Sink the Bismarck! HMS Ark Royal, 26 May 1941

[TheBaron]

Is there a collective noun for scuttles?

(Asking for an incredibly precise naval friend)

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

A butt? 

[CedB]

Admirable Crisp - getting those tiny things with the 'cover' in the right place would drive me mad…  

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Gator Thin is your friend; plenty of time to adjust, easy to remove excess, secure once dry.  

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Working further for’d, I’ve reached the main sponson by the Seaplane Crane, so today was filing brass supports into shape as well as scuttles.  

 

[mdesaxe]

On 8/31/2020 at 3:09 AM, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Gator Thin is your friend; plenty of time to adjust, easy to remove excess, secure once dry.  

You might want to stock up on Gator products. Kenny Loup, who is its manufacturer, had his house and shop all but destroyed by the recent Hurricane Laura.

 

Maurice

[bbudde]

2 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Working further for’d, I’ve reached the main sponson by the Seaplane Crane, so today was filing brass supports into shape as well as scuttles.  

 

That looks very fiddly even in 1:350. As  1:600 is my favourite scale, it would be impossible for me to get a treat on the old Airfix one like this in a single way. Grand work on that at all.

Cheers

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

10 hours ago, mdesaxe said:

You might want to stock up on Gator products. Kenny Loup, who is its manufacturer, had his house and shop all but destroyed by the recent Hurricane Laura.

 

Maurice

Too late, it seems; all the places I looked at in UK seem to be out of stock.  I have plenty for now, & it goes a long way... but not nice news for Kenny.  What with him and the poor Fishers losing everything in the fires, the elements seem to have it in for US modelling folk

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Today’s work has been finishing the top 3 decks in the same area as yesterday - between the Seaplane crane & the no.3 port 4.5”.  As well as the scuttles & support brackets for the sponson, I have added some 0.2mm rod to represent the electrical conduits running to the aircraft signalling lights.  Here are the originals (IWM photo of this area of the ship as she was sinking in November 41):

 

...and here my attempts, along with another 20 or so scuttles added today:

 

You can also see that I’ve started adding some of the scuttles lower down that were  either plated over after the war started, or fitted with deadlights  (not completely clear which, but for these purposes it doesn’t matter; they just have to look “shut”). 
 

Here we are zoomed out to give some perspective - making decent progress.  Still one more set of a/c signalling light rods to add, plus the lowest two decks to finish (c. another 55 scuttles)... that will take me to around half way.

 

Believe it or not, this is going much more smoothly than the starboard side did - at least it feels that way.

 

More soon

 

Crisp

[perdu]

Crisp the detail is beginning to 'pop' as you go along.

 

Can I interject with a suggestion here please?

 

The Aircraft signalling lights (only a dedicated pilot sailor would even consider that!) cables look a tad prominent down the sides like that.

 

Do you have access to Slater's plastic rod which is a weird but kinda lovely red-going-on-brown colour?

 

It has bends in it which can be eased out by pulling it through the thumb/forefinger interface known to modellers and wire workers all over the world

 

The best thing about it is that many model shops carry it in the 0.010" size which would certainly look less thick than the 0.2mm metal rodding which scales in at 0.00787402, nearly eight times thicker.

 

This photo of my last remaining packet tells me it is time to contact Matlock bath for some more although Parabellum in Brum had some last time I was in.

 

 

No use for rigging but certainly up for running round engine bays as randomised cables, tskk tskk.

 

Must look after it better.

[Terry1954]

The very neat scuttling continues. It really does look to be going well.

 

I do like those aircraft signaling lights and wires, but my curious mind can't quite understand why they are positioned there and how they would have functioned pointing beamward like that? Are there similar lights on the other side?

 

Also, I assume the multiple cables running under said lights must be the degaussing cable. I think you mentioned that way back in proceedings but can't recall how you plan to replicate, assuming you do.

 

Terry

[mdesaxe]

13 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

What with him and the poor Fishers losing everything in the fires, the elements seem to have it in for US modelling folk

You are quite correct, unfortunately. Both are people I got to know personally to some extent when I was working in the United States and it is devastating for them.

 

Maurice

 

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Bill, as so often you are right.  I toyed with replacing the 0.2mm rod with 0.1mm, partly because I’d run out of Slater’s - but our friend the internet auction site has some winging its way Sarum-wards.  My initial attempt has been removed (yet another benefit of Gator is that it’s dead easy to fix mistakes if you do it before full curing).

 

Terry, the degaussing cables are in both the Tetra & WEM detail-up sets, so that’s the plan - the Merit styrene version was removed some time ago; it wasn’t terrible by any means, but had incorrect routing in a couple of places, and anyway it was pretty much impossible to preserve the DG while sanding off everything else, so it all came off.

 

I too am intrigued by the whole a/c signalling lights set-up.  I assume it was the night equivalent of the horizontal aircraft signal masts / flag system discussed earlier in the build, but exactly how it worked isn’t clear.  The positioning isn’t that odd if you think about it; they were to signal to aircraft in the visual circuit, so it was actually more important to be visible from the downwind leg; by the time you’re on finals it’s way too late!

 

The system was obsolescent by the start of the war, but fitted in the first 3 Illustrious hulls (Lusty, Formidable, Victorious) at least - which is useful for my purposes because Victorious is very well documented (I have both Anatomy of the Ship & Builders’ Plans books on Vicky, so have been able to glean a lot on late-1930s RN carrier design).  The 3 light banks were different colours - blue, white & red - and yes, they were fitted on both sides.  There were also smaller groups of lights further aft at the same level. I am guessing - though it is a total guess - that the wiring suggests that you could light some or all of each coloured bank in patterns - why else have 7 separate wiring circuits for each group of lights?

 

The flag system was used to identify which flight of which squadron should land first & to call them in (bearing in mind they had no R/T at all, and trying to do air traffic stuff by Morse over W/T would have been hopeless); I know that because it gets a fleeting mention in one of the deck ops instructional films on YouTube.  I assume they could also do simple stuff like wave-offs - wave-off lights survive to this day as part of silent recovery / mirror landing sight / DAPS / whatever Big Betty has.

 

But more than that I haven’t been able to find!  If anyone else knows - @iang the most likely suspect - I’d love to hear 

[Dave Swindell]

13 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

I am guessing - though it is a total guess - that the wiring suggests that you could light some or all of each coloured bank in patterns - why else have 7 separate wiring circuits for each group of lights?

I count 8 separate circuits per bank. Each bank appears to be split into 4 groups of 12 lamps in a 3x4 arrangement, which would give 2 circuits for each of the 4 groups. Logic would suggest that the 2 circuits for each group would be from a different power source, so loss of one source would still enable signalling to be made from the other. It's standard merchant practice for navigation and signal lights to be duplicated with one being supplied from the main switchboard and the other from the emergency switchboard . This would give 6 lamps in each group for each bank with one power source, and 6 from the other.  You'd use lamps on one powersource, or the other powersource, but not both together. This would leave 4 groups per bank to illuminate in different combinations. I'd assume that the 6 lamps per circuit is to both provide redundancy in case of blown lamps (access to change them doesn't look particularly easy) and to provide a larger area of low intensity lighting which will be easy to identify at short range, but not light the ship up like a christmas tree at a greater range.

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Not just standard merchant practice; standard RN too.  You’re right; I’d miscounted.  Alas, still no idea how they actually used them - or even whether they actually did in wartime did. I’ve seen refs to carrier captains getting into trouble with Admirals for shining vertical searchlights onto cloud to allow desperate lost aircraft to home - presumably with homing beacon firmly switched off! - but never any ref to this signalling system, which (as you say) must have been relatively low intensity so as not to act as a U-boat magnet.  

My guess is that it was an inter-War idea whose time had well & truly gone by 1941. 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Revamped aircraft signalling lights (hat tip to @perdu), this time with Slater’s 10thou rod.  Sorry - glue still wet; it will be cleaned up in due course - it simply rubs away with a cocktail stick when it's dry, provided you're careful.

 

And a general view of the back end; all done apart from the fairly obvious white row above the armoured belt:

More soon

 

Crisp

[giemme]

KUDOS for fixing the lights system, Crisp   Are those all glued with Gator's Grip?

 

Ciao

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Yes, everything Gator’s Grip Thin.  I thought briefly about using TET for the Slater’s (those rods are about the only recent part which aren’t brass or resin!), but it’s so thin I didn’t want to melt it any further.

[TheBaron]

On 9/6/2020 at 9:56 PM, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

The flag system was used to identify which flight of which squadron should land first & to call them in (bearing in mind they had no R/T at all, an

During ongoing research into Furious I came across these curios for sale online - interesting detail on the range of codes and symbols used:

 

 

 From 1924 though iirc.

 

Ps. Don't know if you've a few quid handy and fancy one of these..

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

That’s fab!  I particularly like “Deck damaged - look before landing”.  Because of course the one thing you never do when landing on an undamaged flight deck is look at it.

 

That’s told me more about the flag system in 2 pages than all my fruitless looking before.  It also underlines my suspicion that it was a set-up for 1920s aircraft & tactics.  God knows how you signal that stuff using banks of coloured lights on the side of the ship, but no doubt they thought of something.

 

Happily visual communication became SO much more sophisticated by the 1940s...

 

 

[Terry1954]

I now see why 13 is considered an unlucky number!!!

 

Terry

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

11 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

I now see why 13 is considered an unlucky number!!!

 

Terry

I think 18 is worse, to be honest; given the existence of 16 & 19, basically 18 says “off you go; search me where to, but that’s what you get flying pay for...”

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Sorry, chaps; been a while - real life getting in the way (Covid cases at work, dying car, etc).  Plus, I confess, a slight Mojo Wobble.

 

But having finally sorted the new car (going to see it tomorrow morning), I did manage an hour at the bench today, which has pleased me no end.

 

Primed all 18 of the ship’s boats.  To quite the legend that is Nigel Tufnell, “the answer is none: none more black”...

 

More soon

 

Crisp

 

[beefy66]

Nice to see this back i was getting withdrawal jitters not seeing this progress

 

Stay Safe

beefy 

[Terry1954]

As Beefy says, its great to see this one back.

 

Sorry to hear of the Covid cases at work. It seems the more time goes on, the more we hear of cases with people not too far removed from us. Inevitable I guess. We had a dying car about 18 months ago. A 5 series BMW which my wife had had since new - 23 years then. It finally became too uneconomic to repair, due to the tyres, which were metric, and largely unavailable now, so we bought a new car! Hope you get yours sorted and you get some mojo back. I've had a bit of mojo lacking lately, but it's coming back again now....

 

The boats look primed and ready for action, go for it!

 

Terry