Anybody who's purchased the large Hornet recently and wants to swap some of their naval aircraft for my B-25's pop me a note. How close in appearance is the Hornet to the Yorktown? .Would this require a lot of modification or just some small adjustments?

I just got the kit and it is awsome. I also purchased three boxes of B-25's for about 15$ CAN each, maybe you would consider that option. What I am going to do is build the ship for the doolittle raid and open the hanger dooors and have all the regular aircraft set up in the hanger with all the B-25's on deck. I think it would look pretty cool, what do you think? :-)

Shinano. That is certainly one way to go. I think there were only 16 total B-25-s on the raid, but research that before you do the placement. I was leaning to a Coral Sea to Midway depiction with Wildcats, Dauntless and Avengers, or maybe even a prewar early 1941 with the devastator instead of Avengers. I was thinking about the Yorktown because pre-war they had some interesting markings to distinguish the ships of the class from each other.

:-) Very good point blaster! I will research that, thank you.

I've been working on my Hornet too and read up quite a bit. There were just 16 B-25's on deck at the time and its hanger deck was full of its f4f's, dauntless and devestators. There are some great internet resources as well as some real good examples of what others have done. I've cut away a couple of hanger deck doors but not all because 1) the doolittle pictures show that most (if not all) were closed at time of launching because of the gale force winds 2) its too expensive to buy so many planes ($10 a set at Greatmodels.com) just to hide them inside and 3) the detailing of the hangerdeck required is more than my limited modeling skills can handle. Its been a load of fun though, and I've learned a lot.

Yorktown's Island was different from Hornet, she carried Mk 33 Fire Control Directors instead of the Mk37 carried by Hornet. The 20mm galleries on the starboard side are different, and the island bridge structure is different.

Nautilus Models does a conversion set for Yorktown.

White Ensign has just released a hangar details set, it requires some basic scratchbuilding (cutting of plastic sheet) and provides all of the overhead trusswork for the hangar...

Tom's Modelworks will be releasing a resin add-on hangar detail set within the next 2 weeks.

There's lots of information, reviews, and a few build-ups to motivate you over at my site, www.modelwarships.com

Best,

Jeff

Thanks Angry Ensign...I guess it'll remain the Hornet.. look forward toseeing the Tom's resin set. Hopefully it'll have some neat little goodies like pullers and bomb carts. Somebody out there is going to figure that out with 2 big Carriers out and all those other Essex class varieties that just got released from Trumpeter. With the Saratoga and a NImitz planned we could see a pickup in goodies and maybe even a new jet aircraft selection in 350). How 'bout a Korean war Essex class and a Nam era Forrestal .......... WOW - ZOW

I wonder if for the Nimitz class will we see a new set of aircraft. Trumpeter already has copies of the Tamiya Big E. It would be easier to just supply those aircraft with the Nimitz kits. I for one do hope they redo the aircraft, but it is something to keep in the back of your head.

Unless I'm mistaken the A-7 Corsairs and A-6 Intruders are out of the inventory. Lets hope they do Tomcats and Hornets like they did with all their WW2 aircraft. I've been trying to track down loose Tomcats for a while. The guy from White Ensign emailed me and told me about his company's resin Hornets. As we say down south. 'My he sure is proud of those puppies". Around $12 for 2, hell I could buy 2 sets of the Tamiya stuff and get 4 Tomcats and 4 Hornets for that.

I have heard no mention of what time frame to expect on the Nimitz. So, A-6's and A-7's may be in order.

Yes, WEM makes some nice aircraft, but you will have to mortgage the house to fill a flight deck. I saw your message on modelwarships, and I ended up buying 6 packs of aircraft sets to get more tomcats, hornets, and intruders.