Subject: SMML VOL 2258 Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2003 03:21:38 +1000 SMML is proudly sponsored by SANDLE http://sandlehobbies.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MODELLERS INDEX 1: 25 mm Japanese AA guns 2: HMS Ark Royal & HMS Prince of Wales Paint Schemes 3: Re: Methuen 4: NWDC - Concept Development Department - High Speed Vessel 5: The loss of "The Ark" 6: Re: USN vehicles 7: Navismag, PSM, and launching chaff 8: Re: Methuen numbers 9: 1:700 Anchor Chain 10: Ark Royal 11: Queen Elizabeth 12: Re: WTB:Aurora Enterprise/Hornet 13: HMS ARK ROYAL 14: Re: navis magazine 15: Aircraft carrier book impression 16: 1:700 Missouri -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRADERS, ANNOUNCEMENTS & NOTICEBOARD INDEX 1: WTB: Revell 1/300 Geopotes 14 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MODELLERS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) From: "Nuno J. V. Rubim" Subject: 25 mm Japanese AA guns Some photos seem indicate that the Japanese 25 mm AA gun ( Type 96 ) was painted black. That happens in a specimen existing in the Portuguese Military Museum, wich I photographed, along with a 150 mm Field Howitzer. Perhaps it was brought from Timor, after WW II. I understand that it was an Army gun. But I also found in an photo portraying the visit of Emperor Hirohito to the Battleship Yamato, a triple mounting showing the barrels painted black. I am making a model of this warship, so I would appreciate any clue on that question. Thanks N.Rubim Portugal ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) From: "david harris" Subject: HMS Ark Royal & HMS Prince of Wales Paint Schemes A great series of posts this has been. When her wreck was found, the reports said that she was found for a BBC documentary series on the Royal Navy. Has this been aired on TV yet & have I missed it, & does anyone know whether they went looking for the HMS Barham as part of the same series? Hoefully the ducumentary would contain footage of the wreck & would be able to give a good idea of her final paint scheme, as I think that she is sitting upright on the sea bed. Finally, a question on the Prince of Wales at the time of the Denmark Strait action. AP507B overall with AP507A steel decks & teak wooden decks, so far so good. Were the main & secondary turrets AP507B overall or was the turret roof & tops of the guns AP507A? I have seen pictures of models in both schemes & have a photo of the KGV with what look like two tone main turrets & guns, but cannot find a photo of the POW. Any ideas? Thanks in advance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) From: "R N Pearson" Subject: Re: Methuen The Methuen is not the same as FS or BS standards. Basically it is a colour wheel which is divided into 30 different colours and then each of these colours is modified by overprinting with black or diluting with white. For example a basic red is listed as 10A8. To make it darker it will progress on up to 10F8. . each letter represents 10x the darkness of the original. To make it lighter, it is diluted and the suffix number diminishes accordingly. therefore 10A3 would be a pinkish shade. This works for all the colours and is quite easy to understand once you have used it for awhile. In my work on WWI aircraft colours I compared 150+ of the most common WWI colours with Metheun references to a book on computer colour. This book has 10,000 chips in CMYK mixes matched with all possible combinations in 10% increments. By placing the colour chip into a card square and then placing this between it is possible to come within 5% of the mix desired As for good old BS381C .. I had never heard of it until yesterday - but I have worked with the Methuen for the past 15 years :-) Regards, Bob Pearson Flower Class corvettes http://www.cbrnp.com/RNP/Flower/index.htm Managing Editor / Internet Modeler http://www.internetmodeler.com Colours & Markings of the World's Air Forces 1912-20 http://www.internetmodeler.com/cd-roms/RNP_CD/index.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) From: John Kutina Subject: NWDC - Concept Development Department - High Speed Vessel http://www.nwdc.navy.mil/HSV/ConceptHSV.asp Regards, John Kutina ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) From: mnob Subject: The loss of "The Ark" A quick google for "ark royal damage control" produced this well attributed damage report http://www.glue-it.com/boats/general-information/glossary/a/ark_royal.htm It was not a lesson that should have needed to be learnt and I think that can safely be said even without the benefit of hindsight. Maurice ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) From: J.L.Pickstock Subject: Re: USN vehicles Further to my message yesterday I checked some of the references. It seems that early in war the Marine corp Amphibious vehicle were painted Gray or Forest Green. This was overpainted in the Army colours Earth Red, Sand and Earth Brown. The Gray is only described as "Warship Gray" but I should imagine that 5-0 is about right. Schemes used appear to have been copied from the army camouflage manual and followed the "shadow pattern" used by the army. Later "Amtracs" were factory delivered in Olive Drab and were again overpainted with Red, Sand and Earth. For other Marine corp vehicles standard base colour was Forest Green and later Olive Drab. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) From: Phil Stewart Subject: Navismag, PSM, and launching chaff Hi again folks. I love to launch chaff, as much as anyone (more fun than flamethrowing by far), but I'm not sure the market sorts it out from the wheat as well as AAA Hobby Supply suggests (below): >> No, more like the market forces seperating the wheat from the chaff. Not to flame any particular publication, but market forces are what they are. Whether or not I like a subject is immaterial unless there are enough others out there that also like it. With regard to PSM, Mark Persichetti (one of Dan's local IPMS friends) told me he thought Dan was just tired of doing it - too stressful for the "hobby" publication it had grown from. << I agree with the spirit of AAA's post, of course: It's best to take the passing of Navismagazine and PSM with a grain of salt, and not get too down about things. But the 'market' isn't the linear and impartial beast it's cracked up to be! More forces are at work than simple supply and demand. Some great products have been knocked out of the market by forces having little to do with demand-- market position as a supplier and access to distribution channels being examples of these other complex forces. For my part, I'll group Navis and PSM with the "wheat." (Thanks *hugely*, by the way, to SMML for reprinting some PSM articles on the Web!!!!) I did notice that around the turn of 2003, (or a little earlier?) Paolo Pizzi posted an editorial note asking more people to submit articles, citing the difficult pace of publication. There was definitely a supply shortage issue, so to speak; and the same could be inferred of PSM (ceasing publication being Dan's, the supplier's decision). You could attribute that to a market force, but it's not what you'll read about in classic economic theory... And meanwhile, back at my own supply side: I have yet to reconcile discrepancies I've found in the documentation I've found on my own pet project, an accurized Hasegawa Ise BB/CV (old mold--the new one is much easier for this!). I guess you could say I haven't published on the subject, partly, to hold off from launching chaff... ;) Back to my day job, Phil Stewart Washington, DC ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) From: "Graham Boak" Subject: Re: Methuen numbers Like Munsell, the Methuen handbook of Colour presents a complete system, as opposed to Federal Standards 595 which is simply a catalogue of colours. It was published in a small book, and was based on the colour wheel. Each page (of 30) had a reference number, which gave the basic Hue. Intensity was then judged on a scale from 1 (white) to 8 (pure colour), and Tone (darkness) on a scale A(white) to H(black), although the book only published grades up to F. 28 was a colour in the greens (but see below) B means 1/10th grey ink i.e pale 1 means no actual colour present So 28B1 is a pale neutral grey. The system was meant for printers, and is based on the use of printers inks. This means that it lacks the full range of intensities of the Munsell system for paints, and the rigid steps make it difficult to represent the fine grades of pale colours. For modellers, the system was used for a while in the 70s by the British magazine Scale Models, but it fell out of use. I don't think the book has been reprinted since the third edition 1978. USN wartime colours are defined by numbers in the Munsell system: the 2nd edition of the Methuen handbook gave a way of converting Methuen to Munsell, and hence vice versa, as far as possible. Neither bears any relationship to FS595, or indeed any of the British paint standards. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) From: "Stephen Varhegyi" Subject: 1:700 Anchor Chain Hi There I'm after some real 1:700 anchor chain (not flat photoetch). Does anyone know where I can get some or have any suggestions. Haven't used the PE stuff. How does it look? Thanks Steve Varhegyi ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10) From: "Chris and Kayo Amano-Langtree" Subject: Ark Royal Hi all The reason for the loss of the Ark Royal was poor damage control. D K Brown suggests that flooding the other engine and boiler room would have brought her upright and allowed her to be towed into Gibraltar and he should know. A lack of diesel generators didn't help and Bert's suggestion that she should have accepted a tow from a cruiser is also relevant. For most of her life she was in AP507B with AP507A decks with a question mark over whether she was camouflaged. If those who have it take a look at IWM photo A2298 they will see why I put forward the repaint suggestion. Her bows and stern are quite worn whilst the sides next to the island are still in 507B. As for whether she would have had time for a repaint I don't know - she was a very heavily worked ship but I couldn't find any trace of the Force H war diary which might have helped when I researched the Kellys (and I did look for it). Christopher Amano-Langtree ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11) From: roger.antrobus Subject: Queen Elizabeth Hello Everybody All the photographic evidence I can find seems to show the decks of the QE as bare wood for the period 1941-43 ........ it is not too clear as all the photos are black and white. Has anyone got a source which prooves that the decks were not painted? Thanks in anticipation. Roger Antrobus ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12) From: PaulShip37 Subject: Re: WTB:Aurora Enterprise/Hornet I myself would like to see a model of the Hornet with 16 B-24 bombers on deck. This could represent the speculative employment late in the war of Hornet as she would have appeared as an aircraft transport. Possibly transporting Liberators to the Western Pacific. The Liberators would have been sent to search for the missing green battleship. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13) From: "raymond guy" Subject: HMS ARK ROYAL Hi Gang Have ben following the mail on the "Ark" with interest. To answer John's question as to whether there was a drydock at Gib large enough to accommodate the Ark, the answer is yes The No.1 drydock, built before WW11, next to the South Mole accommodated the "Guardsvan" during a minor refit\repair during the early fifties and therefore would have taken the Ark, both ships being of a very similar LOA. As regards the loss of the Ark, there is an extremely good account of the sinking in Friedman's British Carrier Aviation on pages 125 to 127.The main reason for the loss appears to be the delay in counterflooding to bring the ship onto an even keel to enable the towing to Gib to continue. The abscence of dedicated personel from the ship, having been previously evacuated, also contributed to the delay. Regards Ray ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14) From: Robin Subject: Re: navis magazine hello everyone, if navis is cancelled, will the archives be open? or only if you pay a subscription? how can you pay subs to a cancelled mag? will the mag site be open to people again, or will it be deleted? ive seen links to articles in yahoo, but when you follow them it says you will be logged.... if anyone from navis is looking can you please clear this up? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15) From: BSteinIPMS Subject: Aircraft carrier book impression Is it just me being too critical, or did anyone else experience the same feelings of dismay over Anthony Preston's book "The World's Great Aircraft Carriers - From World War I to the Present", Brown Books, Ltd., London, 1999? I came away with the impression that the author, or perhaps the publisher, doesn't really have a good working knowledge of U.S. naval aviation. Then again, it's possible the book was written in haste to meet a publishing deadline which didn't allow time to proof read carefully and check photos for proper orientation. Without spending time on a thorough critique, I found these errors Page 71: The Vought F4U Corsair is dubbed an "F-4U". Page 88: A photo of Grumman TBF Avengers on a flight deck is captioned "Hellcat dive-bombers crowd the after flight deck.....". (Hellcat dive bombers??) Page 99: A photo of ordnancemen moving trolleys laden with bombs towards a TBF Avenger is captioned "Flight deck crewman seen here arming divebombers aboard....." Page 100: A full-page color photo of the WASP depicting the island on the port side, all aircraft facing forward. (Obviously the image is reversed.) And so on. If the lay reader wants a general overview of the evolution of aircraft carriers and naval aviation aboard them, then perhaps this book would meet their needs. If a naval enthusiast with any knowledge whatsoever in carrier aviation is considering this book, perhaps your money would be more wisely spent on an old Lindberg kit or some such. Bob Steinbrunn Stillwater, MN Nautical Research Guild ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16) From: Graeme Martin Subject: 1:700 Missouri This came via Internet Hobbies newsletter EXPECTED: AUGUST 2003 A plastic assembly kit of the U.S. Navy Battleship Missouri. 1/700 scale Overall length: 386.5mm, Overall width: 47mm The long and narrow form of USS Missouri's hull has been accurately replicated. Missouri's characteristics such as the main structure coupled with the front funnel have been reproduced. The hull has been divided in two halves in order to reproduce the finest details. The finest details of the main structure and the masts have been accurately recreated. The main turrets can rotate after completion via polycap. Equipment such as armament including 40mm and 20mm guns are sharply reproduced. Kit includes two types of floatplanes, Vought OS2U Kingfishers and Curtiss SC-1 Seahawks. TAM-31613Retail Price: $36.00OUR LOW PRICE: $29.99 Graeme Martin ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRADERS, ANNOUNCEMENTS & NOTICEBOARD ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) From: "Keith Bender" Subject: WTB: Revell 1/300 Geopotes 14 Hi SMMLies, Time to look in your closet of golden oldies and see if anyone has the Revell 1:300 "Geopotes 14". It came to us in 1987 and it is a civilian ship, I know, I hear the whinning already and i can't help it that she has no guns but get over it, it's still a ship. The ship is a trailing suction hopper dredger. She basicly is a nice looking and busy ship to build. give us a yell off the list if you have on to part with, Thank you, Keith ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the SMML site for the List Rules, Backissues, Member's models & reference pictures at: http://smmlonline.com Check out the APMA site for an index of ship articles in the Reference section at: http://apma.org.au/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- End of Volume