HMS Hermes (1919); Aoshima 1/700; RN's first propah carriarr

[Ngantek]

 

Finally decided on this one, despite having amassed a small hoard of reference material on escort carriers, which was the other option. I've always been quite taken by the pointed flight decks of the Hermes and Eagle, and the fully enclosed and flared bow is particularly striking to my eye at least. Unluckily for Aoshima, Flyhawk released an (apparently) much better kit at about the same time, but this one caught my eye at the LMS and I figure it's better to buy local. The plan is to be pretty lazy and build it OOB from the instructions, in the hope that it might free up some time for a second build in this GB. 

 

A little background for those who know as little about her as I did at 9am this morning (apologies for any errors for those who actually know what they're talking about, I'm very happy to be corrected). HMS Hermes was the world's first carrier to be built as such 'from the ground sea up', rather than as a conversion. Owing to the experimental nature of ship based air operations at the time, the RN didn't have a great idea what they were doing, and construction took until 1924 with many changes of configuration along the way. Some artefacts of the bygone era remained though, including the rather anachronistic 5.5" anti-ship guns built into her side in a style evoking the pre-dreadnaughts, along with a massive battleship-style gunnery control tower to direct them. The open stern and quarterdeck is also a result of intial designs being focussed on recovering seaplanes straight in through the aft hangar doors, with a flexible deck that could extend below the waterline.

 

Her small size and lack of petrol storage limited the size of her air wing, and she saw wartime service in the Med and Indian Ocean before her sinking in April 1942, when caught without her aircraft, and trying to flee Trincomalee in anticipation of the raid on Ceylon by the bulk of the Japanese fleet carriers. 

 

The kit is for her configuration at her sinking in 1942. The later wartime camouflage appeals to the modeller as both adding visual interest and being easier to 'hide behind'. A certain part of me would prefer her in a pre-war configuration on the China Station, but I don't have the aircraft for that, nor I suspect the skill at pulling off those acres of white paint. Still, having avoided work most of the morning by looking at various sites and the flyhawk instructions, it doesn't seem to be a massive change in configuration, since it seems that most of her planned wartime refits were never started.

 

EDIT: Right so a first foray into the box and what to do we have? First impressions are actually pretty good. I had expected (given the unflattering comparisons with the flyhawk kit that I'd seen made; along with some similarly unflattering comments about Aoshima ship kits of the past), some vague outlines with a few simple nondescript styrene dumplings to stand in the correct position for various guns, masts and whatnot. Really though it looks a fair bit better than that.

 

The satisfyingly deep box has a nice picture of a PE fret on the side, but my Kanji-fu wasn't up to realising that it's an advert for the upgrade kit. Not that it would've changed my purchase but heyho. You can just see a big metal plate under the box which is clamped to the waterline base for some stability. A nice touch.

 

The hull detail is a little textured but sharp enough. Print sharpness, gate design and so on seem pretty good to me at first glance.

 

Guns are always a bit of a weak point in 700 scale ships but these little 5.5" and 4" look pretty sharp for IM styrene. What I suspect are Oerlkons to the right are a little marginal, but I think I have some nice Starling resin ones, or indeed some leftover PE origami versions from IBG destroyer kits. A random solitary pair of swordfish included on these frames.

 

Some madcap slide moulding went into the crane, which is hard to believe was cost-effective, but it looks pretty nice for styrene.

 

 

Then oddly there are two copies of a frame from their Ark Royal kit. From what I can make out, they don't seem to be used for much more than a few lowly carley floats in this kit. The detail looks a little less sharp on these and the gate design is noticably less well defined. Still, lots of nice serviceable 4.5" turrets, directors, octo pompoms, quad .50cals, anchors and outriggers. Possibly my perspective on this kit is somewhat influenced by the unholy reaction of asian-scottish genes to the sight of free stuff.

Roundels look a little fried eggy. I think I might have some better AM ones lying around.

 

The final bag contains a couple of frames with 4 more swordfish; two folded and two unfurled.

 

I also have a copy of Flyhawk's WW2 Royal Naval Aircraft I (only partly obtained with this build in mind). The Flyhawk stringbags have some excruciating looking PE props and struts, where the Aoshima are rather simpler, and while the plastic also looks a little better, the comparison is not horrific from Aoshima's perspective.

Flyhawk to the left, Aoshima to the right. Given my history with these nutty flyhawk superdetailed addons, the Aoshima ones will probably look the better once I'm through with them. 13 pieces for a wee 1/700 aircraft is getting pretty silly.

 

So looks pretty good so far, I'm raring to go but with the weekend comes kids, kids' birthday parties, playdates and all the excurciating things that go with it.

 

Still in the post are some Eduard crew figures that I've never tried before, and some more reference material.

 

Andy

[TonyOD]

14 minutes ago, Ngantek said:

I'll update the image and post some sprue shots later, but thought I'd put this in as a placeholder in case @TonyOD wanted to add it to the build list ahead of the mad rush tomorrow. Stoked!

 

Another fantastic subject. I'll be doing a final pre-launch update of the build list this evening, and will add it then. ("The first propah carriarr"... are we talking like pirates now? 🏴‍☠️)

 

[Col.]

Cracking subject choice Andy

 

31 minutes ago, TonyOD said:

"The first propah carriarr"... are we talking like pirates now? 🏴‍☠️

Ha har Cap'n, so be it me hearties  

[PeterB]

Is been quite a few years since I bought any 1/700 ships, and back then you were fine if you wanted Japanese WWII, and there were a few US, German and British capital ships plus some Matchbox smaller ones, but that was it. I therefore did not know that this kit had been released, together with a Wartime Ark Royal, Victorious and Illustrious - all we need now is an Eagle and a few heavy/light cruisers and more destroyers though I see Trumpeter and IBG are slowly filling some of the gaps. I could never understand why back in amongst the 1970's WWII releases Fujimi decided to do the post war Ark and Eagle - faulty research perhaps as the British habit of re-using names can be a bit confusing at times - 5 Ark Royals and maybe as many as 20 Eagles to date I believe?

 

Pete

Edited January 6, 2023 by PeterB

[Ngantek]

55 minutes ago, PeterB said:

Is been quite a few years since I bought any 1/700 ships, and back then you were fine if you wanted Japanese WWII, and there were a few US, German and British capital ships plus some Matchbox smaller ones, but that was it. I therefore did not know that this kit had been released, together with a Wartime Ark Royal, Victorious and Illustrious - all we need now is an Eagle and a few heavy/light cruisers and more destroyers though I see Trumpeter and IBG are slowly filling some of the gaps.

Yeah I'm finding that the choice isn't terrible in 700 these days, at least as far as WWII is concerned. I'd love to see an Eagle for sure, and perhaps an Implacable (without having thought at all about quite how much scratching that would need from an Illustrious).

 

55 minutes ago, PeterB said:

I could never understand why back in amongst the 1970's WWII releases Fujimi decided to do the post war Ark and Eagle - faulty research perhaps as the British habit of re-using names can be a bit confusing at times - 5 Ark Royals and maybe as many as 22 Eagles to date I believe?

 

Pete

Yes sounds a bit like falling at the first hurdle! The hasty reusing of names recently lost doesn't help much either. 

 

I was giving thought to doing a destroyer if this one goes well, but perhaps the more sensible thing would be to do them in parallel and drop one if it's not looking good. It was going to be an nice quick IGB pre war class, but given the history that Hermes shares with the the old HMAS vampire, and the easy availability of a nice simple Tamiya version of that very ship, perhaps I'm talking myself into expanding the unexpandable stash... 

[PeterB]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Incidentally when looking this and Ark Royal up on Scalemates I noticed that one of the boxings of both showed them sinking! Can't remember anything else showing a sinking ship except perhaps Titanic so I wonder what if any logic was behind that as I would have thought it was perhaps inappropriate on a box top and might hinder sales. They have changed the box art since so maybe they agreed

 

Pete

[Ngantek]

I think it turns out to be quite common; both Flyhawk and Aoshima have boxings of the Hermes depicting the sinking (one might argue it is one of the more famous and recognisable pictures of the ship that they're based upon), and similarly with boxings of Ark Royal as you say, IIRC maybe there was a similar case with one of the boxings of USS wasp and no doubt numerous others. With the Aoshima one, scalemates lists this most recent boxing as 'new parts' but both I believe depict the Indian ocean raid/ battle of Ceylon. Perhaps there's an eye to marketing to both Japanese and western audiences, I don't know. 

 

I can certainly see how it could be viewed as distasteful, particularly given the scale of human loss generally involved with a ship sinking, but it's not radically different from the rather partisan paintings of spitfires shooting down 109s or conversely Ju88s missing their targets with bombs that I remember from Airfix kits of the past; and it's not honestly a practice that is uncommon in the hobby still. I'm not a fan personally, (nor was I in the latter cases) but I suspect 'action shots' do sell. Were the Eagle to be made for example, one of the first, most iconic images that springs to mind is her heeled right over before sinking; rightfully or wrongfully.  A bit of a can of worms that one I suspect...

 

In other news... hovering over the vampire kit. I think I need help

[Ngantek]

AAAAANNNND we're techically off although it will be a while before I get the chance to cut plastic. Still, I've included some sprue shots as promised.

[bigbadbadge]

Nice choice Andy, just bought my first 1/700 ship too .  Good luck with your build fella. 

Chris

[Ngantek]

6 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

Nice choice Andy, just bought my first 1/700 ship too .  Good luck with your build fella. 

Chris

Nice Chris, what is it? Going for that A class destroyer? Nice to hear you're going to have a go at ships, my experience is very limited (hence the reason to go all out on the GB) but I've so far found the rhythm of building rather more relaxed and enjoyable (or at least refreshingly different) compared to the ubiquitous sadness arising from things like poor wing root joins in aircraft modelling 😁.

[bigbadbadge]

1 minute ago, Ngantek said:

Nice Chris, what is it? Going for that A class destroyer? Nice to hear you're going to have a go at ships, my experience is very limited (hence the reason to go all out on the GB) but I've so far found the rhythm of building rather more relaxed and enjoyable (or at least refreshingly different) compared to the ubiquitous sadness arising from things like poor wing root joins in aircraft modelling 😁.

Hi Andy, 

Yes doing an H class and going to turn into an A class Destroyer   hot the IGB kit with PE too, looks soooo tiny. If it goes well I would like to do my Dad's last Ship too.🤞 Yes it certainly is a change.  I will pop along and check on your progress .

Chris

[Ngantek]

16 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

Hi Andy, 

Yes doing an H class and going to turn into an A class Destroyer   hot the IGB kit with PE too, looks soooo tiny. If it goes well I would like to do my Dad's last Ship too.🤞 Yes it certainly is a change.  I will pop along and check on your progress .

Chris

I look forward to it. I was going to do their Harvester kit alongside this one (I like all the nerdy ASW gubbins that she was fitted out with), but given the affinity to the Hermes, I think it'll be a Tamyia HMAS Vampire instead. I guess you went Hotspur then which is probably a good starting point. At first glance I suspect you'll need a bit of modification or replacement of the aft funnel, and maybe the addtition of some more torpedo tubes; but no doubt there are a plethora of minor changes between those classes.

[ArnoldAmbrose]

11 hours ago, Ngantek said:

I've always been quite taken by the pointed flight decks of the Hermes and Eagle,

Gidday Andy, I'm intending to do the Eagle someday, but in 1/600 using a Warspite hull. It won't be for this GB though. I'm certainly interested in how your model here terns out and it looks like a nice kit. Regards, Jeff.

[Ngantek]

7 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Andy, I'm intending to do the Eagle someday, but in 1/600 using a Warspite hull. It won't be for this GB though. I'm certainly interested in how your model here terns out and it looks like a nice kit. Regards, Jeff.

Wow that sounds like a serious job, particularly with all that exposed area under Eagle's flight deck. I'd very much love to see that when the times comes. I'm always amazed at the radical stuff you do to your builds Jeff. For me I get worried if I have to add new Oerlikon stand.

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday again, HMS Eagle was actually built off a battleship's hull. I think it was slightly longer than HMS Warspite but I plan to use two hulls to make two long half hulls. The two short leftovers will be just about right for an 'R' class battleship.

But, back to your model here  .     .     .    🙂

[Bertie McBoatface]

Looks interesting. One to follow I think. 

[TonyOD]

The ship guys speak a different language, don’t forget they? I’m finding this fascinating. 

[Adam Maas]

Interesting choice of subject.

As a note, Hermes was the first carrier laid down as such, but Hosho would actually be the first true carrier to commission, with a rather much shorter build time

[Ngantek]

5 hours ago, TonyOD said:

The ship guys speak a different language, don’t forget they? I’m finding this fascinating. 

Yeah I just randomly insert words like stanchion, binnacle and pom-poms into 'airplane chat', and it seems to work. I don't think they're on to me yet 😆

 

2 hours ago, Adam Maas said:

Interesting choice of subject.

As a note, Hermes was the first carrier laid down as such, but Hosho would actually be the first true carrier to commission, with a rather much shorter build time

Oh no wait they are! run! 

 

Seriously though, thanks! I got a mountain of work, but maybe I'll allow myself to stick a few bits of hull together later. Itching to get started. 

 

Andy

[John Laidlaw]

Nice choice of subject. I've pulled up a chair and have poured a beer...

[PeterB]

3 hours ago, Adam Maas said:

Interesting choice of subject.

As a note, Hermes was the first carrier laid down as such, but Hosho would actually be the first true carrier to commission, with a rather much shorter build time

Hi Adam,

 

You are correct in saying Hosho entered service earlier - December 1922 compared with February 1924, and although smaller that Hermes it had a hangar deck accessed by lifts and carried as many planes so I guess you can call it a "proper" carrier, but was it the first I wonder? Argus was larger and carried as many planes and was completed in 1918 and entered service at the end of that year, and Eagle was completed in 1920, but did not enter service until 1923 I believe. Of course they were both conversions, again with hangar decks and lifts, but then according to my copy of Conway's, when Hosho was laid down in December 1919 it was perhaps intended to be a naval oiler called Hiryu, and the design was changed to a carrier in 1920 (though they admit sources disagree so that may be inaccurate). It seems to depend on your point of view I suppose, but I would suggest Argus was the first proper carrier to commission.😄

 

Cheers 

 

Pete

Edited January 7, 2023 by PeterB

[Adam Maas]

21 minutes ago, PeterB said:

Hi Adam,

 

You are correct in saying Hosho entered service earlier - December 1922 compared with February 1924, and although smaller that Hermes it had a hangar deck accessed by lifts and carried as many planes so I guess you can call it a "proper" carrier, but was it the first I wonder? Argus was larger and carried as many planes and was completed in 1918 and entered service at the end of that year, and Eagle was completed in 1920, but did not enter service until 1923 I believe. Of course they were both conversions, again with hangar decks and lifts, but then according to my copy of Conway's, when Hosho was laid down in December 1919 it was perhaps intended to be a naval oiler called Hiryu, and the design was changed to a carrier in 1920 (though they admit sources disagree so that may be inaccurate). It seems to depend on your point of view I suppose, but I would suggest Argus was the first proper carrier to commission.😄

 

Cheers 

 

Pete

Hermes and Hosho were the first two carriers laid down explicitly as carriers. Argus was a conversion like Langley. Furious was actually the first to complete construction as a carrier and Eagle was the first true capital ship conversion (it's really hard to call any of the Courageous class hulls capital ships)

Hosho was never intended as an oiler, it was ordered as the lead of a 2-ship Seaplane Carrier class in 1918 under the 8-6 program (the other being intended to be named Shokaku, which was cancelled in 1922 after languishing in design hell for several years and was never laid down, the name getting recycled some years later), The design was originally inspired by HMS Campania but was changed to a two-deck carrier like HMS Furious after its first refit in mid-1918 then to a flush deck carrier like HMS Argus in April 1919 after reports on the issues with HMS Furious's deck setup were received from the RN. This is what was laid down and built. 

Hiryu is not a name the IJN would have assigned to an oiler in 1919 anyways. The class of oilers under construction at the time were all named for capes (the Notoro class) and all of them were completed as planned. The next class was the Kamoi class which was first laid down in 1921.

There is a connection to Hosho however, as several of these oilers including both Notoro and Kamoi would be converted to seaplane tenders, taking the role that Hosho and Shokaku were originally authorized for. 

 

Edited January 7, 2023 by Adam Maas

[Ngantek]

Thanks for the information guys. It's not a period or subject that I know much about obviously, but the birth of naval avation is a fascinating subject that I really intend to revisit at some point (a Furious in one of her strange configurations perhaps). As to the claim of 'the first' I guess we get down to what quailifies as 'proper' and is it upon being laid down, launched or commissioned? (really I just wanted to give some loose context in the title for those who aren't familiar with the ship, happy to change for something more suitable)

 

I've been thinking a little about painting. I'd already primed myself to trying out some layering techniques for the wooden Attacker class (Mike McCabe did a lovely build here for example); but I'm fairly sure Hermes had a steel deck (comments anyone?) which throws that out the window. How then to get a 'real' look on a uniformly coloured deck? I might ask the audience here, @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies wrote a nice guide for the lazy like me here, and I was going to shamelessly steal all the research, and go with bronze grey. Perhaps some shading or some light oil work will help. There are some fantastic closeups here and here showing lots of tasty deck texture, mostly recording the Lindburghs' visiting with their Lockheed Sirius in 1931. However, what I also noticed was in the famous photo of Hermes sinking, there's a lot of texture of which I can't think of the source. Here's the photo (source wiki):

 

FIrst it seems there's a lot of beam-wise striping, almost in the style of US wooden decks, although that can't be the source. The other thing is that the lengthwise strip of deck astern of the island, and the patch at the aft round down seem to be a darker colour than the rest. These both seem like odd effects, given how aligned they are with features on the ship, I wonder to what extent they're an artefact of the light source or some strange film grain or something. Basically, are we seeing real deck shade variation (in those very uniform, 'orthogonal' directions) or is it something else. Should I, getting to the point, be adding in beam-wise streaking, or different shaded sections of deck?

 

The other thing, all the plans I see have the port side camouflage scheme in 1942 mirroring the starboard, which judging from Jamie's guide, is all derived from Alan Raven's extrapolation based on no available pictures. Given the point that "It was not normal for cruisers and larger ships to have have symmetrical Admiralty disruptive camouflage port an starboard', perhaps it would be reasonable to use a bit of artistic license on the port side? All the kits and subsequent models seem to have used the same symmetrical scheme, so much so that it has been taken as standard, but I'm just wondering how out of knock it would be to improvise?

 

As for the starboard side, I found one photo in David Hobb's book "British Aircaft carriers", I guess this is the only available? Colourwise, again I was going to shamelessly steal Jamie's callouts without doing any research of my own! I tend not to trust kit colour callouts particularly when they follow this odd and ubiquitous obsession with calling out TSS as various  matches for RAF dark green, over medium or ocean or dark sea grey. For the record, Aoshima list the patches corresponding to Jaime's suggestions as:

M.S.1 -> C331 dark sea green

B.5 -> C335 medium sea gray

507C -> C338 FS36495 Gray

(I know nothing about Naval colours that am colourblind to boot, I just put that here in case anyone was interested)

 

Anyway just some thoughts.

 

Cheers,

Andy

 

EDIT: Bonus question for 10 anyone:

HMAS vampire at the time :

507C/ B.5? I got no idea.

 

 

 

[PeterB]

Hi Andy,

 

Jamie's Sovereign site is good for the colours, but what I am uncertain about is if, having served in Northern waters and also the med, the camo scheme would have been changed to a lighter one when she went into the Indian Ocean? Normally the "Home Waters" darkish grey changed to a lighter one but unlike US warships I have yet to find a site that lists the scheme used by RN ships with dates attached. Still, unless somebody knows for certain then go with whatever you are happy with. I don't think Hermes had a wooden deck but neither can I explain the various pattern you mention. Incidentally the Osprey Vanguard book on British Carriers has a few photos and illustrations but not much of use on Hermes. I find the dark green just a little surprising as I thought the RN camo was mostly greys and blues (except for the white in Atlantic schemes and of course "Mountbatten Pink" ) but I am no expert and now I think about it some green was probably used.

 

Looks like a nice kit.

 

Pete

[Ngantek]

3 hours ago, PeterB said:

Jamie's Sovereign site is good for the colours, but what I am uncertain about is if, having served in Northern waters and also the med, the camo scheme would have been changed to a lighter one when she went into the Indian Ocean? Normally the "Home Waters" darkish grey changed to a lighter one but unlike US warships I have yet to find a site that lists the scheme used by RN ships with dates attached.

Interesting, do you mean that the same scheme would be kept but colours within it changed? I'd never heard of this, but that's saying very little! The general view of Hermes's camo, from what I have picked up, seems to be that she only carried this scheme in the few months of 1942 (she'd had a refit completed in Simonstown at the end of January, so I guess from that point?), so whatever the colour, it presumably was intended for use in the Indian Ocean and Southwestern Pacific theatre. Various model-related discussions seem to suggest there's only really one photo of her in this scheme, aside from those during her sinking of course.

 

3 hours ago, PeterB said:

Incidentally the Osprey Vanguard book on British Carriers has a few photos and illustrations but not much of use on Hermes. I find the dark green just a little surprising as I thought the RN camo was mostly greys and blues (except for the white in Atlantic schemes and of course "Mountbatten Pink" ) but I am no expert and now I think about it some green was probably used.

Yeah I have that book and few others. As you say, Hermes tends to be covered as an occasional side note in those that I have. I have so little knowlege on the subject, I'm pretty happy to defer to the theories of others who do. It's an attractive scheme too, so I'm happy to have a go, really I'm not excessively fussed, I just need to pick 'a colour'.

 

3 hours ago, PeterB said:

Looks like a nice kit.

Thanks for taking the time to post Pete, I've very grateful for any knowlege, theory or just random speculation on the subject, coming from the point of no knowledge at all! It is turning out to be quite nice actually... to wit:

 

I've started! Woo! Yay!

 

I should be working really, but have just ended up spending all the time (as I have all week) peeking into the box, reference books, internet searches and finally thought maybe I should just get it out of my system!

 

 

The parts fit very nicely so far. It's not quite Tamiya, but it's plenty sharp. I think my favourite bit of modelling is cutting parts off a fresh new, much anticipated kit, and mindlessly sticking them together. All this filly, masky, painty, weathery nonsense is hard work!

 

Lovely stuff!

Andy