mdesaxe

The Association des Amies de la Musée national de la Marine has a monograph with plans (1:50 scale) for a tartane. Heller most probably relied quite heavily on this monograph, just as they did on other AAMM monographs for their model of La Réale de France and some others. https://boutique.aamm.fr/monographies/voile-anciens/plan-tartane There’s also a fair amount of information in Amiral François-Edmond Paris’s Souvenirs de la marine conservé including good drawings (I think it’s in volume 2). You might want to look to libraries for this because the work is fetching rather high (sometimes close to astronomical) prices. Also, there is some information in Björn Landström’s well-known The Ship. If you really want to dig deep, there is a lot of material on these craft in French 19th-century works on Mediterranean vessels but I'm not too sanguine that you will find much of this in England. Hope this helps. Maurice

It's all one word. You should be able to find him from the advanced search by checking 'by seller' and entering this name in the appropriate box.

He's on Facebook as fernandopintomodels and also on eBay as crazycar19

Glad I could be of assistance. Maurice

There were three editions of William Bourne's The Arte of Shooting in Great Ordnaunce (all sorts of spellings, too): 1578, 1587, and (very posthumously) 1643. The edition of 1587 (closest to your date) lists for sizes: "ordinary" cannon - 11-12 feet with 8-inch bore "ordinarie" demi-cannon - 10-11 feet with 6-1/2-inch bore "ordinarie" culverin - 12 feet with 5-1/4-inch bore "ordinarie" demi-culverin - 10 feet with 4-inch bore "ordinarie" saker - 8-9 feet with 3-3/4-inch bore He list what he calls the "elder sort" of these guns with length of 12 feet, 11-12 feet, 12-13 feet, 12 feet, and 10 feet long respectively. Elsewhere, he also points out that gun founders had their own ideas for the correct sizes, so all his lengths, in particular, he qualified as "or thereaboute", giving you some leeway! You should also note that I have dropped out several of his types and sizes that do not fit the parameters of this model, such as French double cannon. PS: William Wynter was Master of Naval Ordnance for the Royal Navy from 1557 until he died in 1589 Hope this helps. Maurice

I must admit to an error - instead of looking to the source material I took a short-cut and relied on William Laird Clowes' supposedly accurate citation of English State Papers from Oppenheim's work in his The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to 1900, vol. I . I pulled out my copy of Oppenheim from the recesses and found, on page 157, his tabulation from State Papers of the armament of the Royal Navy for this date. Ark Royal did not have 17 smaller guns. Instead, there were just 2 "fowlers" and 2 "portpieces". These were small semi-portable guns and definitely were breechloaders, since the former had 2 chambers each and the latter had 3 chambers each (meaning that they could be pre-loaded, like cartridges). The documents also indicate that the culverins, demi-culverins, and sakers were on the recently-introduced four-wheeled carriages. These carriages were not the same as those with which we are familiar from the eighteenth century but had a solid flat bottom base with stepped side pieces - there's a reasonably useful illustration of this type in John Sellers, The Sea Gunner (I think it's accessible via Google books) even though it dates from a century later . The rigging still would be breeching to the carriage rather than the cascabel, since that was the pattern for another century. The State Papers also list some odd details - the two-wheeled carriages for the cannon were 5' 6" long, those for the demi-cannon were 5' long, and they cost £1 3s 4d and 19s 9d apiece respectively (about £1.16 and £0.98 in “new money”)! With apologies, Maurice

There were TWO 'revolutions' in English navy warship design in the later third of the sixteenth century - "race-built" ships (noted by Pat) and the almost universal adoption of cast-iron or bronze muzzle-loading ordnance. Consequently, I must disagree that any of the primary ordnance aboard ROYAL NAVY warships in 1588 was breech-loading. Some certainly was in the 1540s (the Mary Rose era) but these large breech-loading weapons were obsolete by 1588. The documents in Oppenheim's work on the administration of the navy clearly indicate that all the big guns then used by the Royal Navy were muzzle-loaders and mostly iron (English artillery ironfounders had a Europe-wide reputation for excellence at the time, largely because English iron was cheaper to produce - think Weald iron). The specific armament of Ark Royal in 1588 from contemporary documentation was 4 cannon of 7 (60-pounders), 4 demi-cannon (32-pounders), 12 culverins (18-pounders), 12 demi-culverins (9-pounders), 6 sakers 6-pounders) and 17 smaller guns (including an unspecified number of minions (4-pounders) and some of which may have been old-style wrought-iron breech-loaders of around 2-pounds for anti-personnel work - and these could even have been in the tops in swivel mounts). Ark Royal's main armament is specifically listed as 'brass' which is what the navy called bronze ordnance right up to the late 17th century. Note that the weights of the balls were approximations, as were the bores - both to some extent were a function of the ironfounders preferences - so a demi-cannon, for example, could be anything from a 30-pounder to a 36-pounder. Also note that it is quite probable that the hired ships in the fleet commissioned to combat the Armada carried quite a few old-style breech-loaders. Black Knight is correct that shipboard gun carriages of this period usually only had two forward trucks and that the breeching went to the carriage, not the cascabel (this rigging of the breeching continued on English ships possibly into the very early 1700s and in Europe for 10 years or more longer). Respectfully, Maurice

A minor detail but a hundredweight is 112 pounds, not 118. A hundredweight is eight stone (8 x 14 pounds). The question of why guns were lashed in place in action is quite interesting, Believe it or not, the whole array of tackles we see used for shipboard artillery only came in regular use around 1725. Before that, for about 75 years there were tackles to haul guns outboard after they recoiled but the tackle used to haul guns inboard was one of the outhaul tackles repurposed temporarily. Prior to that, while tackles were used on occasion, the standard was to haul the breeching tight and leave the guns run outboard, thus avoiding having to deal with recoil (but making reloading more difficult). There are some interesting sketches by van de Velde illustrating the contortions guncrews went through to reload in this situation. Maurice

Pat Tonnage in the sixteenth century was an arbitrary volumetric number unrelated to displacement. In theory, it measured how much space there was within the hull. In practice, it was not a very good indicator. Up to the 1650s, the usual English formula was multiplying the length (an undefined measurement since it could be on the keel, on the gundeck, or overall) by the maximum beam by the depth in hold (the distance from the main deck to the top of the keel) and dividing by 100. Obviously, this formula ignored any consideration of the shape of the hull (bluff or sharp bow and stern, deadrise or not) so a box would generate the same tonnage as a prism. Consequently, the weigh of armament was not related in any way to a warship's tonnage. Your analysis for the disposition of the guns is very thorough and rational. One other thing you might consider is that, until the 1650s, there is a fair amount of evidence that guns were lashed run out in action and loaded from outside the hull (the crew hanging through the ports) and that long guns often were stowed and lashed parallel against the sides when not in action, so the problem of excessive length you bring up may not necessarily be too great. Hope this helps Maurice

The 'politics' behind the Army not being Royal go all the way back to the restoration of Charles II in 1660, when a 'new' army was created to replace Cromwell's forces. Parliament did not trust the king with an army, so its establishment was authorised by Parliament itself. This was codified in 1689, when the Mutiny Act was passed. This act required annual Parliamentary re-authorisation of the Army's very existence, a situation that persisted until the final passage of the act in 1879. The Navy. on the other hand, already existed prior to the restoration, and was unlikely to be a threat to the population if the monarch tried to use it 'dictatorially', so it remained Royal

I don't know whether it matters or not but that is not a live warhead. The giveaway is the lifting eye in place of the pistol-arming spinner.

I also recommend going to the Imperial War Museum photo archive site. There are many images of RN escort carriers there, varying from OK to quite spectacular.

The same Arcadian Blue colour was coded M1226 for Ford dealers when they ordered it.

I talked to my brother-in-law (living in Maisoncelles), who is very involved hands-on in restoring vintage cars, about sources for paints. Together, we did some checking on Ford Mustang paint codes to see if we could find sources. As probably is typical of bureaucracies, Ford had three different codes for the Wimbledon White cars. On the door jamb plate the codes stamped were either M or 9A, which corresponded to a dealer code of M1619 (all codes for the same colour paint!). We ended up finding three possible sources for aerosol bombes of the correct paint: Essex Mustang Centre in England (www.essexmustang.com), and peinturevoiture.fr and Pecamax (pecamax.fr) in France. All three carry Wimbledon White in 400ml aerosols. The prices vary widely, probably because the paints have different sources. Here are the specific pages we found: https://www.essexmustang.com/parts/categories/64-73-mustang-exterior-lacquer-touch-up-paint-187 (paint by Highway Classics) https://code.peinturevoiture.fr/83877.html (don't know manufacturer) https://www.pecamax.fr/peinture-carrosserie-ford-america-code-couleur-9a-couleur-white-annee-1964-1993.html (paint by Motip) Note that Pecamax has all three codes listed in the index page but they all have the same manufacturer's (Motip) reference code so they all are the same colour: MTP-M45900. Hope this helps.

I am in the possibly-fortunate position of having to cross the pond several times a year, so I simply pack some of them in my checked baggage. I do not know of a source for Model Master aerosols in Europe, perhaps because of environmental regulation restrictions limiting their distribution. I do know that the Duplicolor range of colour-matched touch-up aerosols for full-size cars is available, though. You would be wise to shop around for these because prices seem to fluctuate wildly!

I would think very carefully about leaving the plastic unpainted, even if it is an exact match to Wimbledon White. Styrene is very susceptible to ultra-violet light (e.g. sunlight) which breaks down its integrity. If you put no finish on it, in the long term the surface will chalk and the plastic itself will become very brittle (in extreme cases it can start to turn to powder). If you want to leave the plastic unpainted, you really ought to apply a clear finish over it that contains UV-resistant additives - at which point you might just as well paint it, since paint acts as a barrier to UV light.

Testors, in the Model Master range, sells Wimbledon White (1964) in spray cans #28132. There are multiple vendors selling touch-up paints for full-size Mustangs. Duplicolor, I believe, is one that is available in Europe and is available through Amazon in Europe.

Am I the only one seeing a video of the Canadian corvette Arrowhead instead of a photograph of Imperial?

This is the start of my construction of a 1:700-scale model of the escort carrier Battler at the time of its participation in Operation Avalanche, the landing at Salerno. The basis is the Tamiya kit, itself a modified re-issue of the Pit-Road original, of USS Bogue. This kit definitely shows its age. My hull was replete with mould shrinkage and also featured very odd bulges along the sheer just abaft the fo’c’sle. The fit of parts also was not very good: the various separate decks required filling and there was a large void between the fo’c’sle deck bulkhead and the main deck. Green putty and plastic strip dealt with the voids. Unfortunately, filing and sanding eliminated much of the moulded detail but that turned out not to be too great a loss, since most of it was not quite correct, so I eliminated all of it.. I also decided to excise the vastly-overthick bulwarks forward. Before doing so I stuck masking tape over the outside of the bulwarks and cut around the upper edges to make patterns that I transferred to thin plastic sheet to replicate their shapes. Several corrections were required to obtain a more accurate hangar. The after bulkheads are not parallel to the centerline but rather to the line of the after gun sponsons. Rather than cutting off these bulkheads I filed the back of the moulded angle at 45 degrees until the bulkheads could be bent to the correct orientation. The aft transverse bulkhead does not have the roller doors featured in the kit, so it was replaced with plastic sheet. The kit’s forward face for the hanger is completely wrong, so I rebuilt that area with plastic sheet. I also added the 20mm clipping room and ammunition trunk abaft the fo’c’sle. A small deck still needs to fill the angle – it will be added after I have installed the watertight doors inside the space. All the sponsons suffered from shrinkage. Filling this destroyed the moulded reinforcements, so I will have to add new ones from plastic strip. I also reshaped the sponsons to give them flat faces rather than bulges where this was necessary. My next step is to replace all the detail using photo-etched parts, brass turnings, and scratchbuilt parts from scrap. This may take a while because I have a more than full time job and also have to travel quite often, so this may not be a very entertaining thread. Maurice

All the Bogue class were built on the same hull - the Maritime Commission's standard C-3 ship. Every set of published dimensions differs but that is almost a necessary function of the fact that everyone measures differently (I'm not being sarcastic - it's a fact that such basic dimensions as length or beam can be measured from and to different points). I compared all Hobbs's dimensions for these vessels to those published by the US Navy and found that the only point of complete agreement was that the hangar was 260 x 62 x 18 feet!! According to Hobbs, the flight deck of the Attackers was 442 x 88 feet and of the Rulers 450 x 80 feet (it seems improbable that the Navy would want narrower flight decks!). According to the US Navy, all of them were 442 x 88 feet. A wikipedia article (with flags all over it saying it needed verification) mentions that the flight decks were lengthened as part of the Royal Navy's upgrade program, but I have never seen that stated in other documentation. PS - Even the US Navy can't agree about dimensions! Another of its publications lists the flight deck of the Bogue class as 442 x 80 feet! In reality, if you want to turn the Pit-Road or Tamiya Bogue or Tracker into a Royal Navy version (or a US Navy, for that matter) there are bigger changes necessary than lengthening the flight deck by 3 mm or so (if that longer deck number is correct). The hangar sides aft by the 4 or 5-inch gun platforms should taper towards the stern parallel to the taper of the platforms and there are no roller doors in the aft bulkhead. The forward face of the hangar in the kit bears no resemblance to the real structure there. There should be a rectangular extension ahead of the elevator into the erstwhile cargo hatch well. The fo'c'sle does not have a solid aft bulkhead across it - there is a passageway below its deck slightly to starboard amidships and there is a small boxy extension back from the bulkhead that contains the 20mm clipping room and an ammunition trunk. Weapon outfits were all over the place and also changed during the war. Battler, for example, was delivered with American 4-inch 50 caliber low-angle guns aft (the same guns as used on the flush-deckers) but had British 4-inch HA guns by the time of the Salerno operation. Sensors also changed during the war. Finally, the bridge needs significant modifications, since the British carriers had an open bridge with different platform arrangements. I am indeed building Battler from the kit. My principal hesitation about posting is the prevailing habit on all these fora for people to put up random comments that do not really advance matters (I do not become upset when what I post does not receive umpteen responses). My other hesitation is that I build quite slowly because I have a more than full time job and have to travel quite frequently, so I'm not sure how entertaining it will be. Maurice

As far as the US Navy (which ordered them) both the Attacker-class and the Ameer-class carriers were the same class: the Bogue class. The differences were in the armament outfits (and the post-delivery modifications for Royal Navy service). Useful drawings illustrating the differences are here for Battler: http://www.hnsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/acv6.pdf and here for Puncher: http://www.hnsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/cve53-d79.pdf Maurice

I want to thank everyone for their assistance. I must admit that I still cannot access the royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk site either using a browser search or by directly pasting in the address. This despite trying four browsers (Safari, Explorer, Chrome, Firefox) on each of two computers (one running Windows 10 and the other Windows 7) that each have separate providers and physically are located 2 km apart. Maybe the site doesn't like foreigners! I am intrigued by the discussions suggesting it is possible to determine colours using light reflectance values observed within black-and-white photographs. Among the images I have of Battler there are several that were taken from very similar angles but the obvious differences in light conditions and reflectance from the ocean play havoc with the intensities of the shades of corresponding panels, so i wonder how this works. I've also observed similar wild variation in shades in photographs that were taken on the same day but from different perspectives. I'm not sure of the protocol for posting images on the site that may have copyright restrictions so I am cautious about putting them up to illustrate this. Maurice

Thank you All the various browser I use to access send me a similar response to this website; either 'this page isn't working' or 'problem loading page'. This is the response I've received to all my requests of any kind from this site for at least the past month. Maurice

I could not find a better place for questions about the RN's escort carriers, so I'm posting my question here. Does any one of our many knowledgeable members know the colours applied to HMS Battler at the time of the Salerno operation. I have well over thirty photographs of this ship that clearly show the pattern but, as they all are black-and-white, I don't know the colours. Alan Raven depicts seven American-built escort carriers in British schemes (plus one in what seems to have been a standard pattern originally painted up in the United States) but none of these is Battler. Malcolm Wright shows Battler, but the pattern he depicts matches none of the photographs I have from the period, so I don't really trust his colour specifications. Any assistance much appreciated. Thank you in advance. Maurice

These booklets often were updated as a matter of standard US Navy practice. The booklet for Battler is notated as updated on May 5, 1943. Without having gone over the drawings in detail, I cannot determine if every British update is incorporated but Sheet 6 conspicuously illustrates the cofferdam around the avgas stowage that was part of the upgrade plan (it also appears on other sheets). Overall, I would be inclined to regard the booklet as representing Battler after modifications for Royal Navy service with British 4-inch HA guns. It is worth noting that the Puncher booklet does indeed show 5-inch guns, which have to be American since the British did not produce such a weapon. Maurice