A Primer on Aircraft Modeling for Ship-Builders

[Goodwood]

Many modelers tend to specialize in only one or two areas of the hobby, focusing on certain subjects usually at the exclusion of most others, for example car and truck models, armored fighting vehicle or "military" models, or ships. However, sometimes these subjects can overlap, particularly when building medium or large capital-class warships and aircraft carriers. Most World War I and later cruisers and battleships possess some sort of aircraft, while planes are the bread-and-butter of carriers.

However, sometimes a ship modeler may find themselves having to deal with planes when they have limited or no experience in building aircraft models, or else are not very familiar with aircraft as a whole. If that is the case, then this thread is for you. Here we can discuss the various types of planes that put to sea aboard ships, how they were painted, and how best to pose them for maximum realism.

Navies began to incorporate the use of aircraft into ships' operations before the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, however it wasn't until the last two years of the First World War, after the value of using such machines for scouting out battlefields on land or spotting and dealing with enemy observation balloons and scouts, became common practice, that the idea was pursued in earnest. Though the first successful launching of an airplane off of a ship had been achieved by the American Eugene Ely in 1910, the British were the first to put to sea a vessel dedicated to the deployment, recovery, and keeping of aircraft at sea, HMS Hermes. As with land-based air forces, biplanes remained the go-to option, however the development of planes capable of dealing with the rigors of waterborne takeoffs and landings, the means by which recovery and launching could be regularly�and safely�repeated, and the specialized training necessary to produce carrier-qualified pilots took the better part of two decades to perfect.

By the beginning of WWI, the placement of aircraft onto capital ships had already begun, with most being otherwise land-based models put atop ramps fitted to gun turrets. This allowed a wheeled-undercarriage plane to simply roll off the short runway and, ideally, have enough speed to maintain stability and eventually gain altitude. As seaplanes were developed, they soon replaced these early attempts, as they could simply be lowered into the water to launch and brought back aboard upon landing. The invention of the steam catapult allowed warships to dispense with the first step, however, and a catapult and crane system soon became a standard feature on most cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships. Though some types of shipborne aircraft were capable of carrying bombs, the role of choice was the providing of scouting for the main battle line; under ideal circumstances, one or more aircraft from a given fleet would be able to locate and plot an enemy armada, bringing that information back to their ships in order to precipitate a battle under favorable conditions. Even the most modern of battleships, the American Iowa-class, carried scout seaplanes, despite these ships possessing excellent surface and air search radars.

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All aircraft share four key aspects: a powerplant, a set of wings, a vertical stabilizer and rudder, and horizontal stabilizers with elevators. Three principle movements dictate how an airplane moves through the air: pitch, yaw, and roll. These fundamental movements lie at the heart of aviation, and aircraft designs have lived and died on the basis of their effectiveness�or lack thereof�in one or more of these maneuvers. Pitch is the attitude of the aircraft relative to the ground from nose to tail, roll is the attitude of the aircraft relative to the ground from wingtip to wingtip, while yaw represents the swing of the nose left to right.

The earliest experiments in controlling an aircraft involved using wires to literally warp the shape of the wings, so that they would cut into the wind as the plane moved forward; warping a surface downward would increase lift on that surface, while warping it upward would decrease lift. Though this method, employed by the Wright brothers for their models, would persist into the middle of WWI with the Fokker Eindekker series, it was not long before the use of attached but physically separate control surfaces would come about. On the main wing or wings, these took the form of ailerons; these controlled roll in opposed movements (the left up and the right down, at the same time, and vice versa to produce a left roll or right roll). In the tail, the rudder controls yaw; angling it to the right causes the nose to sweep right, and vice versa. The horizontal stabilizers and their elevators control pitch; angling them upward relative to the aircraft causes the nose to angle upward, and vice versa.

As aircraft became more powerful, sophisticated and specialized, a fourth set of primary controls was developed: aircraft flaps. These served two, and sometimes three purposes: to aid in takeoff by providing extra lift, to steady an aircraft in landing by helping to reduce speed while maintaining lift, and (in later models) to assist in combat by increasing a wing's surface area and allowing a fighter craft to turn tighter than it might otherwise be able to without stalling out or sacrificing airspeed. Dive flaps and dive brakes were a further development of this mechanism, and allowed for the use of high-angle precision bombing attacks while enabling a safe (if crushing) pullout. Another outgrowth was that of the horizontal stabilizer, which was eventually merged with the elevator to form a "stabilator" that fulfilled both functions with increased efficiency.

The cockpit controls used by a pilot were linked to an aircraft's control surfaces by a number of ways, the first and most basic being wires made out of steel or another high-tensile metal. Later systems incorporated hydraulic-assist, while others used electric cables, with the most modern of aircraft utilizing a "fly-by-wire" system that takes a pilot's control inputs and relays them through a computer to the surfaces most suited to the task. Whatever the control system, however, most aircraft share these four basic sets of surfaces, with other, secondary mechanisms as supplementary systems, including leading-edge slats, airbrakes, spoilers, and rocket- or jet-assisted takeoff packs.

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When their primary purpose was intended to be use aboard ship, aircraft were designed to be markedly tougher than their land-based counterparts, which also necessitated a larger and more powerful engine to cope with the extra weight such a construction would add. This applied to catapult-launched seaplanes as well as carrierborne aircraft, with the result that a fighter designed for naval use would often be larger and more durable in combat than one designed for operations from land bases. For seaplanes, this was the shock of landing on water at speed and having to deal with such hazards as choppy seas, while for carrier-based aircraft, it was not only the hard impact upon a moving vessel that might pitch and roll with the seas, but takeoff in similar conditions as well. A more powerful engine also enabled quicker acceleration, allowing for much shorter takeoff runs, which were also assisted by a carrier turning into the wind to provide even more lift.

Later improvements in structural engineering enabled the design of aircraft with folding wings, so that more planes could be carried aboard a given ship without increasing the size of that ship. This was incorporated not only in carrier-based aircraft, as a number of navies used seaplanes with folding wings as well, so that they could be stored in hangars in order to avoid unnecessary exposure to heavy seas or other weather effects. Whenever possible, a carrier or capital ship would keep its planes out of the weather; if this was not possible, then some would be held in standby while others were kept either belowdecks or in their hangar. No matter what sort of conditions a ship operated in, or how infrequently its aircraft were put into operation, the salty air at sea would still have a negative effect. This most often manifested as paint that would become faded and chipped, as well as strain on the airframe resulting in deformities in the metal skin. While such was not unusual for operational machines, aircraft at sea tended to suffer such surface degradations much more swiftly.

Depending on the navy, aircraft at sea would be scrupulously maintained for as long as practically possible, though their service lives were substantially shorter than their land-based counterparts. Those planes which could no longer sustain the rigors of combat were sometimes kept aboard ship to serve as donors for spare parts; if there was no room for this, or if an aircraft was deemed as too battle-damaged to be worth cannibalizing in this fashion, it would be dumped unceremoniously overboard to sink into the sea. This would also be the case, again depending on the navy, when a ship had to recover aircraft from another source for which there was no space or use.

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Camouflage and markings for combat aircraft in naval service could be as varied as those worn by their land-based counterparts, and often exceeded even that benchmark in terms of colorful schemes. For example, during the 1930s the United States Navy put into practice a markings system designed to inform a trained observer precisely what ship, squadron, section, and section assignment a particular aircraft belonged to. With the majority of the aircraft sporting a natural metal finish or silver doping, the upper surface of the wings was painted in a bright yellow color. The vertical and horizontal stabilizers were painted another color, which signified the vessel, while diagonal stripes on the wings indicated which section; further, the front of the cowling would be fully painted (along with a stripe around the rear fuselage) in the section's color to denote the section leader, the second plane in the section would receive color on the upper half of the cowl, and the third plane on the lower half. This was in addition to numbers painted on the side, which identified the unit, unit type (fighter, bomber, scout, etc.) and the aircraft itself. Other navies also used colorful demarcations during this time, including the Japanese and British, who were at that time the only other major powers who possessed aircraft carriers.

Immediately prior to the outbreak of World War II, these schemes were done away with and replaced with appropriate camouflage schemes as dictated by each nation. In Britain, the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm typically used schemes that were based on those employed by the Royal Air Force, replacing earthen colors with blue-tinted greens, grays, and off-whites; the Japanese Navy turned to greens and green-tinged whites, while the United States chose medium blue over medium gray. German maritime air assets, which were never that numerous to begin with, simply used a variant on the splinter schemes utilized by land-based bombers, with dark green and black green (RLM 70/71) replaced by more blue-tinted alternate colors (RLM 72/73) over RLM 65. Though the Soviets maintained a naval air force, they were exclusively land-based and tasked primarily with protecting Russian ports and other naval assets, and thus they did not experiment with naval camouflage schemes to any significant degree. In most navies, markings of a more distinct nature such as squadron emblems and colors or personalized nose art, were kept to a minimum for a number of reasons.

As WWII ended and the Cold War began, the major naval powers abandoned the seaplane, and standardized their camouflage schemes. The Americans settled on an overall glossy sea blue, the British favored an overall cream coloring topped with dark gray; these too would later be abandoned in favor of other schemes, and dramatic unit identification would make something of a comeback during the 1960s and 1970s before the "low visibility" standard would be adopted once more. With Japan stripped of nearly all of their navy and air force, the Soviet Union soon replaced them as a player on the naval stage. Unlike Japan, however, they did not possess or seek out the development of true naval aviation for many years. However, the invention and perfection of the helicopter soon came into play; these types enabled much smaller vessels to carry out flight operations to suit a number of roles, ranging from anti-submarine warfare to air-sea rescue. Helicopters in naval service would typically carry a similar paint scheme to their fixed-wing counterparts, though dedicated rescue craft, whether civilian or military, would make liberal use of International Orange.

In recent years, however, color has returned to the United States Navy in the form of CAG birds, aircraft which represent a particular naval aviation unit, and would often be flown either by the unit's commanding officer or the carrier air group commander aboard a particular vessel. These planes sported highly-stylized and vibrant versions of and embellishments upon the unit insignia shared by all of a squadron's aircraft.

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In the scale that most ship kits are produced, any provided aircraft can range from simply tiny to absolutely miniscule, and require a lot of patience to deal with. Double or even triple that when using nonstandard modeling mediums (resin, photo-etch), meaning that approaching the accurate and realistic depiction of naval aircraft can require as much planning as a modest-sized ship in its own right. Though most ship modelers may be able to achieve good results with most cruiser, battlecruiser, or battleship-mounted planes with a minimum of fuss, carrier builders must be particularly vigilant, as an accurate and well-depicted air wing can make or break a build. That said, a well-built carrier model need not be covered to the gunwales with planes, and some classes of cruisers were literally swamped with them.

When plotting out your air wing, or simply wishing to be correct in mounting the two or so seaplanes your ship comes with, it is not only recommended that you be familiar with paint schemes, but with how aircraft actually work. Were planes routinely kept on the flight deck with wings spread, and if not, which way were they folded? Would the circumstances of your seascape possibly put your ship's planes in danger of suffering damage from crashing waves, and if so, was there a hangar to keep them safe in? How do control surfaces behave on an unpowered, unmanned plane that has been stationary for a significant period? Would aircraft in storage or else not engaged in flight operations carry ordnance? These are questions that can be easily answered thanks to the Internet, where period photographs are a modeler's best friend.

Most of the time, we will want to make aircraft on our ship models fit in with the ship, which is to say, we want them to look as natural as possible within the limitations of the scale and medium. It may be tempting to do things such as tweak the rudder, drop flaps, or depict a rear gunner's station, however this might not be the best idea when it comes to realism. On the other hand, not doing so can also impact accuracy. Two examples of this can be found in the Curtiss P-40 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190; in the former, a slight aileron shift was part of the aircraft's natural "rest" state; in the latter such a state resulted in elevators, which were connected by an axle through the fuselage, canting at a slight upward angle relative to the stabilizers, but roughly parallel to the ground. Another example is the P-51 Mustang, wherein the central clamshell doors for the landing gear were raised after their deployment; this is a common mistake even for dedicated aircraft modelers, as those doors would only fall open if the aircraft in question was drained of hydraulic fluid or else had been idle for a very long time. Another, more related example, is the Douglas SBD Dauntless, which did not in fact possess folding wings while its contemporary, the Douglas TBD Devastator, did.

In shipboard aviation through the end of WWII, rear-seat gunners and turrets were fairly common, with all types save (most) fighters carrying them. However, when stationary aboard ship, such guns were almost never in their "deployed" position; rather, a gunner would not unlimber his guns until after the aircraft had taken off successfully and climbed to altitude. Conversely, a gunner would put his weapons away prior to landing, and after touchdown and securing on the hangar deck, he would remove them from the aircraft. Depending on the navy, it was the job of an aerial gunner to keep after his equipment, rather than leave it to the ordnancemen. This would even be the case for some turreted guns, such as that mounted aboard the Grumman TBF/M Avenger (I cannot confirm this at this time, however). This would be no different for seaplanes aboard capital ships, if they possessed a gun; it would either be stowed within a shut canopy, or else removed from the aircraft for safekeeping. Guns are as vulnerable if not more so to the vicissitudes of the sea than the aircraft which mounted them.

For later eras of ship and shipboard aircraft modeling, things are quite different. The replacement of seaplanes with helicopters often means the elimination of shipboard aviation entirely, as any smaller vessel that carried rotor-winged aircraft (even those few battleships that did) kept them safe from the sea and salty air, only bringing them out when their services were needed. Large carriers on the other hand, once they had been adapted for the jet age or else built specifically for it, tended to keep a small number of helos on standby for air-sea rescue; depending on the navy, they would also be deployed during fixed-wing recovery operations. With the advent of the angled deck and the compulsory reliance on the steam catapult, the former a revolution in carrier operations and the latter a necessity demanded by the needs of jet aircraft, the problem of "spotting" or arranging aircraft on a flight deck became more acute than ever. There simply was not room in a ship's hangar deck for all or even most of its compliment of aircraft, so it fell to the flight deck to keep the rest and a small section aboard each vessel was dedicated exclusively to this purpose.

Spotting planes on a modern carrier carries with it much of the same aspects of spotting planes on the deck of a World War II-era ship. One of the most important questions to answer when planning this is this: "what is the ship doing right now?" If it is conducting recovery operations, then most planes would be at or near the bow, with some on elevators either level with the flight deck or hangar deck. If the ship is preparing to launch a strike, or is simply at cruise, then aircraft may be spotted differently, and the elevators may or may not be in use at the time. Such rules may also govern how you pose aircraft on, say, a Marine assault ship. Again, as with deciding how to pose individual aircraft for maximum realism, photographs are your friend, as different navies have different standards and practices as well as entirely different carrier designs. Having a cruise book, a sort of yearbook-style cataloging of a carrier's time at sea, can be a huge boon if you are looking to model a specific ship in a specific timeframe.

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Well, I think I've waffled on enough for one day, so let's see what knowledge we can accumulate in this thread as a resource for modelers on this forum. Remember, I am by no means infallible, so do not hesitate to post corrections to anything I've stated in this opening post.

[sargentx]

WEll thanks!....so I guess my gun's not correct either ????lol I'M LEAVING IT DAMN IT!

Very well written and informative as hell. Thanks for taking the time. I'm wondering if you are able to elucidate on how the planes might be arranged on a flattop, how their arrangement and operation would differ depending on weather. Having some flight experience, I know that weather is a killer and winds on takeoff are a very serious matter to consider when choosing the runway direction (or deciding to stay on the ground all together). I'm wondering if the carriers would orient themselves into the wind for takeoffs and if planes (either on capital ships or flattops) would only fly in good conditions.
Talk more about good weather/bad weather 'looks' for carriers.
Thanks again,
Interesting!

[Goodwood]

You're welcome, Chris! I was worried about going overboard, so...

As for how aircraft were typically arranged on carriers, as I hinted at, that can vary quite a bit depending on the ship and the navy in question as well as the types of aircraft. In the straight-deck era, planes taking off for a strike were typically arranged in groups by type; fighters in the front, as due to their higher acceleration and lower weight they could take off on a shorter stretch of deck than other types (they could also split off and form a combat air patrol for the gathering strike package); dive bombers would be next, as they were also fairly nimble, while the torpedo bombers, largest and carrying the heaviest payloads, would be assembled astern right up to the stern edge of the flight deck. Again, depending on the navy and the size of the ship, planes prepping for flight were crammed as tightly together as was possible yet still allowing plane handlers and ordnancemen to access them through the veritable meat grinder of spinning propellers.

It was not uncommon to see aircraft squeezed into three rows on a straight-deck carrier when being readied for a mission, with the outer rows canted inward (portside angled to the right, starboard to the left) and the middle row approximately abeam along the deck's center demarcation line. On U.S. Navy carriers, at least, this was the purpose of the three rows of dashes commonly painted on flattops of that era. When in such an arrangement the center aircraft, slightly forward of its wingmates, would go first, then the flanking planes one by one and repeat. Later in World War II, it would not be uncommon to see torpedo planes in the back of the pack revving their engines and spinning their props while their wings were still folded, sometimes resulting in four in a row sitting at the stern (this may also be true of the SB2C Helldiver, which was about the size of the Avenger), but again, photographic evidence will go a long way here. As far as I can tell, the Japanese Navy also used a three-in-a-row system, though the mechanics may have differed somewhat. Unfortunately I have little information on how the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm spotted their aircraft, however it would likely follow similar norms.

Aboard angled-deck carriers, however, particularly with the development of multi-role aircraft that weren't always easily classified as pure attack, pure fighter, or other types, then arranging them for a strike could be quite different entirely. This is especially true given that not only were catapult takeoffs now mandatory, but these larger types also had four of them. As stated in the original post, these classes of ships had a small team dedicated to "spot the deck" and ensure a smooth and efficient flow of planes around the hanger, onto or off of the flight deck, and into position for launch or after recovery. Photo evidence here is again incredibly useful, but it can be assumed that for takeoff, planes not on the catapults would generally be out of the way (clustered amidships and toward the stern, to starboard), and for recovery, planes not being immediately directed toward the hanger would be clustered toward the bow around the forward catapults and around the starboard elevators forward of the island. Wings would almost always be folded when not immediately ready for use.

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Weather and time-of-day can be a severe handicap to flying, however after a certain point in the history of air warfare, technology developed which largely negated the need to plan around such hazards (though as any Naval Aviator will tell you, bad-weather and night landings are never fun). Speaking in the broadest general sense, it can be assumed that straight-deck flattops did not engage in operations of any kind in foul weather or at night, while angled-deck carriers could be counted upon to do so. By the time of the Vietnam War, the twenty-four-hour carrier was a fixture in the United States Navy, with the new supercarriers able to keep the sea and launch and recover aircraft in all but the most severe conditions (read: hurricanes and typhoons). During the Korean War, the British demonstrated the capacity to mount a very high operational tempo, and given that the Korean Peninsula could be subject to some very harsh weather, it may be that this was the one period in which straight-deck carriers maintained operations in bad weather.

However, that does not mean that planes would not be arranged so as to mitigate damage from high winds, or that ships would plunge into the heart of storms; such phenomena were actively avoided unless something such as a rain squall or cloud bank would hide a carrier from approaching enemy aircraft. If harsh conditions were expected or unavoidable, those planes which could not be stored in the hangar would be tied down to the deck away from the edges, their wings folded and canopies buttoned up to try and mitigate the possibility of being knocked about by wind or flooded with rainwater (though the latter would probably happen anyway). The most severe example of this would be the October 1944 typhoon that struck the Third Fleet bearing off the Philippines; though the flatttops' crews did all they could to secure their aircraft, many were simply washed or blown overboard, and at least two ships were lost along with nearly eight hundred lives.

Night operations carried their own risks, and among the straight-deckers, only one ever really became a 24/7 ship: the USS Enterprise CV(N)-6. At least, this was the case during the Second World War; by the time of the Korean conflict, foul-weather and night flying likely became more common as smaller radar sets could be carried aboard fighters without the addition of bulky antenna pods. So, how would one depict a flattop cruising in foul weather? Well, first of all the deck would be slick with rainwater, and second, all planes on deck would have their wings folded if possible, and secured to the deck via tiedowns. They would also likely be set some ways apart from each other and away from the ends and edges of the deck, so that one aircraft that popped its moorings wouldn't immediately slam into another, possibly wrecking both or worse, careening into others and/or falling over the side.

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Wind was also a crucial factor in the performance of carrier aircraft and operations. No matter in which direction its aircraft had to fly to reach their target, a carrier will always turn into the wind, so that the air passes over the flight deck from bow to stern; this is true for both takeoff and landing. Even if an aircraft is standing still on the deck on a calm day, a flattop's motion through the ocean will generate wind over the flight deck equal to the speed at which it is traveling. Minimum deck wind speed for the conducting of flight operations was at one point judged to be thirty knots (or somesuch, converting knots to kph/mph isn't my forte), which conversely led to the standard of the fleet carrier being capable of running at thirty knots or more, and its escorting warships needing to match that speed (this is why older battleships and cruisers were dismissed from the main battle line despite still being somewhat effective).

This forward momentum translates into lift for an aircraft with wings extended as, in effect, it was already making thirty knots without having actually moved. This means that less push is needed for an aircraft to attain takeoff speed; this meant that in the straight-deck era, though catapults were fitted to the forward flight deck, a traditional rolling takeoff was still quite possible for nearly all types. On the other side of things, this wind can help a landing aircraft drop onto the flight deck and catch an arresting wire with a reduced chance of stalling and falling out of the groove (a carrier pilot would literally kill power to his engines to force his plane onto the deck). I'm no expert on this, however, and there are most likely details that I've missed or what have you.

This also applies to seaplanes mounted on capital ships; bad weather was generally a no-go for such operations, even from catapults. While seaplanes would not be launched against the wind, the placement of ship-mounted catapults often forced a compromise between the ideal and the practical; those mounted amidships were especially prone to such pragmatism, particularly if they were in a fixed position (perpendicular to the ship's beam, for example) while turntable- or stern-mounted catapults could be swung out so that a launch into the wind could be achieved without the warship having to radically alter course in order to launch aircraft. Seaplanes in general also tended to be smaller than carrier aircraft, able to achieve an adequate takeoff speed with a smaller engine and less of a boost.

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Again, this is in my own experience and knowledge gained from my own research, so please feel free to make corrections and such as necessary.

[sargentx]

God you know your subject! Thanks for sharing. This is a really valuable article to have in the forum.
Bookmarked. I have a USS Independence in my stash, and am a bit nervous about these particular issues. Now I have at least something more than guesswork to go on.
Thanks again

[Goodwood]

Happy to help, Chris, and hopefully this serves as a starter. If anyone else has more particular questions relating to this subject, they can be posted here and I (or some others) will do our best to answer them.