Proditor's Perpetually unfinished Navies

[dy031101]

I find your Ghost Fleet holding lots and lots of promises. 

[proditor]

New stuff coming tomorrow, plus I've been pondering breaking out the bigger fleets into their own threads assuming they ever get finished.

But on the block tomorrow, a new member of the Ghost Fleet, and work on the remaining surprise member begins to take place!  Come back for pics!

EDIT: Too durn sick for pics.  Hopefully in the next day or two.  Blech.

[proditor]

New members of the Ghost Fleet!

We needed some dedicated air defense, so I repurposed a light cruiser.







And Hmmm....what might this be?

[proditor]

Everyone seemed to like the Richelieu hybrid, and I made some more progress, so hopefully folks will get a kick out of the next pics.

[Jschmus]

And Hmmm....what might this be?

Is that Taiho, fitted with an angled deck a la USS Midway?

[Thorvic]

No its a Shinano but with Midway style angled deck.

The Taiho has a British style enclosed bows and would make an ideal post war JMSDF carrier as they planned to build them as a class to an improved design for their fleet carriers, Fujimi have just released a new Taiho class which is an improvement over the older Tamiya kit but unfortunately they have gone with their usual style of boxed in deck lifts rather than include a hanger deck  .

The Shinano looks the part prod, a quick twist of fate and have the IJN save the veseel and then beach it so it survives the war. Going to be interesting how you detail it with an updated island, radar suite and of course self defence weapons. What era are you thinking of having it ?

G

[proditor]

Late 80's actually.  I'm going to extend the flight deck and enclose the bow.  That should be fun.   

As to the identification, you are mostly right...it's Hull 111, never stopped at 30%, but still on the slipways at 70% complete when the war ends.  That being the case, she becomes the centerpiece of the new Ghost fleet and a test case for a lot of what goes into the SCB -125 and Midway conversions.  I'm going to revive Amagi as a name.

[Thorvic]

Sound choice and easier than salvaging the Shinano  . Hurricane bow should help make it look the part and support the bow catapults.

So late 80's take it there will be Naval F-4 Phantom or maybe F-18s ?, Corsairs ? kawasaki Vikings  for ASW, COD and AEW ?. With Sea Sparrow & Phalamx for self defence along with a decent radar suite ?

Just thinking you could actually do this ship at various stages in its career ?:-

Late 50's basic limited angled deck as per the Fujimi Eagle, centerline lifts, open bows,  radar & AA guns from the new Early JMSDF set by pitroad. Add early jets, skyraiders maybe Gannet ASW aircraft or early Trackers.

60's refit, new angled deck and lifts, enclosed bows, better radar better AA guns or even missiles, Tracker, Tracer together with maybe Crusader or Phantoms, Skyhawks or possibly Intruders ?

Looking forward to how this one progresses.

Cheers

Geoff

[Joe C-P]

If you'll forgive me a bit of cold-water-of-reality-dashing, Shinano had the same problem as the Midways - a heavily armoured deck, and it was even worse so. The Midways' angled deck upgrades were never as successful as the Essexes', and the Shinano's deck was even thicker. All that weight up high, plus adding more, makes for a tendency to roll.

I admit I did do a 1950s Shinano, as a USN update to carry P2Vs for their nuclear capability, a Pacific counterpart to the Med-based Midways.

But, as always, it's not my model but yours, so do what you want! :-)

[proditor]

Well that's the other reason I'm using hull 111 and not Shinano.    If the decision to finish her as a carrier comes even earlier in the building process, you might get something that superficially looks similar, but doesn't have to go through miles of deck armor to make things work.  

I wasn't going to do the full on crazy angled deck until i realized I had hull 111 as a possibility actually.  I was looking at something much more austere.  But hey, with "Amagi" you get all kinds of new fun stuff.  

[ysi_maniac]

Hybrid Richelieu is a marvel!

[proditor]

Okay, dusting this off again after a long and probably needed break from styrene.  Surprisingly, most of the stuff is almost exactly how I left it over a year ago, which is both good and bad.  Pics in a day or so, and I made some new puchases to finish out some of those ideas.

Anyway, back to hacking plastic and PSR.  

[proditor]

I threatened pictures, so here we go.

So this is my BBCV from like...a decade ago.  Or at least it seems that way.  It had the Y Martin Marietta deck floated for Phase II. 



And to be honest, I've never quite liked it.  It's fairly close to the design, and I did a ton of work, but I still just never liked it.  So I did this.



Yup, just tore that sucker out.

But now what to put there?

I have this idea ya see...

[Joe C-P]

There was a proposal with a catapult and arrestor gear, though imagining landing in all the turbulence of that superstructure.
Perhaps if you cut down and streamlined the superstructure?

[Thorvic]

Nice to see you have dusted off the shipyard again 

With Hybrid New Jersey you could cant the funnels over as per JFK CV