The Ship Model Forum

Oh!! Sorry! Typo - I meant 3 cables (and have corrected that previous post). What I was saying was that CV-6's 4 cables around the stern are not continuous around the stern like Yorktown's 3 cables.


From the pic of Yorktown in PH drydock, it is really hard to ascertain if this is one housing/cable or if two like on CV6 at PH as seen in second pic posted. I wonder if Enterprise had an extra cable installed all the way around after Yorktown. 3/1 compared to 4/2?

TOMLABEL

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Tom-
Agree, hard to tell. The cable amidships on Yorktown looks large enough to be two cables, but I don't see two separate cables in the picture. It almost looks like it may be two cables covered with a housing of some kind.

Phil

Like a few others, I too am trying to figure out how the degaussing cables ran on the Yorktown. I got tried of looking at grainy pics so I shot an email a few minutes ago to National Geographic asking if they had any unreleased pictures or video taken of the wreck. Lets hope I get a reply.

there's a possibility they would be on drawings at NARA - I pulled the Yorktown Class Microfilm a couple of times, but there's something like 21 rolls and no index, so the 5-6 rolls I got through were far from everything. Not sure if I'll have a chance the next time I go, but it's on my "I wanna" list.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

Tracy, many thanks to you and all the others who take the opportunity and time to go to these places and do all of this research!!! I wish I could do the same and may inquire soon as to how to do so and all the ropes and such.

Has there been any new "news" on the unicorn? It would be nice to get a full view of the mural before I complete this kit - would be icing on the cake!!!

TOMLABEL

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Phil, after looking a more pics tonight it does seem like the amidships cable is out of scale with the bundle of 3 cables forward and aft. You may be right that it is maybe a housing enclosing 1-2 cables in that area. It just doesn't look small enough to be one cable.

TOMLABEL

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I've kind of given up /am regrouping* at this point. There are many different sets of photos and records at NARA and 80-G is a popular one because it has actual index cards of photos one can look through. However, Yorktown is really light on cards, perhaps because of her short wartime history. Only two photos I know of show the mural. Ron Smith once said he thought he remembered a full picture, but you have to realize there can be more than a hundred photos per box and there are multiple thousand boxes.... after you've been through a few they all blend together and remembering WHERE is nigh impossible. I tend to scan anything I find of interest just so I have it in the future

I went through the indexes for yorktown and pulled the photos listed, but none had the mural. It's possible that the photo is there and just listed under a different subject, but that's a lot of photos and boxes to go through and I've got to get this Essex class book done. There are some good projects in the works for Yorktown class fans, so there's that at least, but the mural is still out there, somewhere.

* Ron said that he thought the photo of the mural had an Admiral or Captain in the foreground, so one possible tack is to look up all of the famous admirals and captains who served on her or around her time and look for shots of them. I really don't want to contemplate doing that at this point though.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

From what I've learned from others doing similar type of research I can understand your point. I have to do research on very old accounting records sometimes which are on microfilm and try to piece together multi-year transactions. Well, that is if I can find a machine that works properly and the right film roll after spending an hour on the wrong one! Honestly, I'd rather have the flu than do that!

Completely understand - I'm looking forward to seeing what you are putting together for this class!!!
This is the second time I've heard about this so I am looking forward to what transpires.

Thanks for all that info, Tracy. Much appreciated!!

TOMLABEL

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Well I did get an email response from National Geographic. This is copy and pasted from her email and I left out her last name as I did not feel right about tossing someone's name out on the internet.

Hi Jon,



Just to give you an update, in my initial search I was unable to find anything video or still with of the Yorktown wreck. It is of course possible that we just do not have anything scanned. Do you happen to konw if there was a specific NGM article about the Yorktown wreck?



Best,


Rebecca



Maybe if they have time to do a more thorough search, they may come up with something.

Jon -
Rebecca sounds like a newbie. Giving her that benefit of doubt, the article in NatGeoMag is titled "Return to the Battle of Midway" in the April 1999 issue. Frankly I can't believe it has been that long since I read it. Time flies - but ship modeling doesn't.

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Some people make you happy, then they leave.
Others make you happy when they leave. (apologies to Oscar Wilde if he ever said anything similar, of which there is some doubt . . .)

John, you could be right. I don't have the copy of the magazine or the video so I gave her the year that the video was published and when the magazine came out. I sent a follow up email to her with the issue month and year that you provided. Maybe this will help her out that is if there is anything to find.

Received an email from Rebecca at NatGeo yesterday. She said that there were additional images of the wreck but no video has been found yet. There is a licensing fee starting at $200.00 per image and that price would vary depending upon how it would be used. I followed up with an email asking how many images and for possible brief descriptions of each if possible. I'm not expecting a lot in regards to image descriptions as I pretty sure they are not history buffs or modelers. Hoping for the best.

Hey-

Is there a color to the inside of hatches that is different from the outside? I going to have a some open hatches on the island of my Yorktown project. On the Eduard superstructure photoetch set, it seems like they colored the inside of the open hatches a brown color. Any idea?

Thanks,
Phil

The Navy was pretty anal about camouflage as the war went on, but early 1942 is a bit more of a mystery. Yorktown still had the mural on her elevator wall and silver/aluminum painted structures visible when lost and I can't say with authority that the inside of doors were painted in outside camouflage colors. Hatches are another mystery, but I shoul dalso ask why typ eof hatch you are referring to, because the larger ones were generally not opened all of the way and were merely propped up enough for passage. In such a case, camouflage of the interior surface might not have been considered necessary.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

What was the status of light lockers back then? Did they use them at that time? If so, then weather-deck opening hatches would have been painted flat black, if they followed the procedures in place today.

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We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

Earliest I have is June 1943 for the Essex class, but it sounds like it was not necessarily specific to the class. My guess is that there was less consideration before Yorktown was lost.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

Hey-
Thanks for your thoughts. And sorry, I should have been more specific. I'm actually referring to the doors, not hatches. I'm going to have some of the doors on the island out to the flight deck open and wondered whether to paint the insides gray or some other color.

Thanks again,
Phil

Doors would be either white (pre-war) or to match the camouflage color (war time, but I'm not sure if it started just before the war or at a certain part during the war. The January 1941 SHIPS-2 says "All bright or shiny objects, no matter how insignificant, shall be painted, covered, or removed." I tend to view white paint as "bright" but that's merely my interpretation and not a Captain 70+ years ago.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

Phil,

I think Tracy has it right regarding the wartime camouflage color. Here is a pic of Enterprise at PH just prior to leaving for Midway. The open island hatches are in the top left and bottom right of the photo. They look to me as if they are painted the same color as the island's external paint although it is just my opinion. They definitely aren't white or a lighter color. So - you could assume that Yorktown followed suit, but who knows?

Really enjoying your build of the Yorktown with the heavy list after being torpedoed - fantastic idea!!

Hope this helps! Your question made me look - so it helps me as well!!!

Kelley

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Kelley-
Thanks for the photos. I'll paint them gray inside. In the absence of direct proof I'll go with what is most likely and makes sense to me. Really appreciate the help from you and everyone here! This thread has been such a great help in my project, I'm continually amazed at your knowledge of what photos exist and that that you can find just the right one.

I'm glad you like my project. I'm thinking of starting a thread in the Works-in-Progress forum here for it, I have some general questions and may find a little more depth of knowledge here.

Thanks again.

Phil