USS Enterprise (CV-6)

[eswube]

Fantastic drawings, as usual.

[shipsinker]

I would love to see the uss saratoga and lexington.

[emperor_andreas]

I would love to see the uss saratoga and lexington.

They are in the archives.

[heuhen]

I would love to see the uss saratoga and lexington.

http://shipbucket.com/


I do wonder if we should have a direct link to the archive in the forum...

[shipsinker]

I was meaning the top view drawings that you do so great

[Charybdis]

Astounding work! I'm bit late to the thread...

As with the Princeton, this sets the bar for USN carriers on SB.

Two things regarding colors:

Wasn't Measure 21 revised in 1945? I thought the blue pigment had been removed due to lack of availability and the color used was #7 Navy Grey and #4 Deck Grey.

Also with the switch to the #21 Flight Deck Stain (revised) the deck stripes were (chrome?) yellow. The below link shows color film of Enterprise in March 1945.

https://youtu.be/96QHFvMbW5A?t=50

I'll be looking in more detail in the coming days. Thanks so much for your immense effort on this subject.

Edit: March 45, not 44

[Colosseum]

I was looking forward to your reply!

Wasn't Measure 21 revised in 1945? I thought the blue pigment had been removed due to lack of availability and the color used was #7 Navy Grey and #4 Deck Grey.

The new colors were in use by mid-1945, but only at the stateside yards. The forward areas (including Pearl Harbor as I understand it) were still working thru the old stocks of the blue-grey pigments. Since the ship was repainted in Dec 1944 at PHNY, I have no reason to believe it was repainted into the updated formula. After the ship's mid-45 refit at Puget Sound, I have a high degree of certainty it was repainted into the revised colors, but not before.

Also with the switch to the #21 Flight Deck Stain (revised) the deck stripes were (chrome?) yellow. The below link shows color film of Enterprise in March 1944.

Good catch - I had no color photos of this period to work off and assumed the deck striping was white. I'll make this change with the next round of revisions.

Greatly anticipating further commentary

[David Latuch]

Ian:
She is absolutely marvelous and fantastic!

[Charybdis]

After looking over the drawings I thought I would post a few observations.



1. The 1945 drawing has a few gremlins. The starboard yard arm of the foremast has been cropped and some of the forward 20mm have a few pixels missing around the shield.

3. It's interesting to see that except for the tbs antennae, the profile has not altered at all. Probably due to the fact that the ship spent so much time in the combat zone.

4. I love the detail added such as the flags in the flag box, ammo stacked around the 40mm splinter protection, lights. Is that a round sitting in the 5in gun breach?

5. I'm interested to know where you got your measurements for the breadth of the flight deck. I only found the breadth for the main deck and my drawings of Yorktown Class look a touch narrow. Your drawing looks right by my eyes...

6. I'm not so keen on the shading at the bow, it seems a bit too straight. Maybe some shading under the stb aft 5in guns as that's quite a steep angle.

7. What's your source for all the seawater openings on the hull?

8. We need to clone you and redo all the USN carriers.


This is a great tribute to arguably the greatest fighting ship in history.

[Colosseum]

Thx for your reply!

1. The 1945 drawing has a few gremlins. The starboard yard arm of the foremast has been cropped and some of the forward 20mm have a few pixels missing around the shield.

The result of too hurried copy-pasting into my final templates

3. It's interesting to see that except for the tbs antennae, the profile has not altered at all. Probably due to the fact that the ship spent so much time in the combat zone.

That's right - I found almost no major changes to the ship throughout this period (likely because it was in the combat zone for most of the time...) I did notice the addition of a plexiglas windscreen and a venturi shield on the 07 level above Pri-Fly appearing in a photo from Feb 1945, which will be added to the 1945 plan view in the next round of updates.

I'm sure there were other changes made, but without clear photo evidence I can't identify them.

Is that a round sitting in the 5in gun breach?

I found some color photos of this mount type and the interior of the breech was polished brass, so I chose to represent that in the drawing - my older work (which was usually entirely monotone) did not accurately capture this kind of stuff.

[/5. I'm interested to know where you got your measurements for the breadth of the flight deck. I only found the breadth for the main deck and my drawings of Yorktown Class look a touch narrow. Your drawing looks right by my eyes...

This drawing was plotted from Floating Drydock plans of the ship in late 1944, and then modified as necessary based on photos. The breadth of the flight deck (and all other measurements) came from these plans. The length measurements were cross-checked against those in Friedman's US Carriers, but the beam measurements in Friedman's are not particularly helpful as the exact location of the measurement is not mentioned. The flight deck drawing from the Booklet of General Plans for CV-5 (prewar) matches the flight deck drawing from the Floating Drydock, so I suspect they share the same original source.

Tracy White from ModelWarships board located the original BOGP for CV-6 in 1944, but unfortunately it was segmented into 4 different sections and shot onto microfilm, and he couldn't provide any scans. The camouflage drawings for CV-6 were built off the same BOGP, but don't contain a plan view...

6. I'm not so keen on the shading at the bow, it seems a bit too straight. Maybe some shading under the stb aft 5in guns as that's quite a steep angle.

I went back and forth on this for a while before landing on this solution. I'll consider revisiting the angle of the fwd shading but I'm not particularly interested in shading the aft 5" gun tub area -- I tried this a few times and it never really worked for me.

7. What's your source for all the seawater openings on the hull?

These are shown in the FDD plans for the ship, and must have been taken from a docking plan of one of the class members. The Maryland Silver Company (now long defunct unfortunately) put out a detailed plan book for the class, but as the owner died several years ago, the site has gone down and the books are no longer available. I was not able to get one, but all the other MSC plan books I have contain docking plans which show the exact configuration of the hull openings and sea chests. If anyone knows where to find a copy of this book I would love to get one!

8. We need to clone you and redo all the USN carriers.

It will take some time... this was a 5 month project! Longest I've ever spent working on one specific drawing. 2 months to research and complete the elevation view (done around late December), 1 month to draw all the aircraft from scratch with insignia, schemes, etc, and then another 2 months to complete the plan views