Hey guys, been kinda quiet around here. So what is on the work bench? What are y'all working on? Sound off guys.

I've been reading Shattered Sword and I have always wanted to build the US and Japanese carriers at Midway. I've got Trumpeter's 1/700 Hornet and Tamiya's 1/700 Hornet. Since all three carriers were Yorktown class, was there any subtle differences in the 3 carriers? I want to get Tamiya's Enterprise, and that you leave me with using the Tamiya Hornet for the Yorktown. Any reference pics would help.

So, sound off mates!
Kenny

:-) well in the dock at the moment is 1/350 yamato, 1/200 i-19 and a 1/72 pt15 with airfix e boat and revells e boat to follow on the book front its ballards srech for the carriers lost aty midway followed by disasters in the deep thats about sub accidents .

I'm working on a vehicle for an article, a sub for a campaign and probably an article, and I picked up my kit for the "wind-sails and oars" group build, and inbetween all that I'm doing an aircraft for the A-Guard group build.

I maybe quite lately, but certainly not doing nothing. :-)

Greetings all,

Apart from my armour fettish which is on going, I've 2 x LCM 3 to start for my harbour build and this weekend I hope to do a small rowing boat as the first of the craft for that.

I have an LVT 4 to do for the Rhine crossing or possibly Walcheren.

I've signed up for a couple of campaigns but at the rate I build will likely finish none of them, but they did give me the motivation to keep going. I have wounded infantry and commandos to continue with for the D Day event, still need to think about some more 'active type' RN personnel, doing boat type things rather than just standing around.

Some bunkers to tidy up and finish off again for the D Day event.

Still trying to source a UDT boat (LCP (L)) - might have one/might not at the moment still awaiting further developments there.

Researching Goods Wagons and tracks and stuff like that. Plodding in slowly with my Irish Guards Tank Troop.

Basically enought stuff to keep me busy and fit in with the 5 year plan that may well become the 10 year plan :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

Cheers

Al

Hallo

I just completed a building of the U99 now I started with type VII D minelayer U boat and still working on the m/s Snowberry and also started with the USS Cushing have somebody experience with this model??

Regards

wim

They were all sister ships, but there are significant differences in the islands of the Hornet and the other two. An Enterprise could work for a Yorktown but not a Hornet. I would print out some of those sideview pictures on the NAVSOURCE website and see if you can see a whole lot of difference. I just remember a few years ago some guy using the Hornet as a prewar Yorktown (at a model show)and another guy having an absolute fit about it. Saying this that and the other weren't right. In 350 scale someone does a $70 conversion piece for it, so it must be visually significant, at least to an expert.

Oh and me, well I enter and buld tank campaigns for the past few months. I am honchoing the MEOW (125 participants !) but then I'll enter another as soon as I finish one. I'm knocking a tank out a month so I'm doing my 3rd Campaign which is a modern armor greatest tank ever. Doing a Leopard 2a6. The biggest turret you've ever seen, almost as big as the hull !

Thanks for the help Steve. I'll certainly do that.

David, Dave, Alan, Wim,
How about some in progress shots. Let's see your handy work fellas.

Ok, how about the rest of y'all? What on you table?

Kenny

Well, recently finished weathering my 1/600 Ark Royal (note to self - must take some photos...) also still need to build her air group! And I'm waiting for the resin pom-poms from WEM as well; John tells me they have had some snags with suppliers hence the delay there. Oh well!

Also built a 1/1200 Enterprise recently - nice quick build and turns out as a good-looking little carrier.

On the bench at present is a Trumpeter KV-1 (well everyone else has built one!) She's at the stage of having the tracks weathered and painted, then I can add the fenders and get her finished off.

Waiting on the slipway as it were is Revell's 1/72 Vosper MTB. I'm gathering bits and pieces for her, am planning to do a fairly major rebuild of the rear half of the hull (the kit has a V-hull whereas she should be pretty much flat-bottomed by the time you get to the transom). Provided I don't make a complete hash of that I will then remove and replace or scratch-build pretty much everything on the upper deck. Should be an interesting project and I'm looking forward to getting started on that one!

Cheers

Hi Guys!

Everyone sounds like they're quite busy, I'll say!! Lot's of interesting projects going on...keep in mind gents, that as you are building these kits, whether new or old, if you have any talent with a camera, and a little writing skills, we could use more build features here at MSW all the time!

Geez, at the moment, I've got Italeri's 1/35 LCVP going on for a full build feature, Trump's 1/144 Chinese Type 33G Submarine for DDD2, and soon will be starting Hasegawa's new Yukikaze/Emily combo for a full build feature...also got Revell's USS Lionfish going as a modeling tutorial subject for my monthly article in "Sharkhunters" Magazine (a real slowwwww build!)...I'll have to snap a few pic's me-self to share with all me maties!
Cheers!
~Gunny

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one doing a lot right now.

As far as ships go I’m about to start painting my 1/700 IJN Sakura Destroyer. It’ll go on a base and is being built as a test ship before I start on a Dio for my grandfather containing his ship from Korea.

Also I’m working on a Zero fighter and painting a figure for campaigns.
I also have a WWII infantry Dio on the shelf that I want to get back to.

Hey Gunny,

Geez, I thought I had a lot on my desk. Well, my US Midway force is on hold until I can get a hold of a couple of 1/700 Tamiya Enterprises. I've got a watch on one on evilbay. So, plans are tomorrow to finish up my 120mm Marauder pilot for August FOTM. Then, I'm going to start on Trumpeter's 1/700 USS Hornet. I'll do a full hull build with the Doolittle Raiders on board. I saw a pic of the carrier with an SBD tucked away in the B-25s. I'll do that. If anyone has some better pics, I'd appreciate it.

Gator

Hey Kenny:

Flash me a copy of that Hornet pic. I plan on doing the 350 scale Doolittle thing with my Hornet and having a Dauntlas included would really look cool as well as using a left over plane

Hi Crew

I am actually trying to get a few armour projects from old finished and have the desk cleared up. One is an old Tamiya 251 halftrack which I am building as a weathering decalling test dummy. It will be useful for skills and testing for ships and armour.

I wont to get things clear for my impending Airfix E Boat and Revell s100 plus my UBoats.

Regards

Sean

That's two I have in my stash as well - be interesting to see how they compare!

well thats three of us up to the same thing!!!!!!!

Steve's exactly right. There were some noticeable differences in the Hornet that someone who is knowledgeable would be able to detect easily. The Yorktown and Enterprise were commissioned in '37 and '38 and Hornet not until after Wasp, being commissioned in Oct of 1941, so it is inevitable that some design differences would have been incorporated. The main reasons she was similar to the Yorktown class is that all three were built at Newport News Shipbuilding so they already had the plans and experience, and repeating a build of the Wasp would have been a bad idea as that ship was a bit smaller.

The other thing you always have to watch with warships, especially US in WW II, is the fact they were constantly changing and upgrading things particularly the AA weapons and electronics and radar.

So if you are planning on building all three US carriers as they appeared at Midway, you'd be better off with two Enterprise kits and one Hornet kit. (You could always make the other Hornet kit up as the Doolittle Raid, with a deck load of B-25s.

There is a chance that the Hornet's appearance during the Doolittle Raid and the way she looked at Midway were not the same, I'm just not sure. I suspect there is reference information available which would say for sure. The same is true for Enterprise.

For that matter, there's a good chance that Enterprise and Yorktown did not look exactly alike during the battle. But it may be that the differences would only be minor and only an expert could tell. In a 1/700 scale model, I doubt you'd be able to notice unless it was something obvious like a unique radar placement or AA gun arrangement.

One thing which I've wondered about is whether any of the battle damage Yorktown sustained at Coral Sea would be visible in modeling her appearance at Midway. Most of it was internal and it was an incredible job just turning her around so she could even make the battle.

I'll be interested in your take on the book Shattered Sword. I thought it was one of the best researched and well written books I'd read in a long time. Sure paints a very different picture of the battle than we've heard for a long time.

Tom

Hey Tom,
Everytime I pick up Shattered Sword and read a few more pages, it amazes me. I may be stating this wrong, but you'll probably get the jist of it. History has portrayed the IJN and one of the most professional navies in the world at the onset of World War II, yet the design flaws and organizational structure of their shipboard systems were ridiculous. I explained it to my wife this way...it's like having a baseball team that can knock the cover off the ball and put up a ton of runs but couldn't catch a cold much less an easy ground ball. Offense was definately the main principle of the ship. The differences in idealology are totaly amazing. The US knew when to live to fight another day, where as the Japanese lived to fight for today. The thought processes of the Japanese are just amazing.

Right now I have the compartments from CMK for the Revell Uboat Type VIIC on the bench. Just assembling them right now and taking my time. I've never worked with this much resin before, so I'm taking my time doing it because I don't want to mess it up!!! Those CMK things were almost the price of the Revell kit!!!!!!!

Doug, I'm looking to use those kits on my Revell boat, so would be very interested to hear hwo they shape up

Cheers

You're exactly right. One of the myths perpetuated by Mistuo Fuchida in his book was just how lucky the US was at Midway. But he, as a former officer of the IJN could hardly be considered unbiased. Focusing on the luck of the US Navy in the battle of Midway, was a great way to shift the focus from the major flaws the IJN had. As you read this book, it becomes evident that the overall operational plan the IJN had for Midway opened the door very wide for disaster. The "luckiest" thing about the battle was that we were willing to take full advantage of their weakness. From the overall concept of the operation, to the emphasis on attacking(and the corresponding weakness in scouting) down to the poor planning for damage control, (that's DEFENSE, NOT offense!!) they really were primed for what happened.

Fuchida's claim that the strike aircraft were JUST about to take off and that we VERY fortuitiously caught their carrrier decks full of planes seconds from launch (GREAT facing-saving if you're trying to explain a disasterous defeat) pretty well is de-bunked.

Still a great victory, but we should get a lot more credit for being "good" rather than just "lucky".

Tom

It wasn't just Fuchidas book. Walter Lord and Gordan Prange also give the same sort of idea. Take the title of Lord's book "Miracle at Midway". I haven't read the Shattered Sword, but luck IMHO had everything to do with it. Our flights got separated, and hit the Japanese piecemal, and it happened that the aircover was still low on the water after combating the TBD's when the SBD's showed up. All the bombs etc laying around after the attack the island vs attack the carriers swap the Japanese did. The Tone search plane havig a 30 miute delay in take off.

Of course the key factor was the intelligence issue, and that wan't luck but skill. Knowing the when where and how enabled us to be waiting for them rather than the other way around. It may be quite probable that when Fuchida wrote his book he had no knowledge of the code break issue. I know Prange and Lord did as they definitely made a big point of it in their books.

Well Steve, I've found out that Waldron had a better sense of where the Japanese were than his superiors. He actually broke formation and took off on his own. Bombing 8 and Fighting 8 never got into the battle. As a matter of fact, the Hornet would hav been better off with Jimmy Doolittle's raiders as their airgroup.

Certainly, the fact that the Japanese Strike Force was almost constantly under attack by various forces all morning kept Nagumo off balance, and the piecemeal attack by the US Carrier based planes contributed to that.

That did have a lot to do with over tasking the CAP as well as causing delays in re-arming which did result in failure to secure a lot of ordnance below. However, there is a good case for the fact that Japanese ship design and air wing handling practices, especially with fuel, were an even bigger contribution to the destruction caused by the hits which took place.

And as far as the Tone's search plane being delayed, the authors make a very strong case using time lines, flight paths as well as ship movements to demonstrate that an on time launch would not have helped. The real problem was a bad search plan to start with, and much of that is due to the disdain for anything other than pure strike/offense.

These guys did a terriffic job of research, and their back up material, most of it from previously un-used (but by no means un-available!) Japanese material, really paints a very different picture of the "reasons" the battle turned out as it did.

Anyone who is fascinated by this incredible battle owes it to themselves to read this book because it really sheds new light on how things happened.

Tom

I have to agree wholeheartedly with the poor ship design. 4 or 5 bomb hits and their carriers were raging infernos stem to stern while ours proved to be able to take a licking and keep on ticking. Yorktown got clobbered at Coral sea, and yet was repaired enough to fight at Midway. It took major damage, got underway and then got it again. Even then, it was close to recovering. The Japanese attitude always was attack vs defend. The zero was considered unbeatable until we discoved it had limited protective armor and that was exploited by our early inferior planes like the P-40's and F4F's. At Guadalcanal in the initial battles, the Marines merely had to set up good defensive positions and let the Japanese continually crash their forces into them. Of course they did learn rapidly as shown at Tarawa, Pellielui, Iwo and the like. Their later fighter planes were excellent as well. As to ship design, well look to the Yamato and Musashi, how many bomb hits and torpedoes did it take to sink those 2 behemoths. So both sides larned quickly from errors and preconceptions made at the beginning tof the war.

Gee, I was going to chime in with an off topic post about having a tank on the bench instead of a ship But, it looks like I really missed the boat here.