updated air wing ATLANTIC CONVEYOR 1/700 Falklands

[sandiego89]

Revenge of the ATLANTIC CONVEYOR.   Falklands, late 1982.  1/700 scale scratch build.

This is a tribute to all those that served in the conflict on both sides. As I know there are deep emotions involved, the back story will not include any politics, death or injury.  This is a story from a conflict that has much "what if" potential, especially if the conflict had gone past the Southern Hemisphere winter.      

Back Story:

On May 25, 1982 Capitan Curilovic in Super Entendard 3-A-203 and Teniente Barraza in 3-A-204 launched from Rio Grande air base in Argentina.  After being re-fueled from a KC-130 en-route the duo dropped to low level looking for the British task force.  

Both picked up good radar returns and launched their sea skimming Exocets missiles at 1632, and made their escape the West.

The first Exocet initially held track on HMS INVINCIBLE, but lost track, perhaps due to chaff, or due spoofing by an airborne Sea King.  The missile then found the next largest target, the ATLANTIC CONVEYOR, which had been brought into service to ferry aircraft to the conflict area. Fortunately the missile tore through the thin side of the merchant vessel, traveled the entire thwart ships vehicle deck without detonating, and blew out the other side of the vessel with minor entry and moderate exit damage some 4 meters above the waterline.  

The Second missile tracked toward another large target, which turned out to be HMS HERMES.  The missile ran straight and true and impacted the vessel on the Starboard quarter.  Fire quickly spread up the main deck and engulfed several fueled and armed Sea Kings.  The flight deck fire spread to several other parked aircraft.  Below decks the missile had damaged the starboard shaft bearings and mounts, causing severe vibration and the Captain ordered the shaft secured.  After 12 hours of gallant damage control efforts the fires were under control, but the ship was out of action.  Many acts of heroism were recorded that day.    

With the Hermes out of action, and as air coverage and support of the landings could not be provided by the INVINCIBLE alone. Admiral Woodward made the gut wrenching decision to call off the assault on the islands and ordered the majority of the task force back home for repairs and regrouping.  As there were still several unlocated Argentinean submarines, the INVINCIBLE was detailed to shadow the Hermes to provide ASW coverage for the slow return to home waters.  

Recognizing that additional air cable platforms were needed, several crash program were initiated, including the rushed final outfitting of the ILLUSTRIOUS.  As the ATLANTIC CONVEYOR had proved quite capable in her aircraft ferry role, she was ordered to make best speed for Portsmouth as quick plans were drawn up to enhance her capabilities for the second task force sailing.......  

The kit:  

1/700 scratch-built styrene construction.  I had always wanted a kit of the ship, but no one every made one, so I went for scratch.  I found a good side view of a sister ship, and used period photos for most of the shaping.  This is how the ship looked for the first voyage south in the aircraft ferry role.  She took down 8 Sea Harriers, 6 GR3 Harries, 4 Chinooks and several Wessex.  This was my first attempt at a styrene hull, as I had done balsa in the past with other scratch-builds, but was never quite satisfied with the smoothness of the hull.  I considered this my prototype for hull shape and color trials, but never got around to the final hull.  She scales out about right, but some of the curves need improvement.  I was never quite satisfied with her hull color (too dark), container colors and some of the details, so time for a what if!

So what would a quick conversion need?  I'm thinking CIWS, a small but special air wing, ski jump..........  

[Thorvic]

Well they could possibly build up a more suitable flight deck and hanger arrangement using containers as a basis.
Create a deck of containers and lay with a deck, extend to the bows and possibly add small skijump.
Build up containers fwd of the superstructure and roof over to create dry weather hanger. Some of this stuff could be prepared and outfitted in the dockyeard prior to the ships arrival.

(BTW her Sistership Atlantic Causeway was also involved but not as a Aircraft Ferry, also the Atlantic Conveyor was replaced (part funded by MOD) and the new ship was supposed to be designed to allow conversion to carrier configuration)

[Thorvic]

Nice scratchbuild BTW as missed that from the first reply.

Must do a piece at some stage on how i create my hulls from styrene and the tools i use.

As for fitting out the ship, have a look at Battlefleet models as they do resin sets of bollards. capstains and winched for clutering the bows and sides of sides of ships decks to make them look more shipshape. Photo Etch doors are also handy in detailing superstructures, along with various sizes of box section styrene strip for various lockers.

As to arming up Atlantic Conveyor, well Phalanx was fitted to Illustrious when she was fitted out in 1982, so additional units could be fitted to AC for her conversion, Missiles such as Sea Wolf and Sea Cat are unlikely as little time to fit the radar, command and control for such systems in the time allowed. They did investigate a conatinerised system but i dont think it would be ready in time.
Other bits would be the corvus chaff system, together with AA guns of various types, probably 20mm, but maybe even twin 30 or 40mm set. They would also likely fit Mil standard coms and sat links together with some ECM bits probably carried in container fitted on or aft of the Superstructure.

Looking forward to seeing the conversion.

Cheers

Geoff

[B777LR]

Maybe this is of interest:

[thedarkmaster]

liking this a lot , not seen it before but can't wait to see more   

[Weaver]

I agree with Thorvic: all the lightweight, self-loading Sea Wolf proposals only existed on paper and probably couldn't have been productionised in time. People also forget that the Sea Wolf's automatic engagement capability also requires the Type 967/968 air-search radar and an AIO (CAAIS at least) to provider computer service. Re-fitting the latter two to an existing ship would be seriously hard work: doing it on the BB Leanders proved so difficult and long-winded that half the conversion programme was abandoned.


They could probably have knocked up a containerised Sea Cat easily enough, particularly with one of the earlier fire-control systems, but whether you'd want it is another matter: it wasn't exactly a stellar performer against AShM threats and there were plenty of other Sea Cat ships that could provide such cover (an Ikara Leander, for example).

That basically leaves Phallanx: none of the other CIWS systems were available at the time. 20mm Oerlikon and 40mm Bofors manually-aimed guns would have certainly have been readily available, and the BMARC twin 30mm probably would have been too.

[sandiego89]

Concur that the missle launchers and associated electronics/radars would have taken too long.  How about a land based system like Rapier or Hawk chained to the deck?  Wonder if they could cope with the ship movement and conditions?   

Think I am going to go with a minimal conversion with CIWS, some basic hanger space like waht the ATLANTIC CAUSEWAY had up near the bow.  The more elaborate conversions are very tempting however. 

[Weaver]

One of the problems with land-based Rapier in the Falklands was that the launchers were carried as exposed deck cargo on the journey south, and their electronics didn't stand up to the salt spray at all well. They also had problems with extreme cold: the missiles are held to the launch rail by a shear pin which became brittle and snapped at low temperatures. Crews would often wake up at first light to find their missiles lying on the ground with bent fins next to the launchers...........

So I doubt that Rapier would have been much use as an improvised naval SAM. Tigercat might have worked since the export light-weight Seacat used basically the same launcher and missiles, but then I'm not sure if there were any Tigercats left in the UK by 1982.

The other system, which was used in real life, would have been Blowpipe fired from hand-held launchers by deck crew, but of course, it's a bit hard to model that in 1/700th. Maybe an empty platform with some ready-use lockers next to it?

[PanzerWulff]

I was wondering in 1982 if the CIWS was still in it's "Christ it Won't Shoot" and the fixes that led to the "Christ it Won't Stop" nicknames (basically due to some radar and computer bugs)
where early on the system would not engage incoming targets ,and later continuing to spit lead at the falling wreckage of a succesfully engaged one. The first problem being a serious issue while the second a waste of ammunition on a limited internal supply (989 rounds at 3,000 rounds a minute).Again a potentially dangerous situation,as from what I have been told it took about 20 minutes to reload the ammounition drum mounted underneath the gun.you can see part of the drum and the ammo feed chutes in this pic of a later model "Phalanx"

This Pic of a proposed land based unit shows how much space the eqipment package would take up (roughly about the size of a cargo container Eh?

I hope this info is useful
"Panzer"

[sandiego89]

Thanks Panzer, yes that photo of the trailer mounted unit is usefull, and as you say quite close to standard contianer size!

[sandiego89]

Started the conversion for the second sailing of the task force.  Off with the old containers. 

[Joe C-P]

Clever and plausible. This will be a great result!

[sandiego89]

Decided to go with using the main deck as the flight surface, unlike later proposals for a deck laid over the contianers.  This will limit parking space, but fits with the quick modification back story.  Maybe a sister ship will have a fuller modification.

Ski ramp beginning to take shape as is the forward and main hangar.   

[GTX]

Maybe this is of interest:

What's the source if I may ask?

Regards,

Greg

[kengeorge]

Hi there,
           Not sure if this helps or not. Been searching the net for anything remotely connected to SCADS (Shipborne Containerized Air Defence System) for my own research. I found this pic in a book that I got out of my library ages ago.
Ken