Ship Mania!!! (Pic intensive on page 8)

[Brian da Basher]

Wow Admiral Anthony that's quite a fleet you have there.

Not only are you a whiff-factory for aircraft but ships of the line as well.

Impressive work!!!

Brian da Basher

[BlackOps]

Anthony, you have Sea and Air covered, tell me you don't have a stash of armor waiting in the wings!

Lookin' good!

[monkeyhanger]

Thats it. I've had enough of this messing around. I am going to get sorted and get back into modelling properly. Seeing these ship models makes me want to get on with my modified Tiger class cruisers, County class destroyers and Daring class (well, officially destroyers but they were referred to as Daring class ships).

This is great stuff and I like the modified hull for the through deck cruiser.

Got me going........

[Rafael]

Hermosísima Flotilla!!!!    

Rafa

[anthonyp]

(Let's see how this attachment thing works...  I'm website-less right now, so I have no idea how this is going to work...)

Below are some of my latest projects.  First up is a ship that I did up yesterday.  It's some sort of USN heavy cruiser from World War II refit ala the Iowas from the 80's.  I have no idea what ship/kit it was originally, other than it was a model of a Cleavland class light cruiser, in some odd scale (approximately 1/600~1/615 scale).  I built this thing probably at least 16 years ago, forgot about it, then went through the old boxes and found it (along with some other treasures thought lost to time).

All's I know is in 1/700 scale, the ship's about 685 feet at the waterline, fits in size wise between an Oregon City and Des Moines class heavy cruiser in terms of size, and looks good next to my Sprucan mods.

Got the idea for it when I took it and an old Missouri model out of the box they were in and put them on a shelf.  I happened to put the Missouri behind the cruiser, with their bridges about the same position.  The tall foremast of the Missouri looked natural on the cruiser.  I'd been wanting to try my hand at what a Des Moines would look like refit in the 80's, but can't find one in 1/700.  The old CL could be scale-o-ramed into 1/700 and not look too off, I thought.

After waterlining the hull, I decided to keep most of the superstructure though I'd combine the two funnels into one from the Missouri, and put the foremast abaft the bridge structure.  Simple enough.  I then cut the AA tubs off the hull, and thought about how the hull would need to be built up to accommodate SSM's and Phalanx.  I knew I wanted at least 16 Harpoons on it, as well as four Phalanxes, but I'm still undecided on how many ABL's this thing should have.  I kept three of the original four main turrets, and four of the six 5" turrets.

I'm debating whether or not to drop the four ABL's on the superstructure and go with additional Harpoon canisters, or just go with sixteen total of each (four Harpoon quartets and four ABL's).

After building up the superstructure, I attached a leftover aft lattice mast from a Minicraft Tico, and the conversion is about complete!  The following pics have views of the as for now unnamed (leaning towards failed states names, aka, USS Jefferson, USS Franklin, or USS West Florida come to mind) Heavy Cruiser/Command Cruiser, as well as a size comparison pic of it and my new CL based on a Sprucan hull.

I think it kinda looks like a mini Alaska class CB (that's another ship I want in 1/700!).

[anthonyp]

Next up are the above cruiser with some ships not nearly as far along in construction.

The first pic shows the above cruiser and Sprucan CL with the hull of my CSGN.  I just built up the deck yesterday, but need to work on it a bit more.  It's actually the cut down hull of the old USS Ramsey model (waterlined and shortened).

The second pic shows the CSGN hull with the hull of a Kirov, a new BBGN, and the Revell 1/720 USS Enterprise for scale.  The BBGN is based on a 1/350 Sprucan hull, cut down a few inches to make it shorter than a carrier.

The third pic shows the CSGN, the BBGN, and the carrier for size comparison.  The BBGN has some potential guns on the hull, with one of the turrets from the old Missouri that was scrapped for the above cruiser, as well as a "rail gun" turret, which is in reality the leftover chin gun from an old RAH-66 model that's since disappeared.

The final model shows the size comparison of the (from the back) the 1/720 USS Enterprise (to become USS Reprisal, CVN-67), the BBGN (probably going to become USS Indiana, BBGN-75), the hull of the CSGN (probably USS Constitution, CSGN-2), a Tico/Sprucan hull, and a Flight IIA Burke hull.

Still never completed all the other ships I've begun construction on, but these are my latest flights of fancy.

[jeff3385]

Hey look everyone... TARGETS!!!   
No, really those are some neat modifications you have crafted. Good show.

[CanisD]

Looking sweet!

BTW, found some interesting models on a Japanese site. Modernized Yamato's, including a hybrid CV and a "Super Yamato", a modernized Nagato, and Shinano, as well as some modern US designs converted to Japanese use similar to how the Kongo and Atago are based on the Burke.
http://www.yamatoshi-uruwashi.com/Model_exhibition_room.html
http://www.yamatoshi-uruwashi.com/sp_photo.html

[anthonyp]

Now those are what I'm aiming for!  Not necessarily the same level of quality (we are talking me here), but concept!  Those are incredible!  I'm really diggin' that Kitty Hawk converted to a JMSDF carrier.  Thanks for posting, Dave!

On my ships, no work on the CSGN, BBGN, or CVN, but I did finish up construction on an older model I've been working on for a while.  It's a Skywave Karuna converted to a USN FFL (Frigate Leader) or light(er) destroyer.  No pics, but I took the superstructure from a Sprucan, shortened it, and put it in place of the Karuna's, added a 5" turret, VLS, two old Harpoon quartets, and added the lattice mast from a Minicraft Tico.  The little thing looks pretty smart!

Grabbed my old HMS Vanguard again, and began to think about how to finish it off.  I want bigger guns on it, but the ones that came with the kit look goofy the more I stared at it.

[anthonyp]

Adding to Canis' "other peoples' builds," I was eBay today and found some Soviet, er, Russian customs up for sale from this guy.  They include the "Ulyanovsk" (he put a ski-jump onto it, and a Western-style island), an LPD (supposedly under construction now for the real RODINA, er, Russian navy), and a "stealth" destroyer (about as stealthy as a the Freedom LCS, IMO).  Neat stuff.

[anthonyp]

Got back to working on my Enterprise class variant, USS Reprisal CVN-67.  Decided to do her up as a recent refit of the ship, with some new systems on board (I'm calling the Enterprises experiment prone in my universe).

This is what I've got so far (AEGIS in place of the pagoda, VLS ESSM's in place of NSS launchers):





Island:



Weapons locations:




I've been messing around with making her a CVGN with up to three Mk. 41 64-cell VLS's, but am undecided on it.  She's still missing two additional Phalanx emplacements, but they'll come later.

[Joe C-P]

Ah, the old dream of the self-escorting carrier.

Keep posting! We need to see more ships with all these prop-heads and jet-sters around here.

JoeP

[Hobbes]

Interesting project. Will you be keeping the billboard radars on the tower? AIU they were more or less the precursor to the SPY-1.

[anthonyp]

Ah, the old dream of the self-escorting carrier.

Actually, I'm leaning towards having the ship be armed to the gills with RIM-162's.  Twenty-four cells, four missiles per cell (96 total), the ship would not have a lack of short range SAM's.  I was thinking that SM-2's could be substituted in a few cells, but if anything, I was thinking of maybe placing Tactical Tomahawks or VL Harpoons in some of the cells (ala the USN version of the Kuznetsov).

I could go absolutely bonkers and mount those three 64 cell VLS on the aft corners of the flight deck (one port, two starboard) and make the thing a true CVGN, but I'm trying to keep the Reprisal relatively close to the Enterprise (and the Nimitz class) in terms of defenses and capabilities.

I was going to leave the large billboards, and mount sensors and what not on them.  I've already scraped the lines off both billboards, but the large ones are integral parts of this model's island structure (and I didn't want to rebuild that much of it at the time I put it together).

The airwing is indeed shaping up to be... unique.  I just need to figure out the proper colors to paint modern USN ships' hulls, decks, and flight decks.

Only reason I did AEGIS on the ship was so that she could act as a true command ship, helping to find targets and control missiles for the battlegroup (they ain't "strike" groups, too single minded!).

One thing that I was reminded of recently that the Enterprise class was projected to be a class of six units total, though due to costs, only two were possible, but in the end, only Enterprise herself was commissioned into the class.  I'm tempted to get an additional four Revell Enterprise kits and see where my imagination takes me...

BTW, I removed the four ABL's on the heavy cruiser's superstructure from the first post and replaced them with four additional quads of Harpoons.  And her name's the USS Lake Huron (decided to name the ships after large freshwater US bordered lakes, eg, Lakes Michigan, Superior, Erie, Huron, Ontario, Champlain, St. Claire, etc), Lake Superior class Command Cruiser.

[anthonyp]

I sat down today and got a bug up my @$$ to start work on the CSGN again.  Ended up finishing most of the major construction work on it 



As you can see, almost the entire superstructure is sheet styrene.  I discovered recently that they make that stuff in squares for sidewalks and what not, which made construction a heck of a lot easier than cutting straight lines on clean sheets.



I tried to keep the ship as close as I could to the sketch in Friedman's US Cruisers book, but there were certain limitations because of the hull I decided to base it on, and the available materials for construction.



I decided to go with VLS instead of twin arm bandits, only because VLS is easier to build (all 1/700 Tico/Sprucan models seem to have them).  Somewhere in the backstory I'll say that starting with CSGN-3, VLS was installed, and retrofit to CSGN's 1 and 2.  I went with three because of the size of the ship.  At first I had two of the three VLS forward the superstructure, and one aft, with the Harpoons, but I decided to try and stay close to the original concept.  I built up a deck house forward the superstructure, and placed the four Harpoon quartets there, with two VLS aft.  I modified a 1/350 5" gun from a Dragon Spruance kit, cutting it down to approximate an 8" Mk. 71 gun housing.  I also added a 5" gun aft, since it looked so naked back there.  Two Phalanxes complete the armament.



I went with a double wide helicopter pad since the sketch was sorta vague on that part (it appeared to stretch the width of the ship, which is quite large).  I figure four SH-60B's could be embarked, or up to two SV-22's and maybe one HH-60H (for example).  I need to do some figurin' to see how big a 1/700 SV-22 actually is (and not those things that come with RoG's Wasp class ships... they're closer to XV-15's than V-22').

The thing's a very clean ship, but there's so few references for this particular incarnation of the ship.  I still have to putty her up and plug the holes, but like I said, major construction is complete.