1/350 scale USS Solace LHD Amphibious Hospital Ship

[seadude]

EDIT: This thread was originally about a 1/700 amphibious hospital ship model. That project has been discontinued per Post # 18 on Page 2 of this thread. This thread has now been changed to discuss a 1/350 scale amphibious hospital ship starting with Post #'s 20/21 on Page 2.


As mentioned in this thread:
http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,35519.0.html
........I have an idea to turn a amphibious assault ship into a hospital ship for humanitarian/disaster relief. I have started the build process a few days ago with a 1/700 USS Kearsarge kit, and I hope to have some in-progress pics on Weds. or Thurs.
One thing I'm not really keen on is the way hospital ships have so much white. I was thinking of the following:
Flight deck: Dark Gray
Deck Tractors: Yellow
Smokestack Funnels: Black
Radar Masts: Light or Medium Gray
Life Raft Canisters: I know this'll sound crazy, but I was thinking of painting them some type of orange color similar to the orange color that some lifeboats have. White canisters against a white hull just makes them harder to see.

[kerick]

Don't forget some modern lifeboats like the cruise ships and others carry. Orange top and bottom. That would add a little more color. I'm going for a Coast Guard version with the orange red stripe on the sides.

[seadude]

Don't forget some modern lifeboats like the cruise ships and others carry. Orange top and bottom. That would add a little more color. I'm going for a Coast Guard version with the orange red stripe on the sides.

I don't have any modern lifeboats. All I got in my spares box is an assortment of leftover WWII era lifeboats. And besides, I can't add any extra lifeboats as there's no good place to put them on or around an amphib ship, and I have no davits for them.

[Thorvic]

You could cahnge the funnels to Buff colour with black Funnel caps and paint the Radar masts and Radar black in line with the funnel caps (hides the soot. The rest sounds pretty good, especially the dayglo life raft canisters.

One thing to consider which has been installed in the UK CVS carriers is emergeny chutes, that have airliner style inflatable escape chutes on the deck edge so crew can slide into the sea rather than jumping off the deck edge.

Regarding the flight deck don't forget to put red cross on a white back ground at one end so it can be identified as a Hospital ship from above

[kerick]

You could cahnge the funnels to Buff colour with black Funnel caps and paint the Radar masts and Radar black in line with the funnel caps (hides the soot. The rest sounds pretty good, especially the dayglo life raft canisters.

One thing to consider which has been installed in the UK CVS carriers is emergeny chutes, that have airliner style inflatable escape chutes on the deck edge so crew can slide into the sea rather than jumping off the deck edge.

Regarding the flight deck don't forget to put red cross on a white back ground at one end so it can be identified as a Hospital ship from above

Good ideas!

[Old Wombat]

Looking at the Kearsarge's funnels (I notice she has 2), they ain't exactly big & the superstructure where they are is eminently suitable for a couple of green stripes & big red crosses.

Any domed radars you are keeping could be done in "radome tan".

All lifeboats & life-rafts/canisters should be either dayglo orange or yellow & there should be many more of them than are usual carried (especially boats) - injured people don't swim so well.

[seadude]

Looking at the Kearsarge's funnels (I notice she has 2), they ain't exactly big & the superstructure where they are is eminently suitable for a couple of green stripes & big red crosses.

Any domed radars you are keeping could be done in "radome tan".

All lifeboats & life-rafts/canisters should be either dayglo orange or yellow & there should be many more of them than are usual carried (especially boats) - injured people don't swim so well.

See my Post # 2 further above.
In a real life situation if a hospital ship were to be attacked, the extra amount of lifeboats would be pointless. On a hospital ship, you can't save a lot of the wounded because a lot of them might be in hospital beds or incapacitated in some other way where you can't save them and get them to a lifeboat. The United States Hospital Ships Mercy and Comfort have a good quantity of lifeboats. But the only people that could use them are the crew and the wounded who were still capable of making it to a lifeboat. In a worst case scenario, A lot of wounded would end up going down with the ship. You can't save everybody.

[Old Wombat]

Possibly not, seadude, but when I did nursing one of the most regular training exercises the hospital had was emergency evacuations, where the entire hospital was emptied (in theory, not in practice, you don't risk real patients in a practice). The hospital was designed, internally, to facilitate this & staff were trained for it.

Same on a hospital ship: Put the life-boats where they can be got to; design the interior of the ship & life-boat access to facilitate rapid evacuation of patients; keep your staff up to date on their emergency evac procedures. Maybe you can't save everybody but you can try & I, for one, would rather say "I tried & failed" than "I left them behind because there weren't enough boats" (ships don't always sink in minutes, they sometimes take hours to die).

Training & practice, dude, & miracles can happen.

(If you've got the boats! )



Guy

[seadude]

But I still have no good places around the outer perimeter/circumference of the amphib ship to put any extra lifeboats. And I have no extra davits either. I can add plenty of liferaft canisters, but boats isn't an option.
This is a pic of the amphib ship that I have a model of that I'm modifying.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/USS_Kearsarge_LHD-3.jpg

[Old Wombat]

Didn't say it'd be easy, man!

Seriously, though, I couldn't do it, so I'm not really saying you should. This is supposed to be fun!

What I was proposing, I suppose, was what I would be looking for in a purpose built ship. I'd also be looking for purpose built life-boats, too!
In the RW (& in Whif World ? ) there haven't been any such purpose built vessels, even those which claim to be in RW are really modified passenger liners.

So, I say, go with the best compromise that you feel happy with (& more rafts is better than nothing).



Guy

[kerick]

Here's some examples of lifeboat storage. These davits must telescope out to clear the side of the hull. How about some sponsons to hold the lifeboat under partial cover?


Here's the fall away style. When the release is triped the lifeboat slides down the rails straight into the water.

Isn't one of the Kearsarge boats hanging from under the edge of the flight deck? What if you did that the length of the ship?

[seadude]

I found some emergency and Red Cross decals here:
http://www.coloradodecals.com/pesquisai.asp?palavra=ambulance&submit=Pesquisa
Which would look better on a 1/700 hospital ship: 1/43 scale or 1/24?

[seadude]

Need opinions on my Post # 11 above.

In other news........

A few sample in-progress pics. I don't have a lot of good lifeboats to use from my spares box. Most of what I have is too small or not in scale, etc. and looks crappy. I could only salvage about 9 boats that looked decent enough to add to the sides of my model as shown in pics further below.

(Below) The left side of the ship. I removed the crappy looking boat launch rails that would normally be used from the kit and put in place instead a nicer looking 1/700 sponson from an aircraft carrier kit to hold the motor launch. I also added a few small balconies along the side of the ship. The two "trusses", for lack of a better word, on the right side were scratchbuilt to hold two more large lifeboats.



(Below) Right side of ship. Another 1/700 sponson from an aircraft carrier kit to hold more motor boat launches. Also added a few more small balconies. The white balcony near the back will be used for RHIB boats.



(Below) Left side of ship showing where orange colored lifeboats and other launches will go.



(Below) Right side of ship showing where more lifeboats and launches will go.

[Mossie]

I found some emergency and Red Cross decals here:
http://www.coloradodecals.com/pesquisai.asp?palavra=ambulance&submit=Pesquisa
Which would look better on a 1/700 hospital ship: 1/43 scale or 1/24?

It all depends on the size of the decals.  My guess in trying to roughly work out the size of the 1/700 Keasarge and ambulance models in those two scales is that 1/24 would probably work better.

Another option is to print your own onto decal paper (easy as the straight lines won't show any sign of pixelation).  Another is to cut out a mask and paint them on, again, fairly straight forward.  Both these options mean you can make the crosses exactly the size you want.

One thought for something a little different, maybe you could adorn it with the Red Crescent as well if it's operating in Middle Eastern waters?  Something a little different that I've not seen on pictures of Hospital ships, but you often see on ambulances and aircraft.  It's simpler than it looks to create, it's just an offset circle within a larger one.

[kerick]

So what's happening my friend?