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Sink the Bismarck! HMS Ark Royal, 26 May 1941


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On 8/20/2019 at 10:18 AM, Nick Charnock said:

Hi Crisp, this WIP's great, so much information and the history behind. I hope you don;t mind but I plan to use it as reference when I build my Ark.

Re the fairlead - I've got a spare 1/350 battle-cruiser one from Hood - send me a PM if you want me to post it to you for casting.

Thanks, Nick.  I have ordered another couple of the L’Arsenal sets I used on Dido’s fo’c’s’le.  Despite having used it before, I can’t recall exactly what configurations it contains.  Definitely the “capital D lying in its back” type, because those were the ones widely used in 1960s frigates, but also some open topped ones.  Ark’s were (obvs) larger (but they were somewhat overscale in Dido, so should be OK, I think), and also seem to have been the type with a diagonal gap at the top - and I can’t recall whether they feature in the L’Arsenal resin (or can be adapted therefrom, at least).  There were some I turned into roller fairleads, but I cannot for the life of me recall how they started off.

 

... but if the answer is ‘No’, then I will take you up on your kind offer!  And I am more than happy for anyone to use this as a reference thread for future Arks; that’s one of the main reasons that I am putting as much info / background on here as I can, within the bounds of copyright.

 

Evert Jan, I tried a similar technique to tighten the bends of these rungs... but I couldn’t get enough purchase (no pliers with small enough jaws) without pinging the rungs off into the maw of the carpet monster!  They look decent enough to the naked eye, but I definitely need more practice.

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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Sounds familiar :) I usually make them much too long (about 1 inch) when bending and cut them to size them later with a chopper. I have a bunch of spools with brass wire that go on forever so more where that came from.

Edited by foeth
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This midships area to starboard is getting close to being complete now.  Today I have added the remaining brackets, given 6 new scuttles their brass surrounds, and both folded and glued the for’d, tapered Carley float platform in position:

48587657792_381d66d771_b.jpg

 

This view probably shows why I went to scrap brass for my added brackets, giving a bit of consistency.

 

Another view from aft:

48587517456_aff879c3b9_b.jpg

 

...and from for’d:

48587518141_2b241fc17f_b.jpg

 

The for’d platform is all Tetra, which meant I could fit the support brackets before adding it to the hull, so it took about a quarter of the time of the others further aft.

 

More later in the week

 

Crisp

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31 minutes ago, Courageous said:

Nice work Crisp, now you've got to do it all again on t'other side.

 

Stuart

The port side is totally different... but I only said the midships section was close to done; there’s still well over half the starboard side to be done.

 

Softly softly 

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Tonight I have continued working my way gradually aft along the starboard side.  Though there are numerous small inaccuracies in Merit’s moulds in lots of places, they have at least tried all over the hull... except on the deck I’d call 2 deck (the deck below the flight deck), using modern RN parlance... but which they’d have called the Upper Gallery deck.

 

[OK - quick digression, but worth doing to help people  follow the build.

 

Post-War (don’t know when the change came, but definitely by my era), deck names were standardised throughout the Fleet. This might seem trivial, but in fact accurate description of where a compartment is in a ship is vital: “Fire in the mess deck” doesn’t really help much if there are a dozen mess decks.

 

The highest continuous deck is called 1 Deck.  So in a carrier that’s dead easy: the Flight Deck = 1 Deck.  Anything above that has a 0 in front, going up - so the levels of the island would be 01 Deck, 02 Deck, and so on.  Anything below has no Zero, so 2 Deck, 3 Deck etc. are going down into the ship.  The hangar of Ark 5, my era, was on 3 deck, for example.  Once you are used to it, this is a simple, logical system.

 

The 1940s RN was different.  The Flight Deck was still called the same, thank goodness.  But going up into the island the decks were A, B, C, D etc.  And going down into the hull they had names: Upper Gallery, Lower Gallery, Hangar, Upper Deck (which confusingly was 4 decks down...), Lower Deck, Platform Deck & Hold.  

 

Throughout this build I will use modern terms, because they are completely instinctive for me and I find the WW2 terms highly confusing.

 

Digression over.]

 

For some reason best known to Merit’s designers, they have not moulded any detail on 2 deck at all, despite there being plenty there for real.  If you look at this pic from a couple of days ago, there’s nothing there except a few pencil marks of mine:

48539204221_60cf0c46bc_b.jpg

 

Tonight I have started fixing that; seen here are 8 newly drilled and brassed scuttles, the sponson for the starboard aft HACS (kit part) and a section of Tetra brass representing open galleries in the real ship - all on 2 Deck.

48602177767_a9bc075cc6_b.jpg

 

It being a Bank Holiday, I’m home from tomorrow until Tuesday, so I will leave you with two summary photos which show all of the week’s work... seen from aft:

48602042116_e7e133b6d8_b.jpg

 

... and seen from for’d:

48602176817_e0143de4e1_b.jpg

 

Until next week 

 

Crisp

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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18 minutes ago, Dave Swindell said:

That's likely a carryover from when aircraft carriers were built on top of the likes of battlecruisers, and the Upper Deck would have been the battlecruiser Upper Deck.

Indeed.  And in Furious, Eagle, Glorious & Courageous it might have made some sense.  In Ark, designed as a carrier from the outset, less so.  I also wondered whether the Upper deck might have been the top of the armour?  But I guess that amounts to the same thing in the end.

 

I wonder how they referred to the... uhhh... gallery (boat bay?) that was on neither the Upper nor Lower Gallery deck, or whichever level of hangar (Ark’s being double) it was that wasn’t on the Hangar deck?

 

The more modern system of numbers for up & down, letters for fore & aft (rather than frame numbers, which might be obvious on a drawing but are not in real life) makes far more sense!

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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3 hours ago, Courageous said:

Glad of the digression Crisp, cleared a lot of debris from my head being a submariner and all that.

Yes, a nice digression indeed. So Stuart, is clearing debris from a submariners head like clearing your baffles....🤔

 

Excellent work on that starboard side Crisp. She's going to be a real corker I reckon!

 

Terry

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9 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

The more modern system of numbers for up & down, letters for fore & aft (rather than frame numbers, which might be obvious on a drawing but are not in real life) makes far more sense!

We used numbers for decks below the main (upper) deck and letters for the decks above. The numbers were never a problem, but some ships started with A as the 1st deck above the main deck and some started with A as the deck immediately below the bridge deck. Then there were the ships that had had the top couple of decks cut off and an extra 1, 2 or 3 decks inserted, confusing or what? Holds and bays were numbered from the front, frames from the ruddeer stock (aft).

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RN used letters for the watertight compartments, starting at the bow.  I’ll spare you the über-geeky further details [and I left 22 years ago next week, so I’ve probably forgotten half of it anyway!], but there was a system for sub-divisions within each letter, and so on.  It’s possible to identify the position of, say, a ventilation hatch within a few feet.  

 

Dull.  But important in an emergency!

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Great pictures. We went to Toronto last year to see one of my sons. I had hoped to go and see Haida, but in the end couldn't get down to Hamilton where she is berthed, in the time we had. Next visit hopefully.

 

Terry

 

PS. Just had a thought. That photo above showing a watertight door as 2N must speak to the convention discussed above. That particular door leads out onto the A/S mortar deck I think, which I assume is called no 2 deck, the one which drops below the fo'c'sle deck on a destroyer which in turn is presumably deck number 1? So I'm assuming 2N is probably the last door on number 2 deck going aft.  A layman's guess?

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Hi Terry, spot on with your layman's guess.  The fo'c'sle is 1 deck so the deck below it, which after the foc's'le break become defacto the upperdeck, is 2 deck.

 

IIRC, though like Crisp it is a good few years since I was last at sea, modern RN convention would normally dictate that a door is marked as showing the 2 compartments that it separates so 2M/N is the door on 2 deck that allows access from Mike section into November section.  I'm not sure then from the HAIDA photos if that is indicating the compartment that it is coming from is 2N or if the Squid mortar deck is 2N. 

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Gidday All

25 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

I'm not sure then from the HAIDA photos if that is indicating the compartment that it is coming from is 2N or if the Squid mortar deck is 2N. 

Further to Chewy's comment above, IIRC (20+ years ago), the 2N on the door hatch means it is on "2" deck and the "N" means "the compartment TO WHICH IT LEADS TO" (when closed). So the compartment inside is 2M (which should be visible on the outside of the door hatch if it were closed) and outside where the photo was taken would be 2N. 

     Again I stress, my memory here is 20+ years old, but I think that is what I was taught. HTH. Regards, Jeff.

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No apology necessary - after all, it was me who started all this DC marking stuff.

 

Very little to report over this weekend; I’ve been glued to the quite astonishing cricket, and my man cave is mostly as hot as Hades... not to mention the kit being in London.

 

But not entirely: here is a bunch of Swordfish after being painted in Sky Grey, the first part of their S1E scheme (see earlier in thread for discussion of which aircraft were wearing which scheme in May 41).

48624411236_44586de75e_b.jpg

 

Once dry, I foresee a lot of delicate small scale masking in my future!

 

More soon

 

Crisp

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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Small update this evening, continuing on the starboard side.  

 

I have fitted the base for the first of the folding aerials (?HF), adjacent to the Carley Float area where I’ve been working for a few days.  On the rear face of it is something described on the builders’ plans as the “main aerial lead-in”, visible in this photo as what looks like a huge piece of Bakelite or some similar insulator.

48504948447_d345f6317b_b.jpg

 

Here’s my improvised version: an old ammunition locker from the spares box, suitably trimmed, with a resin winch drum as the insulator.  First from below:

48632421912_fcd39fae40_b.jpg

 

Then from aft:

48631924438_e9217d3bac_b.jpg

 

Close enough for Government work.

 

More tomorrow

 

Crisp

 

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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18 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

48504948447_d345f6317b_b.jpg

That's an excellent reference shot, and your so called improvised version looks pretty good to me.

 

That structure which appears to come out of the middle of the three rafts on the top row, looks like some sort of range finder at the top, assuming that "arm" is one half of a range finding optic?

I may have that completely wrong of course!

 

Terry

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

That's an excellent reference shot, and your so called improvised version looks pretty good to me.

 

That structure which appears to come out of the middle of the three rafts on the top row, looks like some sort of range finder at the top, assuming that "arm" is one half of a range finding optic?

I may have that completely wrong of course!

 

Terry

 

 

That’s one of the HACS “tubs” - so yes, the “arms” are a range finder.

 

I’m intrigued as to what the cylindrical thing immediately above & to the left of the upper Carley floats is.  If I didn’t know that she never had radar, it looks like one, with the waveguide feeding from the top of it and up the island.   It's right next to a large horizontal piston job (not visible here) which is connected to the crash barrier, so it might be some sort of accumulator... but for once the plans are silent!

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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On 7/14/2019 at 10:23 PM, Courageous said:

Who's lost, not me.

Back to the history lessen...very interesting, not that I know anything about carrier operations, then or now.

 

Stuart

Wouldnt worry about it ....some of the stuff I've heard about developing carrier ops makes me wonder if we did actually have 3 CVS ....coz not a lot has been remembered still...I'm sure it will be ok in the end🤔🤪🛫🚁🚁🚀

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Having finally unearthed my Dad’s 1937 Admiralty Manual of Seamanship, I have at least solved the “Admiral’s lights” question about the stern:

48636033182_9838459071_b.jpg

 

I haven’t yet found any references to the Fog Light, however.

 

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Over the past couple of weeks I’ve done quite a lot of experimentation with how to build the 2 (arguably even 3) types of rectangular scuttle/opening - lead, very thin brass, aluminium tape... all showed promise in theory, but in the end they’ve been trumped by good old styrene sheet.

 

One of the main reasons for that is the need to be consistent - aluminium (plumbers’) tape looked great in a single item, but I found it impossible to get a consistent looking series, and they need to look consistent to be convincing.

 

Styrene, however, wins because it can be cut consistently using my indispensable scratch building tool... The Chopper... this:

48638017016_0ff9af361d_b.jpg

 

And below is the result; quite a lot of additions this evening. The 10 white styrene panels (eventually to have a central round scuttle in the middle, once everything is nicely cured), plus 6 new ‘normal’ round scuttles above on 2 deck, plus 2 new scuttles either side of the gash chute (right of photo under the 4.5” sponson), plus 7 new grilles of assorted sizes along 3 & 4 decks.

48638257257_ee2148efc3_b.jpg

 

Slowly but surely it’s getting busier and more cluttered... which is what real ships look like.  And here once more is the same part of the real ship:

Ark Royal starboard side close-up, 1940

 

More soon

 

Crisp

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