HMAS Australia - Essex Class replacement for HMAS Melbourne

[Taiidantomcat]

Looks unique 

[Thorvic]

Looks unique 

It shouldn't do as pretty much a par with USS Oriskanny so far  . The only difference to date is the bows have lost the hard chine of the Oriskanny as i read they wanted to smooth that out when rebuilding the bows to a the Hurricane bow format.

Anyway i have got all the basic structure done on the Hull and created the Island, i did some photo's but they were done too late and the flash has washed out most of the detail along with a poor focus, so will try and catch it again with more natural light.

Anyway now its time to add the unique features, afterall this is HMAS Australia and is an Essex SBC-125C conversion on a previously unmodified Essex class about 8 years after the last conversion was completed, so some of the 50s era fit would be superceeded by late 60's kit more in.
The proposal mentions the Oriskanny having 211' C11 steam catapults and the RAN ship could have these or 250' versions. Due to the deck layout i suspect to accomplish this they would have done as they did with Melbourne and extend at least to the bridal catchers in the bows. The Radar was also supposed to be updated with the SPS-30 replaced by an SPS-48 set. I will fit Sea Cat and twin 40mm in place of the AA armament as these were the RAN close AA weaponry of the period.

The airgroup will consist of F-4J Phantoms from the Trumpeter set, S-2 Trackers & E-1 Tracer from the Pitroad Wings of the West 2 set along with Seakings again from Trumpeter.

I do wish Trumpeter would consider doing more Aircraft Carriers in 1/700 as we have the Nimitz class and the Soviet Carriers, but could do with the later Nimitz Class upto the USS George Bush, together with the earlier USN post war carriers such as the Forrestals, JFK and the Angled Deck Essex as either the ASW variant or the Attack Carriers like Hancock then we could get aircraft sets such as Skyhawk, Tracker, Tracer, Skyraider and possibly even the earlier jets - Tiger, Demon, Cutlass, Fury & Crusader.

[Thorvic]

The Island


The Hanger


Alongside a scratch built Melbourne hull i did the other weekend

[nebnoswal]

Looking good.

Probably a bit late now, but did you consider the the alternative mod, which saw the fwd elevator moved from the centre of flight deck to the starboard, fwd of the island.  A US version retains both fwd catapults whereas a Commonwealth version see's 1 of the cats moved out on to the angle.

[Cliffy B]

WOW!!!! Where did you get those drawings?!  Are they real or did you make them?  I'm very intrigued now if you can't tell 

Thorvic, you are a scratch building machine.  She looks great, keep it up!

[nebnoswal]

No, not my work, they are out there on the www.  There are some better, clearer drawings on a Russian site, which I can't find at present (still in the US for another 2 weeks)

The commonwealth version has alrewady been done on shipbucket

[Thorvic]

Yes as it happens i did consider a European style that was in vogue at the time (Foch, Eagle ) with the waste cat and the relocated deck edge lift to the aft end of the angled deck.

The reason i didn't was the document being used pretty much specifies the Oriskanny design and to implement greater structural modification would have delayed the build and increase the costs to cover the redesign process.

The other aspect is that unlike the Midways or the European carriers, the Essex class were designed with the hanger deck  as its main strength deck so not sure how much extra top weight could be added with the use of extensive flight deck overhangs   

G

[anthonyp]

nebnoswal, that first one is EXACTLY what I was trying to pattern my SCB-125C conversion (HMCS Ontario) on before I realized my MS-paint skills sucked (did a pic of it a few years back... it was embarrassing).

[Jschmus]

Alongside a scratch built Melbourne hull i did the other weekend

Geoff has several projects on the go (this build, the icebreaker, all the different SIG builds) and he just casually throws out that he scratched a Melbourne "the other weekend".  You are some machine!  I am in awe.

[Thorvic]

Aye but this one has the focus at the moment, so some of the Project Cancelled ship builds are on hold whilst this one is done.

Managed to get the flight deck fitted last week and have created the various walkways around the deck edge, scribed in the catapults and fitted the the Island. The general clutter has been added to busy up the features of the ship and last night i was able to prime it  .

Initial impressions are that it looks OK although i need to look in daylight to check for obvious defects and do some more photos. Still need to mark up the angled deck and then sort out the locations for the arrestor wires and crash barrier stanchions but then i should be ready to start painting.
There are still some details to fit such as Armament, radars, boats and life rafts but these will be painted seperately and added after decalling to prevent them being knocked off or damaged.

[Thorvic]

Couple of questions for our Aussie friends 

1. Pennant No:-  HMAS Melbourne was R-21, HMCS Bonaventure as R-22 so would the potential HMAS Australia be R-23 or would the RAN look to reuse the USN carrier number or even Start again with 01 ?

2. Helicopters :- The RAN actually received Westland Sea Kings in the mid the 70's to replace the Wessex and Melbourne operated the Sea King in the ASW role alongside the Trackers whilst the Wessex dropped to plane guard duty. Given that HMAS Australia is expected to enter service approx 1970 with its new airgroup of Phantoms and Trackers would the RAN have followed the USN & RN and ordered Sea Kings earlier for service from 1970s onwards ?

G

[TsrJoe]

looking really sharp, neat modelling indeed 

[rickshaw]

Couple of questions for our Aussie friends 

1. Pennant No:-  HMAS Melbourne was R-21, HMCS Bonaventure as R-22 so would the potential HMAS Australia be R-23 or would the RAN look to reuse the USN carrier number or even Start again with 01 ?

It would have had to not clash with the USN pennant numbers.  So, more than like R-23 IMHO.

2. Helicopters :- The RAN actually received Westland Sea Kings in the mid the 70's to replace the Wessex and Melbourne operated the Sea King in the ASW role alongside the Trackers whilst the Wessex dropped to plane guard duty. Given that HMAS Australia is expected to enter service approx 1970 with its new airgroup of Phantoms and Trackers would the RAN have followed the USN & RN and ordered Sea Kings earlier for service from 1970s onwards ?

G

Possible.  When did Westland start production?  You'll notice that the RAN had a predilection for British Helicopters until the late 1970s-early 1980s.

[Thorvic]

Updated photos as promised

[Taiidantomcat]

This is just great  superior skills