Aircraft carrier Essex-class

Dan Stinson Hello all - a newbie here. "Sven from Modellbau sent me." I've tried to read all the comments in this thread, as best I could using a translator. Christian, absolutely stunning work on the aircraft! I appreciate all the comments and photos of the modifications so far.

I'm working on a 1/350 conversion of the Gallery USS Intrepid kit to the USS Hancock, CVA-19, as she was on her seventh of nine deployments to the South China Sea 1972-01-07 to 1972-10-03 with CVW-21. [source: Where we were in Vietnam 1945-75, by Michael Kelley] (By the way Christian, her 1967 deployment was the Hanna's third to Vietnam after 10/64-5/65 and 11/65-8/66.)

Unfortunately for me, by '72 most of the aircraft had changed, so most of the aircraft that come with the kit are not all that usable. By '72 the A1s were gone, the Seasprites were replaced by SH3G Sea Kings, and the A4-Cs of VA 55 were upgraded to A4-Fs, while VA 93 was upgraded to A4-Es and Fs. The added avionics hump on the later A4s is really noticeable. Luckily VF 54's F-8C Crusaders were upgraded to F8-Js with little visible difference. A lot of what I needed I've found online, but I'm still pondering A4-F/G options.

Ray Bean has been very helpful, and between he and Sven they have managed to help me spend a lot of money with them. I suppose it was inevitable. I look forward to following along, and I'll try to add something of value if I get the chance.

Dano

Stephan H. Great work so far. The pictures with the complete air wing already look great! "thumbs pressed"

Christian Bruer Thank you Dan for you kind words and your interest. Welcome aboard, it would be fine to see your progress on Hanna. I put her beside due to several other progressing projects, but I hope to finish her one day.
Mmhhh I don't know if there are A4's with hump available in 1/350?

Looking forward to see your WIP here.

Cheers Christian

Christian Bruer Thank you Stephan

Dan Stinson I'm glad to be here, Christian!

There are several different 3D printed 1/350 aircraft on Shapeways. ( www.shapeways.com ) I just ran this filter for 1/350, but a finer search would winnow that down.
( https://shapeways.com/marketplace?type=product&q=1%2F350 )
I'm going to order a couple different models and see what I think. I suspect the most important thing is to get them in a material that's easy to work with and paint.

Another advantage is that they can be done as a single part, which would make the landing gear easier to work with. Of course there must be some trade-off for part thickness, but I want to find out.

Perhaps others know of different 3D printers with useful products? Does anyone know any more about this guy's project?
cs.finescale.com/fsm/modelin..t/162729.aspx?sortorder=desc

Dano

Lode Schildermans Christian, how could I possibly missed this one...but I did. Looking forward to see your progress on this air carrier

Sergej I Oh wow, and I thought my 1/72 Skyhawk was tiny
Great job so far, looking forward for more!

Christian Bruer Thank you for all your kind comments. Well mates, due to a lot of other projects I put this time consumpting one beside. I'll come back to it one day and if you have the patience to want you're welcome to take a seat

Cheers Christian

Jeff Dick Commission for grandson of surgeon on the Essex, finished in measure 21 with 60 aircraft on deck.

Norbert Steffens Yes you're right. It's more than interesting that there are several ways to create good sea scapes. Up to now, I only tried silicon, with good results, but i think only when there isn't a rough sea. But lets see what Sven result will look like

Sven Schönyan So, after a while I came back to my Intrepid. Because the first water didn´t turn out as desired I built a new one. First I had to cut off the old styrofoam and apply a new one. After shaping the waves (a little bit smaller now) and cutting a opening for the hull they got a coat of plaster stone. With a little sanding I smoothed it the seascape and applied another layer of plaster this time an air drying type.
Because I want to get a good fit of the hull I first textured the plaster on one side of the hull and after a day of drying the other side.

Christian Bruer Interesting but time consuming technique.

Martin o I am going to buy this kit one day despite having no space for it.. The build is going nicely! Nice job on the hagar floor weathering!

Lode Schildermans Smooth job, Sven. Curious how it will look in the diorama

Norbert Steffens Big effort for your scape, but looks quite good so far.

Martin Oostrom A large project it is. Like the rest I'm curious how she'll end up. The start looks very promising

Sven Schönyan Thank you guys for your comments! It´s still a long way to go. Yesterday the plaster wasn´t as dry as expected so no work on it. Hope to find some time during this week.

Robert W Martel I bought a bunch of these (6) Dragon kits last year, and lots of others, when I was on my carrier kick !
They are very nice highly detailed kits, but OOOOOH, some of the parts are VERY small! So, I wanted to see if I could even handle the many small pieces. Plus I have a PE set I might try to use some of that too. So far it seems doable, but very time consuming.
I've got it pretty much at the ready to start painting stuff stage, but it isn't quit warm & dry enough to start painting yet. So I put it aside and started another car kit too.

Jörg Luther The only way to avoid that would be to split up the topic "Essex-class carrier" into seven sub-topics for the different construction states between the 40s and the 70s. IMHO there's absolutely no need for such an overkill. If you don't know the difference between a wartime and a SCB-125 Essex, you shouldn't build one in the first place, nor buy PE for it.

Jon Somerville I know the difference, but been building for a long time and have been surprised by what many builders do not know. I've figured out that it is a site design limitation and I'm okay with that. BTW, your sarcasm isn't appreciated and the over statement of seven sub topics is way off. Only 2 really required, being WWII and angle deck.

Jörg Luther No sarcasm, just facts: [img1]

Jon Somerville Okay, no sarcasm, good.

But why stop there at 7 as any time a carrier goes in for overhaul there are minor to major modifications as I know you know. My experience is that some builders may not know the difference and my attempt was to divide the two major modifications, that being WWII and angle deck Essex.

Like I said, I understand now how the site structure works, so I'm okay with the limitation.

Happy modeling...

Robert W Martel Another carrier that's been on my list for some time. I bought the USS Hornet CVA-12-Apollo Recovery version last year, so I just had to have this one to go along with it. The Hornet was an RoG re-issue so quite a bit cheaper than this one. I'm embarrassed to tell what I paid for this one !! Anyway it is a 1969 issue still sealed in plastic, box in new condition. I don't see too many of these still sealed in this condition, and they do go for a high price.
That's pretty much it on my "gotta have" carriers list, but there are a couple more on the "want" list!

Robert W Martel Another carrier that's been on my list. I've been watching this particular one from Korea for the past 6 months,,, cheapest one on ebay,,, $38 shipped. When I started watching he had 5 or 6 of them, when it just got down to the last 2 I figured I better snap one up now. Otherwise next cheapest is $50 !

Matt Lang Looks great so far, I've always liked the angled deck Essex, Midway class and similar era Royal Navy ships like HMS Ark Royal, will watch with interest.

Robert W Martel Picked this on up on ebay for $30 shipped. The main bags w/hull & decks had been opened, but everything else still sealed and in perfect shape. Even the box is great. good buy! real nice kit.

Robert W Martel Picked this one up for $20/shipped, good price, the box is beat up but the plastic is fine, still sealed inside. Comes with 12 ea./ F6F, SBD, TBF & SB2C. Worth it just for the planes!

wilky Great bargain there

Robert W Martel Yea, another risk that paid off. I gave it a thorough going over, nothing broken, everything still attached to the sprues. I'm beginning to have too many carriers, and a few more yet on my list. I need to get on a different kick....tanks maybe. LOL Cheers Wilky

Robert W Martel 2 of these sets are coming with the Dragon Randolph. So I should have plenty of planes for a few 700th Carriers! YES!

Robert W Martel Picked this one up pretty cheap on ebay. It had the GMM 1/700 WWII USN carrier & WWII aircraft parts sets. Why 1/700 for a 1/720 kit ???? I suppose they'd fit ok. That's why I bought it, to check out the PE stuff. Pretty small, but not as small as the Trumpeter 1/700 airplane wheels!! Anyway, not too impressed by these 720 kits....no hanger decks, pretty light detail, but I suppose with PE they'd be ok.
Maybe I'll use the PE on the Tamiya Enterprise.

Robert W Martel Looks decent enough to me. Rated as only "fair", but GMM does have a PE set to fit this scale Essex class. So maybe it could turn out nice> I wanted this Apollo Recovery version, also looking at the Wasp CVS 18 Gemini Recovery kit as well. Because I grew up during that era!!
I remember President Kennedy's speech about > sending a man to the moon & returning him safely to the earth!

Christian Bruer na schaun mer mal wie schnell es bei Euch beiden voran geht
Meine Air Wing ist bis auf einige Crusader und die beiden Tracer fertig zum lackieren, ebenso das Hangardeck. Bin derzeit aber einigen anderen Projekten dran

Gibt es schon was neues in Sachen Zusatztanks?

Torben Ke Wow, das geht wirklich schnell.
Bei mir geht es langsamer, aber mit der Weile wieder kontinuierlich weiter. Nach einigen Abrissarbeiten, die notwendig wurden, um die Gallery Teile verwenden zu können, baue ich seit einer Woche wieder Strukturen auf.
An den Zusatztanks sind wir dran. Wenn alles gut geht, haben wir in ein paar Wochen erste vorzeigbare Ergebnisse. Auch um Radar für die HANNAH brauchst Du Dich nicht zu kümmern. Ist auch in der Pipeline.

Christian Bruer Super

Bilder und Progress findest Du übrigens hier:
USS Hancock CVA-19 | Album by Christian Bruer (1:350)

Cheers, Christian

David Smith I have a question about your CVW-5 aircraft decals .
I'm converting the Gallery Models Intrepid to the USS Ticonderoga CVA-14 with CVW-5 on board in 1965.
Where are you getting your decals from as I too need them?
Thanks David

Christian Bruer Hello David, sadly there are no decals available at the moment so they will be self made one day.

May you ask Starfighter Decals if they plan to release a Vietnam Set set for CVW-5 or other SCB-27 CAG's.

Cheers, Christian

David Smith Hi Christian,
I've already contacted Mark at Starfighter Decals about doing decals for CVG-5
I was told by him if I wanted to pay hundreds of dollars to have a custom set done he wasn't going to a set for CVW-5 that he was only going to do CVW-10 for the Interpid .So we are both in the same boat, we are going to have to try and make our own
Maybe if all of us doing the USS Hancock or USS Ticonderoga with CVG-5 on board make a plea on all the ship modeling boards maybe someone will make them .
I know there are allot of us doing the other ships in the long hull Essex class carries
so it would be a viable product for them to produce.
I've got hundreds of pics of the Ticonderoga with CVG-5 on board
Thank you for getting back to me
David

David Smith Christian,
Check out my photo album if you need pic's of the Hancock let me know I can email you allot of them
Enjoy, David

Christian Bruer You're welcome That is a lot of money for that sheet. But I guess he has his cost and I don't know if there is a market to sell such amount to reduce the price to get a cost breakdown and win.
Even a lot of modellers are talking about to build an SBC27 Carrier I have seen just a few in progress or finished, most USS Intrepid. I took a while to build the carrier and air wing
See my Hanna, she is just on hold not because of missing decals but to less time for modelmaking.
About the decals, I think time will tell.
I just took a look to your album, thx for sharing David
Cheers, Christian

Robert W Martel Just got this one, shipped from Canada for $39.02, pretty good deal. The box is a bit F'd up but the contents are fine. Another real nice kit! Can't wait to (try) build some of these carriers!

Robert W Martel Wow what a nice kit! Highly detailed, PE, tugs etc, etc. The aircraft look really nice. Lots of itty bitty parts though. It wasn't cheap, but from what I've seen so far well worth it. We'll see, I have several others coming (Trumpy, Italeri, Revell). Gonna take some time to build this one. I need to get some shelves up where I can put ships! (they'd look kinda funny hanging from the ceiling. lol

Torben Ke Thx my friend! A lot of time but a lot of fun too.
Let me add Franks Coral Sea to our lineup of Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club carriers. That will be amazing!

Today I have glued the 3 A-3´s together. The wheel bays are cut out as Christan did with his Hancock planes. I have also cut out the cockpit area for some White Ensign PE. Pictures soon.

Joseph Crown I had a secret clearance but that wasn't high enough to know for sure if we carried nukes all the time nor did I have a need to know. I do know that each time before the ship pulled into Japan, there were containers off loaded. Did they contain nukes? I don't know. The weapon itself just looked similar to a drop tank.
Corrosion control was ongoing during the entire deployment. When the aircraft took on a speckled look from all the touch up painting and zinc chromate, it was repainted by the squadron in the Philippines.

Torben Ke Thank you Joseph. I think they did a lot of secrecy on the nukes. I read in Adm. Holloways book that the USN tried to never let the Soviets know how many and if any nukes were carried onboard.

Torben Ke Hello mates, my A7 master is ready. After four hours of work for just one plane I have decided to cast my about 30 planes for the airwing. Added are the wheel bays, in flight refuiling probe, cockpit, engine and the ejection seat. Unfortunately a lot of filling and sanding was necessary. I used Peter Halls great White Ensing photo etch.

Christian Bruer Well you can spent hours and hours in all these little details but great work Torben

Torben Ke Thank you Christian, you are so right. This week will see some structural work. It is much more encouraging to see something huge going on.

Torben Ke Not so much progress to show unfortunately, buisy week.

@ Joseph: I came around some pictures of modern hangar interiors and wondered if TICO carried any boats in her Hangar deck? Did she carry utility boats all the time or were they stowed somewhere ashore?

Joseph Crown I don't remember. There was probably a boat for the Captain to get around in during port calls but no other boats that I can remember. Tico was a small carrier by today's standards and when you had the airwing filling the hangar bay, there wasn't room for much else. We weren't allowed to take the A-3s into the hangar bay because of space issues. All maintenance of the aircraft was done on the flight deck, usually with the tail pushed out over the water.

Mathias Carl Looks promising.
I´ll stay tuned.

Alex Das sieht spannend aus - viel Erfolg!

Torben Ke Thank you, I will post some in progress pictures soon.

Sven Schönyan Pictures pleeeeaaaaasssseeeee!!!!

Torben Ke Hi mates, some progress shots as promised. I have blistered the Trumpeter hull and started with the photo etch design for the model. The bow is enclosed and some hangar details are in place. You will notice that there are some structures in place which will not be visible anymore in the next updates. What you can see is the status before Gallerys Intrepid went onto my desk. I will use several parts out of the Gallery kit so I have to remove some of the already build structure.

Es-haq Khosravi Great job Marry!

George Bacon Looks like lots of work. I'm in.

Mary Lawton Work!? I call this enjoyment

Christian Bruer Very nice and fast star on your Franklin. The photos remind me to a lot of filling and sanding on my scale 1/700 Yorktown

Mary Lawton Lol I have done about 4 Essex class carriers at 700 this is the fifth now and one at 350 if it's trump the filling and sand needs to be put on the box lol but I like the extra hard stuff kits that will mess most up triumph to the brave and also crazy my father always said lol

Mary Lawton Thank you Mr Bruer.

Christian Bruer You're welcome Mary. Which four Essex do you build?

Mary Lawton I've tackled the well Essex twice, Yorktown, and Ticonderoga at 700, those builds were years and years ago about 10 almost the 350 was Ticonderoga. And now I'm going to pay out my now skills hopefully after about a two year skill building quest all over this awesome little gal.

Mary Lawton I'm going to get a start on this ship it will be the only one on the bench and I will be uploading step by step photos as usual format much like the VK.45.02 wish me luck guys!

Matthias Weiss Good look Mary L.

Christian Bruer I'm in.

Phil Marchese a very historic ship and well disciplined and heroic crew.

Dave Flitton If you do this kit justice like your 1/35 builds, I will gladly watch this build.

Mary Lawton It might not make the bench for a while unfortunately I have the tiger I and jagdtiger to go then I might hit the deck with it, mind the pun lol

Mary Lawton Just to note I'm on Facebook with scale models military great group of builders that have inspired me to what I do now and I post my stuff on there and enjoy been berated! Lol look us up if interested if not we got the amazing site!

Christian Bruer Good choice! Go for it, I like to see some more mates building ship models

Phil Marchese Dave, agree!

Mathias Carl Erzähl mal, wie ist der Bausatz denn so?
Die Meinungen die ich bislang so gehört habe sind eher geteilt...
Gerade wohl auch wegen des Preises.

Christian Bruer Hi, ich muss gestehen, ich habe die vielen Teile noch gar nicht so unter die Lupe genommen. Auf Modelwarships ist allerdings eine recht aussagefähige Rezension des Bausatzes. Das was da beschrieben ist, im Zusammenhang mit den Dingen dich ich mir bisher angeschaut habe, ist der Bausatz durchaus gelungen. Spritguss technisch absolut auf der Höhe, der einteilige Rumpf ist trotz der Größe und recht hoch stehenden Seitenwände nicht eingefallen oder verzogen, Flugdeck einteilig mit einer akkuraten Struktur und viele viele Kleinteile. Über Auswerfer an Strukturstellen etc. lässt sich streiten, aber irgend wo müssen die Auswerfer nun mal hin.
Was ich tatsächlich als weniger gut finde, die fehlenden Fahrzeuge und die schlechte und wenig durchdachte Bestückung mit Flugzeugen. Statt von jedem etwas wäre es besser gewesen, eine kpl. Airwing einer bestimmten deployment zu liefern. Für den der was anderes mag hätte der Hersteller separat eine Airwing anbieten können. So ist es nix halbes und nix ganzes.
Betr. Des Preises, mmhh, ok Angebot und Nachfrage, den Posts in den verschiedenen Foren zu urteilen sind / waren(?) alle scharf auf einen Winkeldeck Essex. Ist doch klar, dass ein Hersteller damit dann auch Geld verdienen möchte. Zumal viele Teile incl. PE. Ich denke die Scharnhorst von Dragon war / ist auch nicht viel günstiger und schau mal den Preis von Hasegawas Hikawa Maru!
Also rundum, ich finde das Teil megafett und freue mich schon auf den Pontos Satz(?) und eine Menge an sonstigen Zubehörteilen. Wenn ich ihn baue dann first deployment Vientnam April – November 1966. Airwing 10 mit A-1 und A-4 an Bord. Da gibt es ein schönes Foto im Netz, Aufnahme Datum 13.09.1966, mit dem Datum verbinde ich etwas ganz wichtiges in meinem Leben
[img1]

Burkhard D Unf***ingbelievable! I love this!