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Sink the Bismarck! HMS Ark Royal, 26 May 1941


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22 hours ago, RAF4EVER said:

When will see Vicky again?

Hopefully not too long, she has been in storage waiting for a house move which will probably happen within the next two months, I will get her out to check all is OK later today, but it will be a wee while until she is back on the slipway properly !!

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Nothing to show worthy of a photo over the weekend, but there has been work; I spent 2 or 3 hours comparing the hull with photos / plans to remind myself of where I’d got to and what needs to be done next.  The starboard side isn’t bad (though still stuff to do, like the forward boat boom to match the aft one), though the Slater’s rod ‘welds’ need a repair in a couple of places.  
 

Loads to do on the port side, though - and the port side is harder because detailed reference photos seem to be less common.  Plus the whole thing needs a major clean up; when you look at it in a close-up pic or via Optivisor, it’s a right mucky mess.  Nothing that can’t be fixed, but probably several hours of work.

 

More soon

 

Crisp

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2 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

I spent 2 or 3 hours comparing the hull with photos / plans to remind myself of where I’d got to and what needs to be done next.

 

It seems we all have similar challenges when returning to older "stalled" builds. I'm re-starting my Vosper WIP at the moment, and just sifting through many of the small scratch built add ons yet to go on the model is quite a task! Also its amazing how stuff that you don't touch for 2 or 3 years gets damaged! Hopefully that build will show some progress in the next few months, and who knows, I may actually finish it this year!

 

Good luck with your recommencement of work on Ark Royal. It'll be a stunner when finished but we must never rush good things 😉

 

Terry

 

 

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Hat tip yet again to @TheBaron, whose use of PureRef in his Vixen epic has finally inspired me to start sorting my Ark photos and copious notes into some sort of logical order; I wasted a lot of time over the weekend in activities along the line of “I know I’ve already looked at that somewhere and found an answer - now where was it?” [only with less printable language].

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So not wishing to distract you in anyway from the re-start of this superb build Crisp, and of course Bill @perdu, I still won't mention the S** K***, but I'm thinking this might be considered at some point as a very acceptable distraction .......... https://uk.airfix.com/products/fairey-gannet-14-a11007 ............ just announced today. I'm very tempted, even though its big boy scale!

 

OK, I'll stop now.........!

 

T.

 

 

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4 hours ago, Terry1954 said:

So not wishing to distract you in anyway from the re-start of this superb build Crisp, and of course Bill @perdu, I still won't mention the S** K***, but I'm thinking this might be considered at some point as a very acceptable distraction .......... https://uk.airfix.com/products/fairey-gannet-14-a11007 ............ just announced today. I'm very tempted, even though its big boy scale!

 

OK, I'll stop now.........!

 

T.

 

 

 And already pre-ordered.  
 

Anyone want a Classic Airframes 1/48 Gannet AS4?

 

P.S. In due course the method in my pause on the Sea King might become clearer… but not for a fair while yet.  Ark Royal is the current priority.

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11 hours ago, Maginot said:

Yeah! Back at the bench. But if I have trouble falling asleep tonight, I might try counting your scuttles 😎


How do you think I feel about the bloomin’ things?!?

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This probably won’t come as a total surprise to most of you, but this ‘ere build is complicated.  I have therefore finally conceded to myself that probably the safest (?only) way to make sure that my references are all consolidated into one place is to do my own drawings.

 

Just as with the Fearless drawings 2 or 3 years ago, these will NOT be for publication, but purely for my own use - because they are being assembled from a spectrum of published sources (notably Witold Koszela [Top Drawings], builders’ drawings & as many photographs as I can find - all of which have pluses and minuses), and where they diverge it’s sometimes an issue of date (e.g. builders’ drawings are the most detailed by a mile, but obviously they depict her as built, not as in 1941), and sometimes a judgement call of what to omit / include (a published set of plans could not possibly judge which elements one particular modeller will or will not decide to interpret).  
 

They do sometimes diverge quite markedly in unexpected areas - notably the shape of the bow, where I have assumed that if anyone would get it right it would be the builders, rather than someone working from relatively limited information 50 years later.

 

I’m not making any claims that mine will be definitive, & I’m certainly not going to mess about with anyone’s Copyright or wish to take away their hard-earned income from published work.  If you want to do something similar, then you’ll have to spend the money and set aside the time, I’m afraid.  Their purpose is solely to give me a single place to go (& one which I can amend as I spot other things, which I am still doing) - and above all to clarify my thoughts about exactly what I’m doing here.  So before anyone asks, no you can’t have a copy!

 

… so with those caveats, this is where I am up to after 2 evenings away from home listening to the football and drawing lines in Pixelmator (thank God for copy & paste!)

52622761433_54f1a451c5_b.jpg

 

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Just quickly skimmed through your work on the carrier and I can see that this build is labour of love. But I have to say, applying all the PE to the scuttles is making me feel rather dizzy. looking very ship shape. Keep up the good work. 👍

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On 1/10/2023 at 10:11 PM, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Anyone want a Classic Airframes 1/48 Gannet AS4?

 

Might be worth hanging on to it as I've heard it's not bad, but never seen one so can't be sure. I have a couple of other CA kits that are pretty good IMHO. Depends how many Gannet's you have room for I suppose!

 

I remember seeing your Fearless plans. They looked pretty good as I recall. I noticed Atlantic Models show a 1/350 Fearless as a future release. That'll be a large chunk of resin!

 

Good luck with undertaking similar plans for your Ark Royal, and completely understand why you would not want to share!

 

T.

 

 

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8 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

this is where I am up to after 2 evenings away from home listening to the football and drawing lines in Pixelmator (thank God for copy & paste!)

 

I totally admire your patience! (and skill) :clap:  :worthy:

 

Ciao

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That's a good start on the plans Crispin. One thing Richard pointed out to me which I think it worth repeating is that Koszela like many (most?) has marked on the boot topping much too narrow for any period of the ship's career. The bottom didn't move but as the ship gained weight and the draught increased the top of the boot topping crept upwards.

 

At present I think it looked something like this at the bow. Still very much a work in progress, and I should tell you now that I'm working my way from the stern forward with your photos Crispin with regards to the scuttle placement etc. I haven't drawn the degaussing cable either which is going to be another layer so I can make it visible or hide it.

 

ArkBowWIP.png

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Crispin, if a may, good to see you back on task.

 

Just to clarify and amplify a bit re what @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies has posted re the boot topping.

 

My first comment to him was a general one, that some full hull modelers are not depicting the width of boot toppings nearly wide enough. The origin of the problem may well be erroneous kit painting instructions and/or modern illustrations and/or looking at photos of ships afloat and not realising that the thin black line visible at the waterline is merely the uppermost part of a much wider band most of which is hidden below. You can also be seriously misled by photos of a ship fresh into drydock where water friction has worn away most of the boot topping below the waterline but left relatively undamaged an upper strip that was above the waterline.

 

My second comment to Jamie was that he needed to significantly increase the width of the boot topping in his first draft drawings. This he has now done based on some eyeballed judgement from photos and hence the above. But note that this depicts the level of the top edge (close to the lower scuttles) at the time of Ark Royal's sinking.

 

I had since started doing a bit more digging to try to get some exact draught mark number information both for Jamie's drawings of Ark Royal at various stages of her life and also in anticipation of the obvious question you would want an answer to: What was the width at the time of the Bismarck action?

 

The bottom edge of the boot topping was, as far as I can tell, always at the bottom edge of the XXI draught mark. 

 

However I had noticed that the width of the boot topping increased during Ark Royal's life, the level of the top edge moving upwards.  I'm not sure yet whether or not Jamie's depiction above, which is as at the time of sinking, is correct for the time you are interested in six months earlier. This is therefore a sort of holding posting suggesting that you do nothing until I come back hopefully with a suggested upper edge number. Given that the draught marks are marked on the As Fitteds you will hopefully be able be to transpose the readings onto your drawing.

 

 

Edited by dickrd
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Thanks all, and especially Jamie & Richard [by the way, Jamie, the draught marks decals arrived safely yesterday; they look fab!]

 

The boot topping thing is one of those errors that is blindingly obvious as soon as someone points it out; as previously depicted it is definitely not deep enough.

 

However, I am not sure about Jamie's drawing; the draught marks are too high up the hull (with I being nowhere near the keel).  This is a close-up of my drawing with a partial scan of the bow section of the As Built plans overlaid; the marks look in about the same place as yours, Jamie, but the lowest mark is XII, not I.

Bow detail - draught marks

 

Using Richard's information that the lower edge of the boot topping always seems to sit at the bottom edge of XXI, I have re-positioned mine - and then taken Jamie's approximate depth (just over 11 marks, top to bottom) and used the same to position my top edge.

 

The result looks like this, zoomed out a bit:

Bow - boot topping

 

 

My upper edge looks a bit lower than Jamie's when you look at the relative position vs the lowest row of scuttles, but not wildly so.  What do you reckon, chaps?

 

Looking further aft, this width/depth means that the boot topping now covers a large proportion of the armoured belt.

Screenshot 2023-01-13 at 09.36.18

 

 

Thanks for help

 

Crisp

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I suppose there isn't much need for draft marks if that draft corresponds to a displacement lower than the light ship weight...?

 

Gallery_10_03.jpg

HMS Not Ark Royal

 

Incidentally, the draft marks on the builders planers match this photograph perfectly, so it would be a good guess to not add Ark Royal's marks below XII.

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The whole point of draught marks is to provide a simple visible indication of how low the ship is sitting in the water, so I imagine they'd calculated that anything less than XII was physically impossible once the ship was afloat.  Even with zero fuel, oil, ammunition, ships' company etc., just the weight of the metal that makes up the hull would easily see the bottom 12' of the hull under water. 

 

Yet another great photo, Evert-Jan - is it Hood or a KGV?  

 

C

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EJ, I read the lowest draught mark on the ship in your photo (PoW) as XV

 

The lowest draught mark on HMS Ark Royal at launch was XII. I have no image later than that from which to judge if this was ever altered but I suggest that this would have been unlikely.  

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6 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

 is it Hood or a KGV? 

 

This one is HMS Prince of Wales, pic from: https://ontheslipway.com/the-launch-of-hms-prince-of-wales/. Not my copyright (Wirral archives / BAE systems) but I got permission to post them. A similar range of pics of Ark Royal was on Ebay a year or two ago but €€€.

 

1 minute ago, dickrd said:

EJ, I read the lowest draught mark on the ship in your photo (PoW) as XV

 

Ah yes, that is correct.

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Ah, I found the listing on Ebay

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/144722850236?hash=item21b22771bc:g:DFsAAOSwYdRhrkA2&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoGLp%2FX5Mjckxy3YBMsM3bFcxRBEluJofh2MTIUO5%2BrDX7qJuuULX3cvW3UW%2BdusboPqPeuxN9Uk%2FosyIk%2FneYh4LuwdIzGQreakikHzPVkb1nb6ejAw57B0iyGsWzI8SCk10UbzHmInPXlFk8AgNN1Z5SNjCTnZ%2B3CQBqNI%2FTZ9EX7Dn39aMatT3l4xa7eA2Kqlix%2FDLjcPzFzpufdYnl0s%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR7KshrS1YQ

 

It's not the pre-war Ark Royal but a 1950s launch. I used to think the prices of this particular seller (AMGARCHIVE) were excessive and I put him on my blocklist, but now I see they are in fact just right; I only find fault in his placement of the comma.

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