The Ship Model Forum

Inspired by ADM on this forum, building the exquisite Casablanca escort carrier, I started gathering as much information as possible on the HMS Macoma that served on Atlantic convoy duty from 1943, sailing under Dutch naval command with Dutch Swordfishes on deck, and I laid the keel this morning, after days of drawing and scaling.


Macoma was from the Rapana class; the carriers were originally built as Shell tankers



and the structure is quite different from the dedicated Casablanca class or the converted merchantmen from the Empire class; as the ships served both as carriers as well as tankers, much of the original deck layout was preserved and the carrier deck was built over that.


As a result the Rapana class did not have lifts; any work on the planes needed to be done on the deck out in the open only for a row of aft deck plates that could be tilted to vertical to give at least some shelter.



I only have detailed drawings of the ship as a tanker, thanks to Kees Helder from Helderline.nl



As there are no hull cross section drawings from the Rapana class, I morphed, strecthed, cut and scaled the Casablanca hull drawings from ADM as seen here to match the dimensions up to the tanker deck of Macoma, quite a struggle I have to say, and it remains to be seen if it looks the part. As the Casablanca has a flat stern, I will need to create the rounded stern of Macoma myself, probably by shaping from a block of balsa.



Building very much in the same way as ADM, Ilaid the keel today


I made the mistake of choosing thinner multiplex, and that, combined with the foracious appetite of my rather blunt motorsaw plus my my limited skills, did away with the delicate and accurate measuring and drawing of templates i did for a few days


For that reason i choose glueing paste with a bit of filling capacity, to still get strong bonds on uneven surfaces, hopefully later nailing the playwood hullplating corrects any outer dimension mismatch as a result of my plywood massacre.


Any way; here she is: up to the tanker deck in frames,



Bear with me as this is my first shipmodel, so the learning curve is quite steep, but fun

cheers, Skybert

I will be watching this ship with interest, I've always been fascinated by aircraft carriers, you've done a great start, it's an impressive model and it will attract a lot of attention when finished

Finished for the day

In the picture below I have temporarily placed the tankerdeck on the level of the flight deck to see if things look right..



De commandersbridge is too far backward here

After more sawing and hammering I now have the structural box, which is not strong yet, since the tankerdeck is cut through, the sections weight are now all carried just by the keelplate, and there is risk of breaking. I need to somehow strengthen the box, not willing to risk breaking the thing before the sideplating brings sufficient strength.



There is shaping to be done on the back side where the casablanca crosssection template is too wide; can be fixed..

Today was a good day

Oooooh, this is gonna be cool!

Are you going to make this a static, waterline model like what ADM did, or are you gonna go full hull/RC? And I hope you like rigging, cos those Stringbags sure have a lot of it!

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On the ways:
1/200 Trumpeter HMS Nelson
1/700 Tamiya USS Yorktown CV-5

In the stash:
1/35 Italiari PT-109
1/35 Tamiya "Pibber" Patrol Boat
1/350 Trumpeter USS Yorktown CV-10

Heya Goodwood, definitevely static, i havo too much other hobbies than to indulge myself in RC.

And i don' t like rigging: i tried with this Stringbag for the first time, and cursed so much it raised eyebrows in the house...i need to build 3 more .... Postponing till whenever its time to do so..

An ambitious and impressive undertaking, good luck with it! Could you tell us how you did the lines, by hand or by drafting software?

The 1/72 scale revolution is on. Very cool. I think she would be a serious threat to my convoy raiding light cruiser LOL. nice work.
Haratio.

_________________
Shoot till You see the Whites of their tails.

Hi MareNostrum, I just used ADM's drawing from the Casablanca class, and stretched the height to width ratio to match the width of the Macoma tanker deck, and then reduced the height along the hull to the required dimensions of Macoma. Not exactly a match as I need to sand down some stations to reduce width, primarily on the back end, and add material to the front end stations to meet the deck width there. Nothing that cannot be done. Not exactly a mathematical outcome, but good enough..

Thanks Haratio, yes, those four Stringbags will drop their tin fishes if that Raider of yours comes close

Thanks, and I agree, mathematical certainty isn't a requirement, I maintain there's something along the lines of "builder's license" with projects such as this. I'm working up the courage to "go where no man has gone before" myself, i.e. where there hasn't been, and most likely will never be, an offering by a manufacturer. Certainly encouraging to walk in the footsteps of others. Getting back to the lines, I have to admit that just by themselves they are artistic, that beauty is to be found in the contours of a ship.

Very interesting, For the USN probably the most useful escort carriers were built on the tanker hulls. I have a maritime C3 hull I built about 50 years ago that is quite accurate. I am considering either doing in in 1:144 as an attack Transport or an escort carrier.

Have fun! T

Excellent progress for your first ship model


great subject!

Jim Baumann

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....I buy them at three times the speed I build 'em.... will I live long enough to empty my stash...?
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Timje has flownb since startying and abandoning this project, but back at it.
A short recap of abandoned efforts of last year or so.
As a tanker converted to Aircraft carrier, there is considerable more detail and open space under the flight deck than a casablaca... basically you have to build the tanker first and put a flightdeck structure over it. and there lots stuff on a tanker deck..
[img][/https://modelbrouwers.nl/media/cache/26/d6/26d66d5abc8cbf741d1fa1757a156bf6.jpgimg]
I tried to take a shortcut by cutting the hullplates together with the flightdeck support in one go out of softboard, but it is too stiff and breaks when trying to bend along the hull..so this was going nowhere..





after putting aside for the year, i restarted this Xmas holiday using plywood for the firss time ever..
I will now just build up to tanker deck, and then build the housings and piping and flightdeck support out of styrene sheeting..

Huil plating is on, not exactly smooth, as I I lack patiennce and woodwork skills, but trust to ease out bumps and bulges with filler.
I shaped the stern and bow from balsa.
Once smoothedI will coat with a hard gloss varnish and use this to build the styrene structures on to it.






she starts looking the part now..

I see that the grafting of casablanca hull crosssections to the length and width of raana created a rather rakish stern, that would look good on USS Missouri, but is a bit too much for a tanker.



I will add balsa strips to the waterline and sand the right angle of the plating against the waterline based on this pic.

excellent bert..

Thanks guys,

I reshaped the bow by adding additional stubs onto the bow and reskinning with plywoodmaking it more stubby







All for now as I have a trip scheduled for the next week. thanks for looking and happy new years guys

Very interesting subject. Each navy had it's own way of doing things and identifiable style. The USN Sangamon's were considered versatile and quite satisfactory, for their speed, size and ability to still fulfill some utility as an oiler. The reason more weren't constructed, the oilers were really one of the most important ships in the fleet and never enough.

Thanks for sharing your interesting project! Tom

thx for comments Tom!

A bit of update for you guys.

Finished the hull with filler and yacht higloss varnish, to have a hard base for styrene structures and decks

.




Bought styrene sheets 2x1 meter in a local industrial plastic webstore , for 15 euro each, Evergreen would have drained budget..

I have started building the command deck of the tanker that will later be overcast by the flightdeck



Via Kees Helder at Helderline.nl some unique images from macoma







I then laid out the diorama plan that is haunting me in my sleep on the dinner table .I have a fairly big dinner table, but it seems we need to be eating out a lot in the coming time.


My inspiration comes from Harbor images around the UK in wartime. My dio will have a long qay with oil, coal and refinery installations, some cranes and a railroad. Then on the short side a qay with warehouses, and city buildings. and another long qay with factories and the headoffice of the fictuous 'Empire Atlantic Passage Line'. I bought a second hand railroad station that looks fairly british, but may change the colour to either redder brick or grey basalt


The flowerclass corvettte is the matchbox/Revell kit whuih will be built OOB as there is plenty of stuff to do








some inspirational images off the net





Hope you like it.