I'm in the process of completing my 350th Hornet hangar deck and need answers to the following.....

The hangar bay garage style doors, do they raise and curl at the top into a roll, when in the open position, or do they slide up as a garage door would, resting in a horizontal position?

The WEM PE set has the framing for the middle elevator from the hangar deck, but only has one side with guides for the elevator itself,(unlike the fore and aft elevators that have two, one on either side of the elevator, extending from the hangar floor to the flight deck) Would this be feasible? I would imagine that you would need both sides for the elevator to work properly.

The black and white photos I have of the hangar deck, show the hangar walls to be a very light colour and the hangar bay floor to be a darker colour. What colours should I use?

Do I need to remove the molded on elevator depicted on the hangar deck, if I have the elevator in it's down position, and replace it with the flight deck part, or can I just have it flush on top of the hangar deck? If so, this would mean, it would have a 1.5mm lip from the lowered flight deck to the hangar deck floor ( kind of hard to roll the aircraft over this speed bump!)

And lastly, anybody have any ideas on what I can throw in to the hangar deck (aside from aircraft) to give it a busy feel?

Frank

I’m not going into that much detail with my Hornet so I cant help you with much.

For the color of the hanger deck I believe they are to be the same color. I’ll be using model master Gunship gray for mine.

As for what else you can add in the hanger deck. I believe you can get PE sets of people for the ships. You could add some of them working on the planes.

Good point, I am going to concentrate on the ship first, as I fear that once I get into the aircraft, I could end up spending more time on them than on the carrier itself!

Frank

Hi Frank in the book I have on the USS JFK it says in the section on the hanger that the floor is the same non-slip darg grey and has the same tie down system as the flight deck. I think that the walls are light grey having looked in the Lock on book on the Hornet C+D.

Hope this helps

John

The walls (bulkheads) were white, the floor (hangar deck) was dark gray.

For WW 2 Hornet I would opt for a medium to dark gray hanger deck. Interior almost white. On present day the hanger deck is closer to that color than the dark almost black grey of the upper deck. The Hornet used Norfolk Blue stain color on flight deck throughout war to the best of my knowledge. The doors were roll up. On the Essex kit this was well depicted, but for some reason the Hornet omitted the interior side of the hanger door pieces (I guess because it was the first kit and they were pushing for the Doolittle raid depiction) As for interior junk, trolleys and carts..aceyline torch cylinders hose reels and fire extinguishers on the sides. Unless you light it up in there, it's going to be hard to pick up much. I opted for putting aircraft up real close. Can't help much with the elevator as the Essex was different and I'm going with Doolittle on my Hornet (when i get around to working on it next year)

I wasn’t aware of that. I guess it’s a good thing I haven’t gotten around to painting.
Sorry for the wrong information Frank.

Thanks for the help, I'll post some photos soon.

Frank

Frank

Sorry for the late reply - I hope that it is still on time.
Check also the last picture of Peter Van Buren USS Hornet MOD Feature here:
https://armorama.kitmaker.net//features/282

and more of his Hornet here
http://photos.kitmaker.net/showgallery.php/cat/646

Skipper

Hi Frank,

The hangar deck bulkheads (walls) and overheads (ceilings) were painted 5-U White, while the interior deck itself was painted #20 Standard Deck Gray (a prewar colour that was used on the hangar decks of all USN carriers throughout WW2). In our Colourcoats enamels, that would be:

C 03, Matt White (matched to USN 5-U); and,
US 02, #20 Standard Deck Gray

Cheers,
John Snyder
White Ensign Models
http://WhiteEnsignModels.com