powder and projectile handling. I have drawings for all three Marks but not all of the mods.

One noticeable variation was whether the gun stop buffer was mounted internally or on the lower front of the mount. Ladders and other attachments were arranged many ways and were often "customized" on different ships. Some dual mounts had bucklers and bloomers, others did not. The buckler was the steel mount on the front of the shield where the bloomer attached. The bloomer was the rubber coated canvas bag that attached to the buckler and the gun barrel and provided water tight integrity.

One of the main differences in the dual mounts was the shield armor thickness. On smaller ships like destroyers the gun houses were made of 0.125" to 0.25" plate, and on heavy ships like battleships they were made of up to 2.5" plate. Apparently there were 15 variations in shield thickness in the dual 5"/38 mounts.

Phil

[Fliger747]

Stepped: an abrupt change in the profile of the barrel. As an example my k98k Mausers have such a stepped profile. You will note the barrels in the above mount drawing show such a step or abrupt profile change near where the barrel enters the mount. The actual barrels are gently tapered and show no such abrupt profile change. Indeed some naval weapons do show such stepping as a result of a different construction method. Possibly in error but the rifles mounted on the British Tribals come to mind.

The point; drawings aren't always 100%.

Cheers. Tom

[DrPR]

Thanks,

I thought that might be what you meant. The 5"/38s didn't have a step. They did have an unpainted area where the gun recoiled inside the mount. I suppose you could mistake this for a step in fuzzy pictures.

Looking at the drawing that Steve posted I also see what you mean about the barrels being centered in the opening.

Phil

[James M]

Phil, I have actual dimensions from the 5" twin mounts off the Joseph P Kennedy, Alabama, Iowa and Salem.
I don't know the mark/mod numbers for these. They would represent the destroyer, battleship and cruiser mounts.

Let me know if they would be of any us to you.

James

[DrPR]

Actually, I have been trying to find blueprints for every single part of the 5"/38 and 6"/47 guns and the supporting frames and all associated mechanisms. That is dimensions for every piece, right down to the nuts, bolts and washers.

Phil