WW2 carrier flight deck construction

[Baron Vaderham]

Hey guys,

I’d like to get my hands on a WW2 carrier flight deck, or contract one from scratch. 
I’m thinking of starting  with the Akagi. 
I’ve seen plenty of flat prints/vinyls that can be used as base, but I like my bases to have genuine texture. I’ve not find any real wood decks for scale 1/72, 1/48, or 1/32 soo far.  So if someone knows of something, I’d love to hear. 
 

if I need to build from scratch, can someone tell me what the board sizes were on the Akagi deck?

[Johnny Tip]

I'll follow this one! (hoping to maybe get info about board sizes for the Hiryu deck - just got me an A6M kit) 

[Cyberduck]

Eduard did some plastic flight deck panels in the 1990s. Not sure if they did a Japanese one though

[kapteenipirk]

Hopefully these should get you pointed in the right direction.

 

An overall view of Akagi

 

 

 

 

 

An overall view of Hiryu

 

 

 

 

 

An amazing cutaway drawing of Akagi

 

 

 

A view of Akagi's deck

 

 

 

A view of Akagi (in the distance) and Kaga (in the middle) from the deck of Zuikaku

 

 

Clearly the Japanise liked to use some pretty thin stuff to build the wooden parts of the deck. On the deck view of Akagi you can see that the boards are about as wide as the shoes of the guys walking on it.

Length probably differs quite a bit depending on location and they seem to be pretty randomly staggered if you look at the Akagi's deck closely, there seem to be splits all over the place.

And from what we can see from these two deck views and as i kinda figured, id say the deck boards are probably pretty similar in all Japanise WWII carriers.

[FG2Si]

Nautilus Models makes some flight deck sections. 

 

http://nautilusmodels.com/48-603.htm

 

 

[Scooby]

On 5/31/2022 at 3:23 PM, Cyberduck said:

Eduard did some plastic flight deck panels in the 1990s. Not sure if they did a Japanese one though

They did, I have a few painted up.  I will post a few images.

[Johnny Tip]

18 hours ago, Scooby said:

They did, I have a few painted up.  I will post a few images.

Oooh, please do! ✊😀✊

[bootneck]

 

Hello @Baron Vaderham

Sweet Aviation produced an IJN carrier deck section, with lift, in 1:144 scale.  I think I still have one tucked away somewhere.  If I find it then I'll send it up to you, so that you can measure and re-scale it to your requirements.  Send me a pm with your details.

 

cheers,
Mike

[Alex.B]

Long ago I did a base for a 1/72 Hellcat.

I started with a sheet of styrene (probably 1,5 mm) and I glued on top some real wood strips.

Every 9 wood strips I glued a styrene one for the tie-down holes:

 

 

Everything was then cut to fit into a frame.

I painted the wood strips with various shades of blue and the tie-down holes strip were painted aluminium.

A custom printed decal was used to represent the holes.

Some very light oil weathering and the base was done:

 

[Peter2]

Alex, was the blue colour an attempt by the Japanese navy to camouflage the deck against the sea surface? 

[malpaso]

Alex's deck above is a US Navy type.  On those the boards go across the deck, whereas IJN decks are boarded lengthwise (as conventional on ships) according to the photos above.

[Alex.B]

On 07/01/2023 at 01:21, Peter2 said:

Alex, was the blue colour an attempt by the Japanese navy to camouflage the deck against the sea surface? 

 

My bad I didn't specify properly, as malpaso correctly stated above this is a USN deck.

They were stained in a blue tone in 1942 for the exact reason you said.

 

The topic starter was indeed talking about a Japanese carrier, I posted mine even if it's a USN just to show how I built it.

[Giorgio N]

Eduard also offered a few sets for Japanese carriers, two each for Akagi and Zuikaku. These were made in prepainted etched brass and were reviewed on this same forum when first hit the market:

 

 

 

All these sets are OOP but can still be found in shops.

 

If you want something made of wood, I believe that the bases from a company (or may well be an individual) named Laser Model Graver are made in this material and they offer Japanese WW2 carrier deck sections in all main scales (and US carrier deck sections too).

They are based in Ukraine, so I don't know if the war has affected them, in any case their Facebook page was updated only a few days ago (although none of the carrier deck sections can be seen in their Facebook shop).

 

A more "local" alternative could be the resin deck sections made by Redog in the UK. They too have deck sections for both Japan and US carriers. I've not seen their products in the flesh but in pictures they look good, since they are also pretty cheap I'm tempted to buy one. They only do their bases in 1/72 scale though, that is fine for me but some may have preffered something larger.

 

Regarding the matter of texture, clearly having some is nice, I wonder however if using real wood or properly moulded resin would really make a difference as the same texture of real wood can be easily reproduced in resin. Of course if scratchbuilding it makes sense to start from real wood and Alex's model shown above is a very nice example of what can be achieved with some work