Merchant Ships of the United Nations

The latest arrivals at the fleet review are the several allied merchant ships depicted below. First, we have King Edwin:

King Edwin is a Dodd motor ship built by Harland and Wolf in 1927 with a gross registered tonnage of 4536. I've depicted her using C in C's Doxford. This particular casting is perhaps a touch plain but with a little work it comes out nicely. And it's size and style were fairly common. Further, in some ways a simpler casting affords more opportunity for conversion. I haven't really done that yet, but more might come later. I regret that I didn't add ship's boats, but perhaps I can rectify that.

Next we have a pair of takes on a casting sadly no longer in production: the original C in C "tramp steamer." 

Why C in C replaced this model I'm not certain, but this is the older version, which differs quite a bit from the current casting. Leading the column is the Harrison steamer Daytonian: built by Henderson in 1922 and registered at 6434 tons. Trailing her is Fort de Douaumont: a Doxford ship of 1918 built as War Deer, purchased by Chargeurs Reunis, and registered at 5266 tons. In spite of the difference in tonnage, the two ships are nearly the same length and beam. Likely the newer ship gained cargo capacity through improved engineering, reflected also in a higher cruising speed, and slightly increased draft. Both are single screw reciprocating steamers, but if the newer ship has higher pressure boilers (which she doubtless does) then she should be able to achieve the same results with less boiler capacity and less fuel.

Next up, let's move back across the channel and convert a Panzerschiffe casting:

I've used this typical large freighter to depict an Ellerman liner built by Cammel Laird in 1935: City of Manchester. She was a twin screw turbine with a registered capacity of 8917 tons and even some passenger accommodations. (Though I'm guessing not many.) Panzerschiffe castings are, of course, a little simpler, but that leaves a lot of room for customization, and the resin material is in many ways easier to work with. It doesn't bend as badly as white metal and it's easier to cut and file. All in all I really love these guys, particularly for merchant ships, where customization adds so much to the dizzying variety out there.

Another interesting conversion is this small sidewheel ferry:

This is yet another casting whose provenance isn't quite known to me. I picked her up second hand. From earlier research I'd surmised it to be a 1/3000 Navwar "A/B Standard" merchant, but I can no longer find my reasoning for that. In any case, it's quite small. Above you can see an unmodified casting next to the one I rebuilt as a paddle wheeler. I'm using mine to depict a P&A Campbell ferry built by McKnight in 1891. Campbell operated across the Bristol Channel and Ravenswood continued in service with the company until 1955, when she was scrapped. I probably wouldn't have set out  to depict a small channel steamer, but given the yeoman service all variety of small ships and boats gave, and the commonality of such vessels in coastal service she seems a nice addition. (Ravenswood remained in civilian service until the suspension of the ferry in 1940, after which she was eventually taken over as an AA vessel.)

Next we have another coaster, this time converted for military duties. This is the French "landing ship" Golo as depicted by Seabattles and sold in the U.S. by Viking Forge:

In terms of sheer casting and sculpting quality, this was one of the nicest ships I've had the pleasure of modeling in the scale. I added masts, as you can see. There are small pinholes that lead me to believe the Seabattles castings might come with such fanciness, but the domestically produced Viking Forge copy omit them. Even so, this is a nice little ship, and it's no great thing to make some masts out of rod.

Finally, we have the whole gang mustering at an unnamed tropical port on the way to the fleet review. Looks like a little bit of paradise.

As always, thank you for joining me. If you like what you see here check back soon. I plan to post on converting Fort de Douaumont soonish, and there will eventually be more footage of the fleet review.

Sincerely,
The Composer

Hunting the Hunters

Lately I've talked a lot about Viking Forge and Seabattles. This is in part a side effect of my own comparatively recent discovery of their offerings and also a result of the number of unique and interesting models in their catalog. The bulk of my collection is Panzerschiffe: they clearly offer the most ship for the money in 1/2400. Viking Forge is still a distant second, but now that they've assumed that slot I can't imaging anyone else will threaten it. Their merchant ships and ASW escorts are, in my opinion, the finest in the scale. Along with Panzerschiffe, they are quite unusual in offering small boats from multiple nations. Where most suppliers are content to stop at fleet destroyers and perhaps a version of the ubiquitous Flower class, Viking Forge offers several flower variants, generic sloops and trawlers, various US Coast Guard cutters, and even some Japanese ASW escorts. I've talked about some of these (along with some Panzerschiffe minesweepers, torpedo boats, and tugs that did ASW duty) in other posts. These I will leave aside for now, instead singling out my recent builds.

First, the Coast Guard:

During WWII the US Coast Guard operated as a part of the Navy Department. Coast Guard cutters performed quite a variety of duties in weather and ice patrols, as convoy escorts, and even transporting troops and supplies in combat areas. Among the newest ships in Coast Guard service at the outset of hostilities were a group of "high endurance" cutters known alternately as the "Secretary" or "Treasury" class. Each was named after a secretary of the US Treasury department, which controlled the Coast Guard during peacetime. Following USN convention they should most properly be known as the Campbell class, since WPG-32 Campbell appears to have been the first one ordered.

The two ships above are USCGC Campbell and Taney. Campbell, on the left, is interesting as she was one of the first US ships fitted with HFDF equipment for sub hunting. On the right, Taney was present in Oahu during the Pearl Harbor raid.  She's now a museum ship in Baltimore and bears the distinction of being the last vessel present at the battle still afloat. Campbell is wearing a variant of a camouflage scheme called the "Thayer" system in the United States. Taney is depicted in the MS-1 grey she was wearing at Pearl Harbor and, so far as I can ascertain, retained into mid 1942.

These two models are both Viking Forge castings of Seabattles originals with considerable modification. As bought the models are great depictions of the cutters in their peacetime guise. I took the liberty of militarizing them, adding guns, radar, enlarging islands, and otherwise lightly detailing them in the usual fashion.

In some significant ways the Treasuries were more the exception than the rule. Most Coast Guard cutters appear to have been humbler, homelier looking boats. Where the Treasuries were purpose built light warships, typical cutters were much more closely based on civilian designs. Below are three vessels that better reflect this norm. Where Campbell and her sisters feel almost like small destroyers, Tallapoosa,  Haida, and Algonquin look like tugs and trawlers.

Tallapoosa, on the left and wearing MS-3 light grey, is the oldest cutter of the three. She was built in 1915 to replace a revenue cutter named Winona and ultimately served in both wars. Among other duties, she patrolled as a convoy escort. By the Second World War her age limited her utility somewhat and she ended the war observing blackout conditions. Haida, in the center and wearing MS-12 mod, was part of the four unit Tampa class built by Union Construction Company of Oakland in the early 1920s. These ships played diverse roles, serving on ice and fisheries patrols, search and rescue duty, and enforcing prohibition. Leftmost in Thayer patter camouflage, Algonquin is the newest of the three, in spite of her diminutive size. Her design was apparently based on the earlier Tampa class (explaining the resemblance). Throughout the war she served in the Atlantic escorting local convoys. (Tallapoosa and Haida histories taken from Wikipedia. Algonquin from uscg.mil/history.)

These three cutters were bought as part of the USCGC "party pack." They're absolutely wonderful additions to an ASW force, though it's a bit of a chore figuring out what the models depict, given the random "blister pack" style assortments without the helpful information cards of more casual games. I initially dug through Jane's, wikipedia, Conway, and maybe one or two other encyclopedic resources I can't immediately recall. While this wasn't quite completely conclusive (the models, after all, seemed generally peacetime while the texts showed mostly wartime appearances) I was able to later confirm them against a Seabattles catalog and to fill in the one or two remaining questions by process of elimination. All are lovely little models and required only light detailing and militarization. In general they were not updated quite as heavily as their larger counterparts since they didn't have the legs for deep-ocean escort.

Of course if you want the ubiquitous Flowers, rest assured that Viking Forge can oblige. Below are three models bought in a package of six. VF sells three types of Flower. Given the size and duration of the production run it's not surprising that there was considerable variation in armament and even general arrangement. Sheer lines were changed to improve sea-keeping. Stores were altered. Armament was updated as new developments allowed. In many ways it's a little deceptive to think of one Flower class. Thus it's quite nice that VF has three options that differ somewhat from other suppliers. The trio below are probably the earliest of the three varieties on offer. Depicted are Gladiolus, Nasturtium, and Aubretia.

It is unbelievably difficult to get good information on the appearance of such modest ships when one lives a thousand miles from the nearest ocean, and thus from the nearest repository of such art, but once in a while one gets lucky and finds good things on the internet. Aubretia is such a case. I first saw the checkerboard pattern on a website called www.schroeder1250.de. Thomas Schröder appears to be the man behind some of the loveliest ship models and dioramas I've seen, and the challenge of doing a very small part of what he does in half the size was intriguing. I was able to find photographs confirming the checkerboard, though I have no explanation of its significance. Reproducing it accurately was impossible given my modest talents and materials, but I could at least suggest it in a simplified form, which I have done.

Below you can see the Viking Forge "Begonia class" flower next to the GHQ model. The differences in sheer between Aubretia and Dianthus are fairly obvious. Also apparent are variations in the islands, stacks, and armament. Both castings had minor flaws: the Viking Forge casting had a small void that needed to be filled and the GHQ casting was somewhat misaligned, requiring considerable filing to make it straight. In the end both turned out well, but neither was easy.

Yet another interesting Viking Forge offering is the French trawler below: La Nantaise.

La Nantaise is sold as a La Toulonaise class armed trawler. These turn out to be British merchant trawlers taken over by the RN and then handed off to the French. As such it wouldn't be at all out of place to use them as the British fishing trawlers pressed into ASW service by the hundreds. Similarly, there is a generic trawler in the WWI line that could also make a great improvised escort, but that's a project for another day. The only one I have painted up depicts a civilian without benefit of any armament.

I'll close up with a last picture of Aubretia. I am incredibly pleased with how well this little model came out.

As always, thank you for reading.

Sincerely,
The Composer

To War on a Japanese Liner

Just prior to WWII Japan had one of the largest and most modern merchant marines in the world. Military subsidies and government support kept the major ship-builders busy constructing fast new liners and tankers by the score. During the war most of this shipping was taken over by the military and subsequently sunk. If you want to game WWII it's instructive to examine the brief but interesting period between impressment and loss. Several of my newest endeavors have been of this sort, including two ships bought from Viking Forge: Asama Maru and Hikawa Maru.

These are two of the ships Viking Forge casts for the Seabattles line; a very nice line of well sculpted models of generally smaller warships, merchants, and auxiliaries. Hikawa Maru is particularly interesting, as she is one of the very very few Japanese merchant ships to survive the war (the large red crosses no doubt helped) and one of the only Japanese ships of that vintage (merchant or otherwise) still afloat today. She's now a museum ship, which is a rare enough state. It's particularly nice to see a ship more typical (and less glamorous) than the Missouri or Queen Mary preserved and open to the public.

The variety of both generic and specifically Japanese merchant ships available in 1/2400 is impressive. With some careful conversion it can be made even larger. To wit, let's look at three merchant ships from as many suppliers:

In the above photo the two models in front of the pier depict OSK liner Buenos Aires Maru (in civilian colors) and NYK liner Asama Maru (in two-tone grey.) Behind the pier is a model of another NYK liner, Hakusan Maru. The three ships are from Panzerschiffe, Viking Forge/Seabattles, and GHQ respectively. I invested a similar amount of work in all three, building masts and adding details to each. (Even the GHQ ship). Each has advantages and disadvantages, but to my mind all three look pretty good together. For the price, Panzerschiffe is the only way to go, but their variety of available merchant ships is not endless, so if you want a more colorful fleet without scratchbuilding it other suppliers are also useful. Typical Panzerschiffe merchants run $3-4. Viking Forge merchants usually run about twice that, with larger ships costing somewhat more. GHQ merchants run anywhere from four to six times the price of Panzerschiffe, thus making up the smallest percentage of my collection. Even so, some of their ships are quite pretty and I'm willing to shell out every once in a while.

In addition to the companies above, C in C also casts some fine merchants and Viking Forge has some in house sculpts, which you can see below compared to one of the Seabattles ships and a different Panzerschiffe liner.

The two tankers at the left are the Viking Forge and C in C models. Both depict "Kawasaki" type tankers taken over as fleet oilers. Both have had masts added. The Viking Forge model (in the rear) has also bee armed and generally militarized. The Panzerschiffe model, foreground on the right, is older work which I did more quickly and with less research or detail, but even so I think it makes a nice addition to a convoy. The escort in the foreground, sold as an "Etorofu" type escort, is another Viking Forge house sculpt, though a much more recent one than the tanker. Their new work is really quite good, fully up to the standards of C in C or GHQ.  The masts are added, but it's a nice little model even without them. The detail is crisp and the casting is clean. (Cleaner, in fact, than most of their Seabattles casts.)

One final option for 1/2400 merchant ships is available through Panzerschiffe. In addition to the ships in their general catalog they sell a number of "merchant groups." This is a sort of "budget" line that seems to be specifically aimed at convoy gaming. Where a typical merchant might run $3, these generally run a little less than half that, though you must buy them by the group. Each group is $20 and most contain about eight ships. (A few have more and one has seven.) Below are two ships from MG-7 next to the VF/SB Hikawa Maru.  These are less detailed ships (and I have added less detail) but even so, they can serve to flesh out a convoy nicely. (And I think if I invested the time they could look quite nice.) And if you want simple markers in which you don't need to invest the effort of painting, these little merchies, like all Panzerschiffe, are cast in grey and could be used for a game straight out of the box.

If you want to specifically model merchants and auxiliaries 1/1200 might possibly serve you better, but for wargaming the variety of models available in 1/2400 is, I think, quite suitable. There's a little something for every budget and every skill.

Winning the War on a Tide of American Oil

Whatever your politics or the state of your scientific literacy it's fairly easy to see WWII as an "oil" war. Suddenly everything was mechanized and everywhere you went everyone wanted a little slice of the oil-pie. It was a war about burning gas: tanks, airplanes, trucks, diesels, ships with bunkers full of unrefined sweet Java crude . . .

Somewhere someone once said that the Allies "floated to victory on a tide of American oil." I've heard it attributed to Churchill, but googling about isn't really helping much here, so I won't worry so much about who said it. The truth of the matter  is, I think, more or less self-evident.

But getting that Texas, Pennsylvania, or California distilate to the fronts where it was needed was a a complex matter, and that's where tankers and oilers come in. Some of the first merchant ships I bought were oilers: a pair of German tankers repurposed to serve as Cimarrons and two Shiretokos, one of which was apparently converted into a seaplane tender (the subject for a future conversion, no doubt.) But these early efforts were remarkably crude and unsophisticated. (And the "Cimarrons" were later rebuilt into civilian tankers.) I've gotten a little better at the game since.

Like most naval developments of the twentieth century, fleet oilers found their genesis in the Royal Navy and matured rapidly in the U.S. Navy. One of the earliest U.S. offerings was a class of oilers named after rivers (as would become standard practice) called the Kanawha class. I've chosen to depict USS Maumee, AO-2.

AO-2 differs identifiably from AO-1 in engineering plant, among other things. Where Kanawha was a conventional steamship of her age, AO-2 Maumee was one of the first U.S. ships of her size fitted with diesels. Not surprisingly, the funnel arrangements of the two ships are visibly different. Maumee carries hers farther aft. More about Maumee later.

Next up we have a trio of Cimarron class oilers from as many sculptors. The farthest, Kaskaskia, is from Viking Forge, though with considerable interference by yours truly. This is an older model that I include only for comparison. Second from the front is Platte, from a casting of a Seabattles original. In front is the GHQ model I used for Cimarron herself. The front two are a little closer to manufacturer's original, but both have aftermarket booms and radars, and the GHQ ship also has new masts. 

If you've spent much time studying auxiliaries, you'll no doubt have noticed that the armament was both inconsistent across classes and quite flexible over time. The Cimarron class is a nice example. Encyclopedia articles will tell you the "class" sported four 5"/38 DP rifles and a Mk 33 FC director. On paper the US Navy wished this to be true. In reality the armament varied considerably and tended to consist of whatever was available and more or less appropriate at the yard when the ships were taken over. (Though I suspect they all did have the FC set.) The careful viewer will note that all four of these are different. The REALLY careful viewer will say that this is quite appropriate. The EXTREMELY careful viewer will tell me where I have screwed up and exactly what each ship ACTUALLY sported in mid-1942. I hope that this viewer is an ordinance officer from the USN in 1942, which means, sadly, that he probably can't correct me anymore. (Which isn't to say I don't make mistakes, just that I hope they're pretty small.) If corrected I will GLADLY fix my mistakes. (Very gladly for vets of the ships depicted.) In the meantime, I'm doing my best. Please forgive any mistakes you see and feel free to offer corrections (with footnotes please). I want them to be right, but I will accept "close enough." (And I confess to certain artistic liberties to make them look better from a scale mile away.)

Anyway, in spite of their varried and colorful origins, I think they make a fairly convincing class. The forward two are beamier and more detailed, but not beyond comparison with the other (after appropriate refitting).

Of course in reality, much more crude traveled in civilian bottoms. Below are two that flew the red ensign.

Well, more or less. To starboard (from the ships' perspective, of course) is a ship I'm calling Inverarder. In reality this was a demilitarized version of an oiler ordered by the RN and intended to be War Hagara that British Mexican Petroleum was using as a tanker. Trouble is, while the model is about the right size and apparent age (it was a Viking Forge collier Mars) the arrangement of the War class oilers appears to have been quite unusual: engines amidships in a three island structure, much like a conventional freighter and not at all like an engines aft tanker. (Or collier.) Oops. Well, ignore that. I was having a devil of a time finding a tanker of about the right size and age still in service in Britain by 1941 (searching the 1942 E. B. Talbot-Booth, Roger Jordan's The World's Merchant Ships: 1939, and sundry places online), so let's just play pretend and ignore the defects on that one.

The ship to port is perhaps closer, but also rather fanciful. She's meant to depict (approximately) a British coastal tanker called Lunula operated by Moss and Co. I was able to find one picture of her online . . . afire and sinking after striking a mine in the Thames. The ship was already awash amidships and going down by the bow, so everything forward of the mainmast is pure speculation. (Given that there was no foremast sticking out of the water I assume she had none, but even that is far from a safe bet.) Still, the funnel colors are correct, and the hull was at the least dark. (Though many things look dark when below clouds of roiling black smoke.)

Where the two ladies above both sank, both the girls below took torpedoes and lived to tell the tale. These are somewhat better depictions of two tankers from one piece of the grandly dismembered Standard Oil, Standard Oil of New Jersey or Esso.

The rear ship, a C in C T-2, depicts a ship called Esso Bolivar operated by an offshore subsidiary called the Panama Transport Company. That in the foreground approximates John Worthington, which served Esso directly. Esso Bolivar took a torpedo in the early days of the war while carrying a shipment of water, which may well have saved her from a firey death. After being hit she apparently soldiered on towards Guantanamo, suffering the indignity of continued shelling until the captain ordered her abandoned. Fortunately, the cavalry had heard her distress signal before the radio was shot out. A minesweeper found the U-boat still shelling the abandoned ship and scared her off before picking up the crew. The next day a rescue party went aboard, restored power, and sailed the ship to Gitmo.

John Worthington was slightly less lucky. She survived the attack, off the coast of Brazil, put in to Trinidad for temporary repairs, and ultimately made Galveston for overhaul, but the damage was deemed to great for economic repair. She was ultimately abandoned and sank in shallow water where she lies to this day.

Thus concludes the present edition of the NIFTI miniature naval gazette. We'll talk more about building Maumee, transporting dry(ish) goods, and escorting these large floating targets through sub-infested waters in the next issue. As always, thank you for your indulgence.

Tenno Junyokan Banzai! Tenno Senkan Banzai!

Long live the big boys! Long live wagons! Long live guns the size of steers!

But first, God bless the little children:

These are just the sorts of things Japan could have really used more of. Viking Forge sells them as the Etorofu class, but they serve almost equally well as the preceding Shimushu class, for which I have chiefly used them. Collectively the Imperial Navy called these two classes "Type A Kaibokan." These small but handy escorts were upgraded throughout the war, eventually boasting six depth charge projectors, a trench mortor, and a pretty decent sonar suite on a displacement of just under nine hundred tons. They weren't quite Flowers in terms of ASW, since Japan never had anything quite as nice as Hedgehog or Squid, but they were moving in the right direction, albeit with a multi-purpose military hull that cost a little too much. As the war drug on Japan began to realize that they really needed more of these things cheaper and with more and better ASW projection, so they simplified the hull dramatically, but it was a case of too little too late. If Japan had invested in mass producing cheap versions of these from the early forties the submarine war might have been a somewhat more difficult proposition for the U.S.

All or nearly all of Japan's prewar escorts suffered to some extent from one particular problem: all were capable, multi-role ships that cost too much to be economic ASW platforms. The Type A Kaibokan described above are no exception, but the next two classes might be even better examples.

These two are the torpedo boat Otori and the small minelayer Natsushima, both from Panzerschiffe. Both were intended for convoy escort, but both were also outfitted for additional roles: the Otoris had a significant anti-surface capability in the form of several 4.7" deck guns and a triple torpedo mount, and a thirty knot top speed. Natsushima and her sister Nasami shipped over a hundred mines on a five hundred ton hull. The Otoris in particular might well have been very capable ASW escorts had they dispensed with the torpedoes, most of the deck guns, and a large portion of the powerplant. As it was they probably had too much equipment on too little displacement to be entirely satisfactory, and they surely tried to do too many different things. I suspect some of this stems from the same Japanese preference for a few very capable ships rather than many less capable ships that is so evident in major combatants. If you're planning to fight a conventional war with a wealthier opponent this makes some sense. If you need to defend against asymmetric or economic warfare (or both in one submersible package) it doesn't really work out.

Speaking of submersible packages . . .

The above two submarines are different models of the same class from different manufacturers. For reasons that may be self evident I have not used them as such. At the top is a conversion of a C in C miniature, which they market as I-19. Below is Panzerschiffe's I-15. Both of these boats were B-1 types. Since C in C miniatures virtually always seem just a little smaller than their competitors (they claim that theirs are the correct scale) I have used their boat as a slightly less bulky C-1. To do so I stripped off the hangar and catapult track, cut the deck gun off and replaced it forward, and added a guard at the bow for the forward anchor of the radio antenna. I decided to use the Panzerschiffe model for I-19 since the GHQ search plane made a much better visual fit on the larger model. The catapult track is broad, making it easier to mount the aircraft, and the hangar is large enough to look plausible if quite cramped. I made surprisingly few alterations, all considered. I did add a crane, but since this is collapsible it would be quite excusable to leave it off. I changed out the deck gun for one I built up out of stock to make it look a little lighter, but again, this isn't vital. The only alteration I considered truly necessary was the addition of a pair of periscopes.

Among my new-build Japanese destroyers are these two Fubukis: Fubuki and Sazanami.

Both of these ships were quite active in the early war and both were the veterans of many battles in the East Indies, the South Pacific, and ultimately Sazanami of Coral Sea and Fubuki of Midway. Both are Panzerschiffe models. The paint is somewhat speculative and a little inexact, but attempts to portray the fact that different Japanese naval arsenals used different paint formulations resulting in quite different shades of grey, with Sasebo's being darkest and Maizuru's the lightest.

Just when I think I've got a handle on Japanese destroyers I learn that they built a quick-firing behemoth during the war as an AA escort for their carrier fleet:

I first learned of the Akizuki class in the "Imperial Council" thread on the World War 2 Forum, www.ww2f.com. Somehow I had repeatedly overlooked them in my previous researches. They're surprisingly large even for a navy known for building large and capable destroyers; weighing in at 3,700 tons fully loaded. With eight quick firing 4" DP guns for a main armament these must have been fearsome AA escorts indeed, almost an AA cruiser. I've used yet another Panzerschiffe model to depict them, albeit with the usual added masts.

But I said I'd also built a few heavies. Admiral Takao, this one is for you:

Years ago, when I built Atago, I rather fell in love with Japanese heavy cruisers. These were large, fast, sleek ships with a tremendous punch and the Takao class, with their enormous flag bridge, had an especially menacing and almost modern aspect. While Atago still looks alright, I've learned a lot since then and I put all the lessons to work on Takao (and Nachi.) Both of these are Panzerschiffe models, but I've added quite a lot of detail. You can see masts, rangefinders, secondary gunbarrels, breakwaters, aircraft cranes, anchor chain, and anchors. Most of these are fabricated from simple styrene stock. For anchor chain I use the smallest cylindrical stock I can find and crush it in a pair of pliers to give it a corrugated surface that looks chain-like from a distance. The aircraft are GHQ details and the ship's boats are C in C. In order to get the appearance of boards I run deck brushstrokes in parallel, painting a light wood color over black. I typically allow a little black to show through this second coat. When you drybrush a light color across the direction of the brushstrokes it actually makes the "boards" pop out just a little and it can be quite convincing.

The last new ship I'll discuss today is Ise, which you will see in the forground of this picture:

This is a nice study of what can be done with a Panzerschiffe model and some patience. For comparison I've placed Ise in front of a C in C Kongo I painted up as Kirishima several years ago. When I first bought the C in C miniature it left me somewhat dissatisfied with my (increasingly large) collection of Panzerschiffe miniatures, but I have more time than money, so the best solution for me was to find a way to make what I had look better. That's when I started trying to find a way to add deck details. It's taken a good couple of years and a lot of practice, but I think you can see that it's paid off. I think my simple Panzerschiffe Ise looks entirely presentable next to the C in C Kirishima. (To which I have also added a mainmast, to be completely fair. I haven't been content to build a model as-is in years.) Ise had the complete treatment described above plus radar. Apparently she was the first ship in the whole of the Japanese Navy to carry air search radar. A very handsome ship, if I do say so myself.

Minor American Combatants

Minor combatants are often amongst the unsung heroes of naval warfare. (They're in good company with auxiliaries and merchant vessels. Everyone likes solid teeth in their military, but without a good logistical tail the teeth have very little bite.)

I've long been interested in minor combatants and lately I've begun to find more sources for off the shelf models of these. Most notable amongst these is the Seabattles line which is available in the U.S. as recasts from Viking Forge. While the models from this line aren't quite as crisply cast as GHQ, the models have a lighter, more delicate appearance and look fantastic painted up, and since most are one piece castings even inexperienced modelers will enjoy them. I bought two packages in the U.S. range: the Treasury class cutters and the USCGC "Party Pack."

The first contains four models that look something like this:

This depicts them more or less as they looked before the war, so I felt some changes were needed to militarize them. As the war grew longer the Navy added more and more armament to these lovely little ships, but the first round primarily saw the addition of an improved AA suite and some additional ASW weapons. I started with USS Ingham, which was a little less modified early war than some others. I worked from this photograph I found on the Historic Naval Ships Association website:

This is apparently a modified version of what was called the "Thayer" system of deceptive camouflage. Thus far this scheme is unique in my collection. If I understand the early war changes correctly, she had one of her 5"/51s landed and gained 2 smaller mounts forward (possibly surplus 4"/50s), a pair of smaller mounts aft (possibly surplus 3"s), two autocannon/machinegun grade mounts, and some ASW astern. I didn't attempt to depict the ASW, but you can see my changes to the AA and surface fit. [Thanks to Carronade on WW2f for the corrections.]

Further, I added the mast, the searchlight platform, and the bedspring antenna according to the usual crushed styrene stock method.

The next ship was much more satisfying:

This one took some real research. She came from the "Party Pack." One of my only complaints with Viking Forge thus far is their refusal to sell the other cutters in their inventory individually, selling them only as a random selection from a pile of prewar, wartime, and postwar cutters. (If I were going to be uncharitable I might guess that all the cutters accidentally ended up together and rather than try to sort them back out it was decided to shake up the box and sell them in "booster" packs a la Magic the Gathering [of Your Money.]) It was on me to figure out quite what I had. Careful research helped me identify some of them, but only after I found a complete Seabattles catalog saved in my files, lord knows where I found that, was I able to confirm some and correct the rest.This turns out to be USS Northstar. (IX-148 to the Navy, WPG-59 USCGC Northstar to the Coast Guard.) And I was absolutely endeared by the dainty little ship with the SOC aboard aft. I attempted to depict her as I found her in this picture from NavSource:

Last but not least is a pair of tugs I acquired from Panzerschiffe:

The dark blue one wearing MS-21 depicts USS Vireo, which attempted the rescue of USS Yorktown. She was built as a Lapwing class Minesweeper but later reclassified as a fleet tug (old) ATO-144. The nearer ship, wearing MS-22 graded paint, depicts USS Navajo, AT-64. Navajo survived air attack and numerous tricky tows in the Guadalcanal campaign only to be lost to a torpedo from I-39 en route between Bora Bora and Pago Pago in the Spring of '43 far behind the front lines.

These two models required a bit more work than the Viking Forge acquisitions, but the end result is fairly satisfying. All of the above might call at a South Pacific harbor like this one:

But discussion of that can wait for a later post. Next up: Imperial Japanese tiny terribles (and a few heavys.)

Liners, Merchies, and Logistics: Part II

To continue the theme presented in Part I it's time to start talking about some smaller liners, merchies, tramps, and maybe even an auxiliary or two.

The very word "liner" tends to summon images of the QE-II and her ilk, but in the days when surface ships dominated the trans-oceanic passenger business the overwhelming bulk of "liners" were smaller ships, ships of closer to four thousand tons than forty. The big kids got all the press, but the little kids did all the work. While the crown gave Cunard a generous subsidy to build Queen Mary the majority of the merchant ships flying the British flag could count on no such benefit, and it might surprise the reader to learn that the average tonnage of British flagged merchant vessels, of which there were almost nine thousand excluding great lakes steamers, was about 2,300 tons. [Extrapolated from E. B. Talbot-Booth, Merchant Ships. (MacMillan, New York, 1942.) The add for Tremo Mouldings cast 1/1200 scale ships on p. 27 buried among adds for Hepolite marine piston rings and Harco mild steel cable plates is QUITE intriguing. It reads: "We are anxious to make contact with Importers in every market of the World, as although Metal Toys cannot be exported at present - they may soon!" Even in wartime there are gamers and collectors.]

Anyway, I digress. "Liners" were, of course, always a little larger than your average merchant vessel, but the grand dames of the major European lines were in no way typical. Initially, if I understand these things correctly, liner simply meant "ship belonging to a shipping line." It came to also carry the addendum "and traveling on a fixed steaming schedule between regularly scheduled ports." In the popular imagination I suspect this came to mean "large fast passenger vessels" but so far as I can tell the latter was never an industry definition, while the former more or less was. Most liners of the WWII era seem to be vessels of around five thousand tons with larger/newer/faster ones sometimes ranging as high as ten or even fifteen thousand tons, but rarely if ever more without substantial government subsidy. (And with naval conscription often predicated on these subsidies. Witness NYK's Izumo Maru and her sister Kashiwara Maru.)

NYK's 1923 Hakusan Maru seems altogether more typical, and it is she that GHQ has chosen to depict.

While this ship suffers less exaggeration than many GHQ offerings, the masts provided have the usual problems. The majority of them were bent beyond recognition in the box and they're so very delicate that even if straightened they wouldn't last through a game. To add a little further injury they're also incorrect. My advice: throw them out and start over. It works better that way. Styrene stock will give you more control and better results. It takes CA+ better than the pewter, it's easier to trim accurately, and it's straighter and rounder. Modern pewter castings are nice for many things, but long slender objects aren't on that list.

The Viking Forge/Seabattle model below depicts HMS Rawlpindi; another typical midsize liner, in this case a P&O passenger steamer, taken over by the Royal Navy as an armed merchant cruiser.

 

Seabattle chose to model the ship in her civilian garb, so I spent a little time militarizing her. The two pictures  give you an idea of what I did: adding eight six-inch rifles in single mountings scattered around the ship, removing one funnel (I can only speculate as to why the RN did so, but the preponderance of the evidence seems to suggest that they did), and adding the usual masts. Out of the box this ship could make a quite lovely liner. Conversion to armed merchant service involved a little more work, but since she was a famous victim of two very famous raiders I felt obliged.

Another Viking Forge/Seabattle ship I built depicts Schoharie.

This very lovely little ship was a "Hog Islander" launched in 1919 that served throughout WWII. Like Queen Elizabeth discussed in the last chapter, this is a single piece casting. No masts were provided, though the rafts rigged to the side of the ship are a quite nice touch.  In general, this is a very nice casting of a quite  ubiquitous class of ship. These were, in many ways, the precursors of the ever-present Liberty Ship and I'm glad that Viking Forge and Seabattle make one available.

One of the other things that pleases me about my Seabattles acquisitions: I often have quite a bit of difficulty tracking down the specific prototypes for "typical" merchants, which makes it harder for me to decide what ship I wish to depict. (I strive for accuracy wherever possible.) Models with names like "Typical Maru Transport" and "Tramp Steamer" don't help, but quite often even "named" ships turn out to be very difficult to pinpoint, and I'm amassing a fairly large personal library of period ship lists and have access to google. I've rarely had that problem with Seabattle. Of all the major manufacturers, they seem to provide the broadest and best documented  catalog of merchants, auxiliaries, and minor combatants. If you want to do convoy gaming in 1/2400 they're a supplier you should be familiar with. (Even if you order from Viking Forge, finding a Seabattle catalog is invaluable, since it makes the prototypes clearer.)

I'll close with two more GHQ models: MV Tower Hill and MV Gran. (Top to bottom.)

MV Gran is a case in point of the problem I detailed above. I can find no record of a ship matching this description. I have no idea what ship served as the prototype. It's not in E. B. Talbot-Booth. It's not in Jordan's The World's Merchant Fleets: 1939. I can't find it with Google. In short, I have no reason to believe there ever was such a ship. As far as I can tell it's a fantasy, albeit one that looks relatively typical of British merchant steamers. (Which I suppose does make it a little easier for me to build and paint, since I can just make it up.) Again, the masts provided with these two ships were more or less useless and were all summarily discarded. (All were bent in the brand new sealed box. Most were asymmetrical. Sadly, I've come to believe that this is the rule and not the exception.)

I don't mean to seem as though I hate GHQ. I've enjoyed building some of their models and their detail parts are invaluable, but I've found their merchant ships somewhat disappointing so far. Perhaps I am unjustly holding them to a higher standard, but they do cost half as much again as most of the competition. If you're going to charge a premium price you should provide a premium product. Or if you want it another way:
GHQ, find a way to make some merchant masts of comparable quality to your IJN tripods. They should be straight, symmetrical, and durable. If you can't do that in pewter you might consider casting them in styrene. Other miniatures gaming companies that don't even bear mention have figured out how to package models with parts in different materials. Snap to it kids. You can do better. I'm confident of it.

Next time: the long delayed 2012 Fleet Review.

Liners, Merchies, and Logistics: Part I

While there have been some exceptions, like a few Japanese heavies of one sort or another, I've spent the bulk of my modeling effort this winter on minor combatants, minor powers, and merchant ships. Today I'll recapitulate some of what I've learned about the dizzying array of merchant vessels and their derivatives available to the 1/2400th modeler.

I've mentioned before that I'm a little bit more of a modeler than I am a wargamer and as such I confess that I have an interest in things that will, in all probability, never face the dice of my fellow gamers. I like merchant ships for many reasons, sometimes because of their functional elegance, sometimes their efficiency, often their colorful variety, and in a few cases I can't help but be impressed by their sheer bravura size. These last are most often the great liners. The biggest and sexiest never saw a lick of combat during WWII, spending the war in yoeman service ferrying troops back and forth between assorted ports of call in the New World and the Old. Their smaller brethren, which I have also modeled, often faced far greater hardship. Let's start with the "super-bigs."

Virtually everyone in the West is familiar with one particular budget super-liner (I say budget since niceties like a double bottom and full-height water-tight compartments were apparently scrapped on the drawing board to save a few ponies) that managed to get tangled up with some solidified water on her maiden voyage. Everyone knows about her sheer awe-inspiring swaggering mass, her virtually immutable stature. Less attention is paid to her comparably sized and sometimes larger sisters and cousins, since they didn't leave the party during the first dance. But geeky gear-headed types often like them. To some, names like Leviathan, or Rex summon images of gigantic whales or kingly dinosaurs, but geeks of my particular bent might think of preposterously oversized collections of steam and steel. Like all things writ grand few of these ever really made simple economic sense. Many were grandiose political statements, not unlike some Battleships we love, but usually (ahem, usually) without the comparably exaggerated casualty statistics

My first super-liner in miniature was a Panzerschiffe model of Olympic. I won't detail her here beyond saying that she sat lonely for a long time, singularly the largest ship in my collection, forever needing an update but with no particular reason to give her one. No longer. Perhaps a year ago an acquaintance of mine offered me a copy GHQ's Queen Mary at a post collision discount. Some work was required to straighten the bow and reconstruct the fo'c'sle, and to build more prototypical masts, but after some time in drydock . . . God Save the (wartime grey) Queen!

It's pretty, but I truly think GHQ overdid it with their usual detail exaggeration this time. I understand, I do. I exaggerate all kinds of things myself, even on models, but this has an almost fantasy feel to it. At the three dollar price I paid I think it's a remarkably good deal, but at full retail I can't recommend it. It's a difficult model to assemble, GHQ stock masts are virtually always badly bent and equally frequently incorrect, and it's just remarkably expensive for what it is. I'm glad to have it, but I probably wouldn't recommend it.

Of course Queen Mary had an even larger half sister Queen Elizabeth:

 

Last fall I broke down and ordered some Seabattles castings from Viking Forge. Reviews on the net suggest that they're not as crisp as the Seabattles originals, that they're less detailed, or ill formed. At table distance I actually think they look better than GHQ and they're certainly simpler for the inexperienced modeler. This casting required no assembly and only minimal cleaning. I added the masts, since it came with none, but I see no advantage to badly mauled and universally fragile incorrect masts over no masts at all. Ironically, the cost is identical to the GHQ offering, but I walked away somewhat more happy. I will say that not everyone will feel the same way: there's a little more flash to clean, the casting really isn't as "crisp" out of the box, and it looks less detailed out of the box, but I think it paints up better and looks somewhat better and I very much suspect it will wear better. Perhaps more relevantly, they have the model in their line and no one else does. In fact, they have quite a few liners and while none are cheap, the less luxurious liners have comparatively more pedestrian prices.

But I like the large and extravagant, so I also ordered RMS Aquitania

and the lovely French liner Normandie.

In the end I hemmed and hawed about how to paint each of these. Normandie was easier, since she was lost during conversion. The Cunarders would surely look more lovely in proper black and white, but Aquitania is actually cast with AA armament and I didn't wish to demilitarize her and as she went, so too must the two Queens.

As noted above the great liners led pretty uneventful careers during World War II. In Liners, Merchies, and Logistics: Part II I discuss some of the smaller liners and merchies I bought around the same time, many of which faced more risk and suffered worse fates.

Two Conversions of One Model

In the same vein as previously . . .

Yet another fire sale purchase: a pair of Vestals. This is a bit of a problem as, so far as I can tell, Vestal was a singleton. But even beyond that, I was a little disappointed to find that Vestal was depicted in her 1920s guise. The ship that sat alongside Arizona at Pearl looked DRAMATICALLY different, as her entire superstructure had been scrapped and replaced in a refit just previous to the war.So following in the footsteps of the institution I'm trying to model, I cut Vestal off at deck and built up from there.



You can see that I extended the fo'c'sle deck with some rectangular stock. Small cookies cut from large cylindrical stock serves as gun tubs for fours and fives. You can glue them to the deck and then file them down to make them narrower. Slivers of scrap serve as splinter shields and the breach sections of the exposed artillery and very small cylindrical stock cut to length works for masts and barrels. More cylindrical styrene stock squashed with an appropriate size of pliers makes half decent anchor chain.

I fabricated the superstructure from rectangular stock. The center of the bridge is two pieces sandwiched together with a third laid flat on top. I filed all of this down to a suitably angular shape. and added the detached wings with two more small pieces. The center superstructure is two long pieces sandwiched together. Another two pieces placed outside them serve for the odd outboard structures.

At this point, it's rather wise to paint any approximately "interior" spaces a suitably dark color (like black). Extensive "negative" space (like an open hangar deck, say) can be virtually impossible to paint later.

Being the occasional fool, I didn't. (I've always done this before. Why oh why didn't I this time?) I still find myself trying vainly to touch up brilliant white bits that I notice in the middle of everything.

But anyway . . .

Tiny pieces of strip styrene served to bridge the void so that I could place C in C boats and launches atop them. (C in C sells several sets of detail parts in their WWI line. They're well worth the investment.) You can bend a piece of modest cylindrical stock and cut it off just at the elbow to make ventilators. Small pieces of flat styrene cut to shape can be used for Carley floats and additional ships boats. Simply painting the center black will usually suffice to make it look contoured. Additional pieces of rectangular stock can be filed into triangular shapes to serve as deckhouses. All added together, they give the ship a suitably "cluttered" appearance.

Dip it in blue paint and you have a U.S. auxiliary suitable for use in the Pacific. (Okay, I didn't really dip it in blue paint. Nor did the U.S. Navy, but sometimes it's hard to tell.)



In some ways Harry Lee was actually easier. Of course, finding another WWII auxiliary of about the same size as a ship first ordered in 1904 took some doing, but once I'd found my candidate I was pleased to note that the superstructures were similar enough that I didn't have to scrap this one. Harry Lee was about 10 feet longer and about 2,000 tons lighter, which is pretty much within the margin of error at 1:2400.

The biggest difference is the deck. The fo'c'sle deck extends all the way to the bridge. In fact, it steps up just forward of the superstructure. This had to be filled and built up with more large strip stock. Masts, armament, and deck fittings worked much as on Vestal.

The only new items were hold covers and Higgins boats. For hold covers I use large squares of thin sheet styrene. The Higgins boats, or LCVPs, are carved out of the standard rectangular blanks. I used a small chisel to cut a shallow indentation for the suggestion of the troop compartment and filed the stern into a flat triangle. They're not perfect, but at table distance they look pretty tolerable.



Thankfully, I got to paint something other than blue for a change. The MS-21 truly disappears against my "ocean" in the right lighting conditions. It makes much much better "camouflage." But it's much less pretty and not remotely as much fun to paint.



So there's my first APA.