Posted by Mike Kozlowski (via Matty) on September 6, 2010, 17:45:14
This will be the thread where we track Mikey Kozlowski's progress on his build of the flush-decker DD USS Barney (DD-149), using as a foundation the venerable Airfix 600-scale kit.
Updates and your responses/input will appear as "replies", below...
Update: 11-9-10
Posted by Mike Kozlowski (via Matty) on November 13, 2010, 21:29:09, in reply to "Mike's Build of USS BARNEY "
"Hello, all! Here's the latest pics of the USS Barney project:
Click on Image for FULL-RES
All the major superstructure surgeries are complete, and came out quite nicely, given that I did it all pretty much by Mk.I eyeball. The hardest part was the extension of the midships deckhouse aft. What I did there was simply cut a strip of the appropriate width, the cut it to length and bend it downwards at the upper deck edges:
Click on Image for FULL-RES
Fitting it around the #3 stack was a bit more of a challenge than I'd expected, as should be evident from the amount of good ol' Squadron Green that's visible. Fortunately it sands down quite smooth and should have no serious problems. The 20mm tubs came out well, as you can see from the above pic and this one:
Click on Image for FULL-RES
The challenge now is going to be making the 20mm cannons proper, but I have an idea that I'm going to try when I get back to the bench this weekend: I've got a couple of 1/700 3" guns from an old Hasegawa Essex kit, and I think they will be adaptable into a 1/600 20mm. The 20mms from the Essex kit may also serve without any real work at all as acceptable .50s on the tower aft, which is the only remaining piece I have to fab for the project. That will get its own article in the next update. Till then -
Mike(y)"( -Ed.)
This is great, Mike!
Posted by Matty on November 15, 2010, 9:24:37, in reply to "Update: 11-9-10"
Mikey, I agree your gun tubs and deckhouse mods look very nice.
About the little teeny guns, I think you'll find the gun shields end up being the most crucial (visible) parts - particularly how thin they look - so I would highly recommend PE there. If you don't have any (even close) in scale, let me know and I'll snip off and send you a few true, 600-scale shields from an old WEM fret or two, that I have lying around.
Great little DD you got, taking shape there, buddy!
Cheers,
-Matty
Re: This is great, Mike!
Posted by Mike Kozlowski on November 15, 2010, 9:48:45, in reply to "This is great, Mike!"
Matt,
Thank you very much for the compliment! I finished up one of the 20mms yesterday - it came out quite nicely, though perhaps a little bit oversized. I was able to make one decent gun shield out of sheet styrene - it doesn't look half bad! The platform aft for the .50s is almost done and I may get it in place today - pics and narrative to accompany it, of course.
Thanks also for the offer on the PE - but part of the real fun on this project has turned out to be doing what I can with what I have on the table. My inspiration there is a approximately 1/72nd 4 stacker my grandfather built from Popular Mechanics plans in the early 30s - nothing but very common hand tools, sandpaper, metal shears, and every last bit of material found around his home. My Dad still has that beast sitting downstairs, hopefully I'll get some pics of it one of these days.
Cheers, Mike
First Update: 9/10/10
Posted by Mike kozlowski (via Matty) on September 12, 2010, 21:14:04, in reply to "Mike's Build of USS BARNEY "
USS Barney (DD-149) was one of the Wickes/Clemson class 4-stack destroyers that served as the backbone of the USN during the lean years between the wars. The venerable old ships shouldn't have been around for the Second World War, but they stepped proudly forward to do their jobs, almost all of them being drastically modified in one form or another.
Barney herself had a long, solid career in the Atlantic, earning one battle star for a vicious night action against raiding German aircraft on 11-12 April 1944. She had a reputation as a fast ship - "fastest in the Fleet", according to Melissa's grandfather, a proud member of her crew. I had some respectful doubts about that until I met a former crew member from Endicott (DD-495) and mentioned Granddad's statement. The gentleman looked at me and said, "Ya know, we raced her once - damned if she wasn't." After the German surrender, she narrowly missed what might have been a short, exciting second career: reclassified as AG-113, she was to have been fitted with modified 5" rocket launchers and been used as a picket ship against kamikaze strikes during the invasion of Japan. The war ended before she could be fitted with the RL's and she ended her career very peacefully in November of 1945.
Click on Image to Enlarge
As always, any build like this requires a fair amount of research, and as always www.navsource.org is my first go-to. Add to their pics Matt's article about enhancing images and you have got a resource that is the next best thing to seeing the real ship in person. One note, however, regarding the 4-stackers: as the war progressed, no two were quite alike, so be careful in assuming that one looks much like another. The base kit here is Airfix's old 1/600 warhorse. It's big enough that you can do a lot with it and not need an electron microscope to handle the detail work, and small enough that you can display it anywhere. Airfix has also repopped the very nice Mirage 1/400 kits from a few years ago, and Revellogram is turning the beautiful 1/242 kit loose again later this year, so there are a lot of potential kits to work from. The hull is very nice and requires only minor modification. Once you've glued it together (DON'T install the rudder or the propeller guards yet), fit the deck in to give it extra strength. The deck fit is a little uneven fore and aft - I recommend sanding it to fit then filling in the gaps. Once that's done, go ahead and sand the hull seams down. Sand off the 'ladders' midship and at the bow, and fill in ALL the portholes. (If you're building another ship, be sure to check your photo data - not all the portholes were plated over on every ship, and on a ship this small it's noticeable.)
Once everything's dry and set, get out your trusty #11 blade - you've got some shaving to do. Cut off then sand down all the gun and torpedo mounts and the depth charge racks. This is moderately tough on the depth charge racks, because you don't want to give the deck a downward curve here. You will also have to deal with the hole in the deck where the tower assembly aft would normally have gone. This distinctive feature - very rare in any of the WWII 4-stackers - was one of the first things to go when they were refitted. I put a piece of thin plastic card over it to represent plating.
Click on Image to Enlarge
The stacks are the next mod. Obviously, you won't be using one, but the other three need some modification. On Barney, she lost her number four stack - I dropped a little Squadron filler into the hole and sanded it smooth. This, by the way, gives you an extra stack in case the next part goes south. I will happily admit I eyeballed the heights of the remaining stacks - the #1 doesn't lose any height at all, but as you can see from the pics, it's definitely got a different shape to it. This was simply a matter of carefully sanding the stack cap to its new shape. There's a ring that goes around the stack that seemed a bit too large for me, I sanded that off as well and have added a new one from sprue that will be sanded down later.
The second and third stacks were handled a little bit differently. I went ahead and glued them into place, then brought them down to the right height with a sanding block. Then, very carefully, I sanded the stack caps into their new shape. What helps out here is that the plastic is thick enough that you can get the new tapered shape onto the stack caps and not lose the proper size of the stack opening. In addition, having them anchored securely to the deck made handling them a heck of a lot easier. Again, here your pics are invaluable: not every 4-stacker had exactly the same mods, and many had the area between the forward superstructure and the midships deckhouse plated over, which complicates things just a teeny bit.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Superstructure came next. I did the easy one first - the aft deckhouse. The part that provides the overhead is so thick that when you look at it from the side, it looks like one of those houses from 'The Flintstones' with the giant rock slab on top for a roof. Get out the sanding block again and bring down the thickness until you're comfortable with it.
The forward superstructure required quite a bit more work, but none of it is terribly difficult. After gluing it together, the first thing that has to go are the wedge-shaped structures that run across the beam of the superstructure just below the bridge. Depending on your preferences, you can shave 'em or sand them. Once that's done, take a strip of styrene and cut it to fit across the existing bridge windows. A fine drill bit or the tip of a #11 gets you very serviceable portholes. Finally, the last work needed on the forward superstructure is actually the heaviest bit of surgery you'll need to perform on the entire conversion. If you take a look at Pics 3, 4, and 6, you'll see where I've trimmed away part of the superstructure on either side of the bridge level. If I remember my nomenclature correctly, this would be part of the 02 level on either side of the bridge proper. (I would be very happy BTW if our USN vets would please correct me on this or any other goofs in terms of referring to various parts of the ship. I am but a Wing Wiper Of Very Little Brain, and want to make sure it's right. J ) I originally intended to use card to cover over the openings this will leave in the superstructure, but I decided to simply get some Squadron filler in there and sand it smooth. I should note at this point that I'm still a bit unclear as to the structure immediately above the bridge - the pic of Barney in the Measure 12 striped camo seems to show that as canvas covered rails, but the pics of her in the Measure 32 block camo looks to me as if it's been plated over.
So - at this point, you should end up with something that looks like this :
Click on Image to Enlarge
So - that's where we stand so far. More to come!
Mike
Reference Pics (so far)
Posted by Mike Kozlowski (via Matty) on September 6, 2010, 18:54:50, in reply to "Mike's Build of USS BARNEY "
This one, dating from sometime between the wars. depicts Barney's fit long before, I'm sure, the period of interest to Mike, however I saved it because it can clarify the question of what guns she carried, and where. NavSource reports the (as-built) guns mounted by the (Wickes) class as: "4 x 4"/50, 2 x 1pdr AA (1 x 3"/23AA In Some Ships)...". Here the 4-inch/50s are clearly silhouetted - with little to no shielding on each - so you can clearly identify, besides each one fore- and aft, respectively, that the one (on each outboard wing of) a midships platform - later plated-in to form a midships "deckhouse" Mike referred to (see below) - is clearly also a 4"/50. Thus, the two additional 4" guns were on this platform - and there was no 3"/23.
Meanwhile, the 1-pounders would have been very small weapons - about the size of a 20mm, or large machine gun - and I believe one of them is silhouetted just behind the forward 4"/50. Like the midships 4"/50s, both 2pdrs could be here - one located outboard on each side, respectively - or, if not then I would look for the second one to be aft, symmetrical with the aft 4" gun. In any case, these are not the light AA weapons later occupying the "deckhouse" gun "tubs" (see below).
These later features appear by the time of the following pic, dated August 20, 1942:
Click on Image to Enlarge
This pic shows many early-WWII-period features - not to mention vivid, (MS-12?) camo pattern - including the midships "deckhouse" now in place, actually a continuation of the hull-side plating, topped with gun "tubs", revealed to be circular railings, with canvass backing. The midships 4"/50s, though not discernable (for the clutter), do reappear clearly in later pics (see below), so they were undoubtedly still present. Only the (many) latest additions - including the above "tubs" - are circled, per the BuShips convention for pics immediately post-refit(s). Especially regarding these gun "tub" contents, I analyzed them in greater detail, elsewhere.
By (at least) March of 1945, these positions may well have been plated in with splinter-shielding, to form true gun tubs:
Click on Image to Enlarge
These pics, both dated March, 1945 and undoubtedly shot the same day - probably within moments of each other - reveal a common later-war (MS33-D?) disruptive camo pattern and flush-faced bridge, among (probably many) other changes, since 1942. Note both show clearly the midships 4"50s - one on each side, as concluded earlier - still in place. The digital enhancements to each (bottom, left and right) targeted the best visibility of (and into) the above gun tubs - however other contrast stretches would highlight details of, for example, the fantail area.
Without knowing exactly what fit/time Mikey wants to show, I won't go into any further detail. (But if I had my "vote", I'd push for this one! )