Sink the Bismarck! HMS Ark Royal, 26 May 1941

[bbudde]

1 hour ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

 

I don't know what is, but I love that shot Reminds me somewhat of opening the Revell kit as  the Airfix one of course too.  Both at different times and  starring at the beautifull boxes from all sides first of course. Those were the days. Memoory lane.........

Edited August 1, 2019 by bbudde

[Courageous]

The devil is in the detail and one way or another you're sorting it to your standards. Good work.

 

Stuart

[Terry1954]

I'm assuming Merit is linked in some way to Trumpeter, given the similarity of a few of the issues between this and the 1/700 Trumpy version I have?

 

I still find it hard to accept some of these really basic errors where information is readily available, and we pay good money for these sorts of kits. Frustrating more than anything more serious I guess, and most of us are able to sort the issues. I notice Trumpeter have announced the C Class Cruisers, and also do a number of other great subjects in 1/350, but it almost feels inevitable we will have to pay good money to correct basic and obvious errors.

 

As Stuart says though, you are sorting it.

 

Terry

 

 

[stevehnz]

On 7/31/2019 at 8:34 PM, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

But nowadays it would sound distinctly odd to refer to, say, an F-35B as “one of Queen Elizabeth’s machines”.

They'd be more like one of Her Majesty's devices I reckon.   I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with this Crisp, I've long had a soft spot for the Ark, I lusted after but never quite managed to get my hands on an Airfix one in my yoof.  She has always appeared to me to be a bridge between an older & more romantic age, so many portholes, & the more brutally efficient carriers that came after her. I'm watching in anticipation.

Steve.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

5 hours ago, stevehnz said:

She has always appeared to me to be a bridge between an older & more romantic age, so many portholes, & the more brutally efficient carriers that came after her.

I think there’s a lot of truth in that.  Having finished “The Dawn of Carrier Strike”, its account if the Norway campaign has led me off down another rabbit hole, so I am currently reading “Carrier Glorious”, by John Winton [a £3 second-hand bargain].  I am just reaching the dark story of her final Captain and the tragic events leading to her sinking, but the stuff before that is equally fascinating.  She and her sisters were almost literally writing the manual for carrier operations; some of the inter-War exercises featured wacky ideas that led no-where, but others clearly show the way to Taranto and beyond.  

 

In particular, until the last disastrous appointment, she seems to have had a series of thoughtful Captains who were willing to experiment.  Many of the lessons they learned were incorporated directly into Ark as she was designed and built, and indeed into the Illustrious class that followed.  

 

Catapults [“accelerators”, as they would have called them] and arrestor wires seem completely obvious to us, but Courageous, Furious and Glorious had neither at the outset (unless you count Furious’ fore & aft wires, which were to help keep an aircraft on deck after it landed, rather than help it get there in the first place).  But without arrestor wires and a barrier, the time between landings was dictated by how long it took to land, stop, be man-handled onto a lift, descend to the hangar and raise the lift again - and even a slick worked-up deck team could get no faster than 2½ minutes.  So if you had 15 aircraft to recover, that meant the ship had to sail into wind, maybe at high speed, for over 40 minutes... after which she could be 20 miles or more away from the fleet.

 

I don’t think I’d fully appreciated that in the beginning arrestor wires were mostly about speed of deck ops.

 

It’s also true to say that Ark, like many ships of her era, was a child of the Washington Treaty.  The high amount of welding, the double hangar and the lack of armoured deck were all results of trying to squeeze as much as possible into a constrained pot.  On the whole, the designers did a great job; she was a massive step forward from Hermes and Eagle.  Who knows what she might have achieved if she’d survived a few more weeks - she was due a refit in the USA, which would have given her radar and numerous other upgrades. 

Edited August 3, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[stevehnz]

12 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

“The Dawn of Carrier Strike”

 

12 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

“Carrier Glorious”,

You're making me realise that my knowledge of carriers, so long neglected could do with some input, I've not heard of these two & I've little doubt there is a whole slew more in the same boat out there, best I get hunting.

Steve. 

Edited August 3, 2019 by stevehnz

[Terry1954]

2 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

I don’t think I’d fully appreciated that in the beginning arrestor wires were mostly about speed of deck ops.

 

From what you have described, that sort of just sunk in here too, and that's not meant to be a pun!

 

Clearly some more reading with those two books on my list of to do's

 

Terry

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

1 hour ago, stevehnz said:

 

You're making me realise that my knowledge of carriers, so long neglected could do with some input, I've not heard of these too & I've little doubt there is a whole slew more in the same boat out there, best I get hunting.

Steve. 

To be fair to you, the Hobbs “Carrier Strike” book was only published this year! Highly recommended, though

[perdu]

I suppose I always knew  that Winton had intimate carrier knowledge from reading HMS Leviathan

 

I need to get more carrier aware so I can keep up with the 'knowledge' shown in here

 

The metalwork is looking pretty damned impressive already Crisp 👍

[Chewbacca]

On ‎01‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 20:55, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Is this essential?  No, of course not; you’ll get a decent model OOB, and a good one OOB with Tetra [Very Fire also do a detail-up set specifically for this kit, but I haven’t seen it].

 

But if you want accuracy, you have to do a lot of Merit’s work for them.  Still, even that is fun, even if it shouldn’t be required for a kit that is far from cheap.

 

I really don't mind doing this sort of remedial work on an aged 1/600 Airfix blob of plastic that bears only a vague representation to the ship she is supposed to portray.  Getting something that looks right and is an accurate portrayal is all part of the fun.  But as you say, you shouldn't have to be doing it on a modern, new mould costing >£100 before you add in the PE.

 

You're doing a great job of it though!

[Chewbacca]

On ‎03‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 10:59, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Catapults [“accelerators”, as they would have called them] and arrestor wires seem completely obvious to us, but Courageous, Furious and Glorious had neither at the outset (unless you count Furious’ fore & aft wires, which were to help keep an aircraft on deck after it landed, rather than help it get there in the first place).  But without arrestor wires and a barrier, the time between landings was dictated by how long it took to land, stop, be man-handled onto a lift, descend to the hangar and raise the lift again - and even a slick worked-up deck team could get no faster than 2½ minutes.  So if you had 15 aircraft to recover, that meant the ship had to sail into wind, maybe at high speed, for over 40 minutes... after which she could be 20 miles or more away from the fleet.

 

I haven't read Carrier Strike yet (was only given it 2 weeks ago as a belated Father's Day present) but that really surprises me since Eugene Ely experimented with embryonic arrester wires (ropes attached to sandbags) in his first landing in 1911!  But then with the lack of interest in the higher echelons of the Navy into aviation following 1 Apr 1918 and the lack of influence that the naval aviators did have in the inter-war years, perhaps it shouldn't surprise me.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Holiday over, I am back in London, so for the first time in a fortnight the kit is in the same place as my tools and reference books - so some of yer actual modelling progress this evening. 

 

However, as the last few posts have already showed, visible progress will probably be measured in small steps for a while as I do some of Mr Merit’s job for him.  3 examples this evening.

 

Exhibit A.  Anchors.  I have already alluded to the fact that the anchors in the kit are too small.  To be frank, I was simply repeating what I have read in every single review of this kit; I hadn’t got round to actually checking the plastic.  Oh. Em. Gee.

On the right, the pathetic, emaciated, shivering wee orphan of an anchor presented by Merit.  Seriously.  On the left, the beautiful resin North Star anchor (still without its shank at this stage) that I intend to use instead.

 

That Merit thing doesn’t look like it could hold a Bosun dinghy secure, let alone over 25,000 tons of aircraft carrier.  And, lest you think I am exaggerating, here’s the resin pick held in the port hawse pipe with Blu-tac:

[Incidentally, you might see that I have also opened up the hawse pipe on this side, using my trusty micro-chisels.  Next stage is to reinstate the large “lip” surround with rolled Mulliput (though I will do all 3 at the same time, so not yet)]

 

...and here the real ship again:

 

Exhibit B: mould ejector marks.  The underside of the for’d Lewis Gun sponsons before treatment - top as un-touched kit, bottom with support struts sanded away (they will be replaced with brass):

 

...and after treatment:

 

Exhibit C : scuttles.

Here is a photo of the midships section of the starboard side:

 

 

Note the 6 scuttles visible between the two galleries, above the armoured belt.  Clearly grouped in 3 pairs (with a couple of the grilles I mentioned a couple of days ago). [This photo is before she had her de-Gaussing coil fitted].

 

Now here is the kit (with the centre 4 already filled & sanded, because I forgot to photograph it beforehand). 6 scuttles, yes, but exactly evenly spaced so it just looks... wrong.  

 

So, finally, here is the same area after some work - incidentally showing some examples of the brass I am going to use to sort out all these scuttles (again from the ever-splendid North Star).

 

It feels a lot of work to get the basics right, but it’s worth it, I think - or will be once it’s done.  

 

Incidentally (and I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this by now), if you compare Merit’s rectangular johnsons at top right immediately above with the actual openings they’re supposed to depict (below the Carley floats 3 pictures up).... nope: no resemblance.  To compound the joy, there were actually 2 sorts of rectangular scuttle-type thingies in Ark; the ones which are visible 3 photos up, and the ones visible as opened doors/deadlights in the bow shot at the top. And neither of them has that odd circular thing which appears in the centre of Merit’s version.  I am still pondering what to do about these, with the current favourite being to sand off Merit’s and replace them with a simple rectangle, either brass or styrene (or even possibly some “waffer-thin” Verlinden self-adhesive lead sheet that I’ve been hoarding for about a decade).

 

Ah well.  On, on!

 

More tomorrow

 

Crisp

 

 

 

 

Edited August 5, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[iang]

On 05/08/2019 at 21:47, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Exhibit A.  Anchors.  I have already alluded to the fact that the anchors in the kit are too small.  To be frank, I was simply repeating what I have read in every single review of this kit; I hadn’t got round to actually checking the plastic.  Oh. Em. Gee.

On the right, the pathetic, emaciated, shivering wee orphan of an anchor presented by Merit.  Seriously.  On the left, the beautiful resin North Star anchor (still without its shank at this stage) that I intend to use instead.

 

 

This photo might help:

 

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

14 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

...there were actually 2 sorts of rectangular scuttle-type thingies in Ark; the ones which are visible 3 photos up, and the ones visible as opened doors/deadlights in the bow shot at the top. And neither of them has that odd circular thing which appears in the centre of Merit’s version.

To be strictly fair to Merit, I have consulted the Motherlode (the builders’ drawings) since that post, there were actually 3 types of rectangular opening and 1 of them did actually look like Merit’s version.  So now I need to add a ‘mapping which is which’ exercise to the ever-lengthening To Do List!

[Chewbacca]

22 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Holiday over, I am back in London, so for the first time in a fortnight the kit is in the same place as my tools and reference books - so some of yer actual modelling progress this evening. 

 

However, as the last few posts have already showed, visible progress will probably be measured in small steps for a while as I do some of Mr Merit’s job for him.  3 examples this evening.

 

Exhibit A.  Anchors.  I have already alluded to the fact that the anchors in the kit are too small.  To be frank, I was simply repeating what I have read in every single review of this kit; I hadn’t got round to actually checking the plastic.  Oh. Em. Gee.

On the right, the pathetic, emaciated, shivering wee orphan of an anchor presented by Merit.  Seriously.  On the left, the beautiful resin North Star anchor (still without its shank at this stage) that I intend to use instead.

 

That Merit thing doesn’t look like it could hold a Bosun dinghy secure, let alone over 25,000 tons of aircraft carrier.  And, lest you think I am exaggerating, here’s the resin pick held in the port hawse pipe with Blu-tac:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow.  Are you sure that's not from the 1/700 kit!

[Terry1954]

1 hour ago, Chewbacca said:

Wow.  Are you sure that's not from the 1/700 kit!

 

I can see why you might think that!

Anchor sprue from 1/700 Ark Royal on the right. I've tried to scale both pictures using the Swan Morton handles, assuming the one in Crisps picture is a no 3? The 1/700 are just a tad smaller I reckon. Measuring on the screen just now the 1/700 come out about 3/4 of the 1/350 Merit jobbies. They are in fact 2.5mm across, from left bit to right bit (don't know the technical anchor term for that). So if this picture is scaled correctly (which it may well not be) the 1/700 anchors might actually be close to correct size for that scale. Not sure.

 

 

[73north]

On ‎8‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 12:33 PM, Terry1954 said:

I'm assuming Merit is linked in some way to Trumpeter, given the similarity of a few of the issues between this and the 1/700 Trumpy version I have?

 

I still find it hard to accept some of these really basic errors where information is readily available, and we pay good money for these sorts of kits. Frustrating more than anything more serious I guess, and most of us are able to sort the issues. I notice Trumpeter have announced the C Class Cruisers, and also do a number of other great subjects in 1/350, but it almost feels inevitable we will have to pay good money to correct basic and obvious errors.

 

 

 

 

I am certain Merit either is linked to Trumpeter or also uses their moulding company - eg the Display Stand is identical

 

as regards ' errors ' its because they use the profile Morskie plans which sometimes are very accurate - and sometimes depict the Ship in 1938 whereas by 1941 the ship had refits ( eg Trumpeter Repulse rear deck superstructures )

they also add gun tubs where none were , or are wrong ( eg HMS Repulse Rear Gun Turret - being a prime example - where there were as circular walkways around the 20mm AA gun ) and are seen from original photos

 

I think they don't do as much checking as they should , but they are getting better - and HobbyBoss is a prime example where they excel ( they too are linked to Trumpeter )

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

It’s deffo more than just a shared moulding company; the 2 companies’ 1/350 Swordfish offerings are 100% identical apart from colour of styrene [which is fine, because they’re pretty nice].  See photo comparison earlier in this thread.

 

It’s a difficult one, this “error” malarkey.  It might sound as though I am slagging Merit off throughout this build, but that isn’t my intention; let’s face it, I haven’t noticed anyone else even planning to produce an injection moulded Ark Royal at present, and those of us who aren’t interested in building yet more US, Japanese or German battleships should be hugely grateful for the fact that they’ve gone ahead and done it.  As far as I am aware, it is the ONLY 1/350 RN carrier kit of any era, full stop, apart from the Airfix Illustrious (which itself has significant issues - notably with serious warping - even if you’re not stupid enough to convert it to one of her sisters in a much earlier configuration).  Having built [OK, started!] both kits, the Merit Ark is streets ahead of the Airfix Lusty.  I haven’t actually glued very much yet, but dry fitting strongly suggests that it fits really well; that alone puts the Airfix Lusty in the shade.

 

So praise be to Merit; I wonder how many they’ve sold (I have yet to see one built at a show, almost 3 years on from release).  I sincerely hope they more than covered their costs - ideally to the extent that their 1/350 Formidable, Furious, Hermes & Eagle kits are being designed as we speak.  [Alas, my breath is not held]

 

As I said at the outset, you could build this kit 100% OOB and, provided you omitted the PE Type 285 radar Yagi aerials Merit provide for her HACS tubs [Ark never had radar - she was due to have it fitted in the US refit due not long after she was sunk], you’d end up with a nice model that’s unmistakably Ark Royal.  Some areas would be simplified, but Merit / Trumpy are hardly alone in that, and anyway I assume every additional piece of mould complexity adds hugely to the cost.  Oh, Merit’s suggested colour scheme is spurious, too - but nothing that some research can’t fix.

 

They bill her as “Ark 1939” on the box, but include elements such as the de-gaussing coil [fitted in mid-1940].  None the less, with a bit of effort you could build her as pre-war, Bismarck chase or as sunk.  They even provide you with Swordfish, Skuas and Fulmars, so you’re not constrained by aircraft, either.

 

So please don’t think I hate this kit or want to put you off buying it.  [OK, the Pom-Pom directors are appalling and - as we’ve seen - the anchors are ridiculously small.  But those are fixable].

 

Of course, when you factor in after-market, then almost all of the omissions, over-simplifications, design compromises or misunderstanding of ambiguous sources [delete according to your view] can be resolved anyway.  I am using the Tetra set [utterly fabulous, but definitely not cheap - and it too contains minor inaccuracies], but there are also Very Fire and WEM sets aimed specifically at this kit, so it’s up to you [& your bank balance] how far you want to go.

 

Since I’m only ever going to build one of these, I am the sort of modeller who enjoys “fixing” kits to make them accurate.  [I added several thousand resin rivets to a 1/48 Sea King, for Heaven’s sake (actually, strictly I did it twice, having cocked up the first try), so it shouldn’t really come as a shock that I don’t really ‘do’ OOB].  I genuinely enjoy researching the history, reading the stories of the brave young men who flew from and sailed in her, and poring over old photographs to try to work out what was really going on.  [Plus I flew from Ark 5 on 820 NAS 46 years after the same squadron/ship combo nailed Bismarck, so I have a personal affinity for them both].

 

And since I know that there are others out there like me, I’m trying to share what I find - mostly so that anyone else who wants to build a model of Ark that is as accurate as possible can read this thread and (I hope) see what they need to think about.

 

I think @73north is spot-on about the Morskie plans.  I have both Morskie and Kagero plans (as well as the partial builder’s plans in John Roberts), and the Kagero researchers seem to see the same things as me in the photos. [e.g. the exact route of the DG coil, which Merit (and even Tetra) have almost right, but not quite].  

 

As often happens, at this stage I seem to be removing more & more of Merit’s surface detail, to make it easier to replace / amend it consistently when I start adding things back.  Whether you regard that as borderline insanity [just build the blooming thing, man!] or commendable attention to detail will depend completely on the sort of modelling you prefer...

[73north]

I think @73north is spot-on about the Morskie plans.  I have both Morskie and Kagero plans (as well as the partial builder’s plans in John Roberts),

and the Kagero researchers seem to see the same things as me in the photos. [e.g. the exact route of the DG coil, which Merit (and even Tetra) have almost right, but not quite].  

 

 

Totally agree - they are using wholesale the Profile Morskie Plans - the release of the HMS Exeter - confirmed this beyond doubt

Edited August 7, 2019 by 73north

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

It seems that Merit are not the only ones prone to the odd mistake.  Searching through the IWM photo archive [there are some lovely atmospheric photos of deck ops and the like), I came across this one:

 

I assume this was during her early years, when the island was fitted on the wrong side...

 

Oops!

 

[perdu]

I bet that took a bit of sorting, cross decking the island isn't done very often is it

 

Would the rest of the battle group muck in or was it a ship only problem?

 

There is so much I don't know about carriers...

[Chewbacca]

On ‎07‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 01:08, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

So praise be to Merit; I wonder how many they’ve sold (I have yet to see one built at a show, almost 3 years on from release).  I sincerely hope they more than covered their costs - ideally to the extent that their 1/350 Formidable, Furious, Hermes & Eagle kits are being designed as we speak.  [Alas, my breath is not held]

1/350 ARK IV is the one I would definitely go for.  I don't know if it was seeing her on TV in the 70s in Sailor, or even having the privilege of seeing her sail from Devonport for the final time under her own steam (I was doing a Sea cadet training course at RALEIGH at the time and they took us all down to watch it saying that we'd never see it again), or the fact that she was the only ship to operate the finest carrier aircraft of all time (F4K and S2B), but there's just something about her that looks so right.

[Terry1954]

1 hour ago, Chewbacca said:

1/350 ARK IV is the one I would definitely go for.  I don't know if it was seeing her on TV in the 70s in Sailor, or even having the privilege of seeing her sail from Devonport for the final time under her own steam (I was doing a Sea cadet training course at RALEIGH at the time and they took us all down to watch it saying that we'd never see it again), or the fact that she was the only ship to operate the finest carrier aircraft of all time (F4K and S2B), but there's just something about her that looks so right.

I have to agree with every bit of that statement, although a tad envious that you saw her! A 1/350 kit would be a dream come true. Pricy I'm sure but worth it. She was just the most visually appealing carrier ever, IMHO.

 

We can dream!

 

Terry

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

For the avoidance of doubt, my list of RN carriers was purely WW2 ones - there are as many again I’d love to see in 1/350 from post-1945.  But it’s so not going to happen, however much we say we’d like it.  The market clearly shows that far more people will buy 2 non-existent (one barely started) German carriers than the Brit ones.  I hate it, but Nazis are, it seems, a sure-fire seller.

 

So my breath isn’t held for an Ark 4 in 1/350.

 

For the specialists like Atlantic it’s too hard - Mad Pete’s 1/700 kit is excellent, but (like many, no doubt) I’ve asked him about the larger scale & the combination of technical challenge (it would be a vast piece of resin) and cost rules it out.

 

So that leaves an injection moulded one... and the model companies have had 40 years since she paid off without so much as a hint.  Face it, guys, it’s not going to happen.

 

But then 5 years ago we’d almost certainly  have said the same about a 1/350 Ark 3... yet here we are.  

 

I’ve been doing a lot of work, but I have very little to show you in photos.  Bitter experience has taught me to do as much of this adaptation, correction, amendment, whatever you want to call it of the basic parts as early as possible - and as already discussed, I am doing a lot of filling incorrect scuttles, drilling correct ones, preparing for PE (by removing the moulded features the brass will replace), and so on. 

 

For instance, here is the for’d end of the flight deck, showing the two accelerator tracks.  Each had a slightly raised platform to assist loading into the cradle (these aircraft were catapulted tail-up), and Tetra’s brass version is better detailed than the Merit original.  So the starboard platform has been sanded away, and the port will follow it in due course. 

 

Similarly, the two pom-poms in front of the island had splinter shields round them - the outlines still just about visible here:

 

You get the gist - I’ll spare you the photo of where the arrestor wires used to be...

 

Slightly more challenging has been doctoring the shape of some moulded detail without removing it; this gash chute had to be shortened & that cut-out in line with the scuttles added (hooray for microchisels).  Still needs more clean-up work, but getting there.

 

Finally, here is the same area of the starboard bow, zoomed out further.  Thus far there’s about 4 hours’ work visible in this picture, with a lot still to be done.  Probably too complicated to explain which are which for now, but there are 9 newly-drilled scuttles here, the moulded DG coil almost completely removed, 7 locating holes filled and sanded flat where styrene parts will be replaced by brass... and so on.

 

So if the pace of progress appears slow, I’m afraid that’s inevitable for now, & it will continue for a fair while yet.  But it will be worth it in the end, because trying to do this after things start seeing glue would be infinitely harder.  At this stage the hull parts (over 2 feet long) are still on their runner.

 

More next week - but I’m happy with how it’s going.

 

Crisp

Edited August 9, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Courageous]

It's all in the detail Crisp and detail takes time. 

 

Stuart