The Ship Model Forum

Thank you Milan! Really appreciate your thoughts.

Mike, you can see the deck design in these photos of the "sister ships":

Iro - nice photo from above


Tsurumi - coloured photo

Thanks Milan! I believe these were two of the ships I came across as possible "sister ships" to get an idea of the deck/platform materials. I didn't find these pictures though, thank you! I think they pretty clearly show a wood deck at the bow, and linoleum used midships (before being covered with a wood deck) and at the stern. And a big thank you for starting this topic and sharing all your thoughts, pictures, etc. - really helpful for us fellow modelers!

I'm still early in researching this ship, and have been trying to figure out the starboard side deck issue that you identified. On the one hand, it seems that to most easily load planes onto the ship, the deck should extend all the way to the hull starboard side. On the other hand, it also seems quite dangerous for the crew not to have a bulwark or railings along the starboard side of the ship. Then again, if you look at the Kamoi, the platforms for the planes actually were higher than the bulwarks, and didn't seem to have any protection like railings, etc. for the crew.

To solve both issues, I'm wondering if the Notoro had some kind of maneuverable platforms that they could position as needed along the starboard side of the ship, load the planes directly onto those platforms, then the crew could push/pull the planes back to the middle of the ship onto the wooden deck. Looking at the third picture in your Jan. 3, 2023 post above, it seems like on the port side at least, the center wooden platform did not extend all the way to the port bulwarks. By just having the raised wooden platform in the center of the ship -rather than extending to either or both starboard and port bulwarks - the crew would have the ability to freely move along the length of the ship with the stored planes up and out of the way in the center of the deck on the raised platform.

All that being said, I think it's very tough to determine exactly what is going on with the available pictures that are out there -- except for the few showing the port side of the interior deck, most are too far and grainy. Like any modeling, we just do the best we can do.

So, I guess at this point after a couple of hours of looking at pictures, models, etc., I'm leaning towards how the kit generally presents the model. Aside from using the Five Star bow deck piece -- which shows a metal deck rather than a wooden one -- I'm going to use most, if not all of, the rest of the Five Star set. What I've been thinking of doing is using wooden deck laminates rather than painting the wooden decks. I've have some generic material from I think Artwox and maybe one other manufacturer that I might try out. I'm hoping I can use the Five Star PE as templates to cut the decks to shape. I'm a little less certain on what to do with the upper platforms. They certainly appear to be wood, but with long lines down the length of the platforms. Maybe those were raised pieces of wood or metal so that you end up with channels on the platforms (for rain, stability, etc.)?

Have you started your build yet?

By the way, I found a build on YouTube yesterday that I thought I'd share with everyone. He also used the Five Star set, and it's a pretty nice build:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX_VuiOfXrY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98PnRJ5hZEU

Mike,

I built the hull a long time ago so I could draw the etchings to specific dimensions. The progress of the initial work can be seen here:
https://www.modelforum.cz/viewtopic.php?f=175&t=133765

I'm currently finishing up the etchings and expect to be working on Notoro again in about 2 months.

Still on the subject of the deck. I have spent a lot of time over the available photos of Notoro and I think the deck might look something like this.


How close this is to reality given the limited documentation I can't judge.

Thanks for sharing the link to your build log. Interestingly, I learned that the Notoro was serviced by the repair ship Akashi in September 1943. I'm actually building the Akashi at the moment, in a diorama where it is servicing the destroyer Asashio after the Battle of Midway in 1942. I have a build log on MSW:

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/32789- ... 0-diorama/

Taking a break from my Akashi/Asashio build, I started the Notoro last night. I ended up gluing the hull sides together, and was thinking I needed to support the long seam at the bottom. The YouTube build I linked above had a good idea of placing plastic card inserts inside the hull, but I was thinking of maybe just adding a full plastic card to the outside bottom. Logged on this morning and saw that you took that approach, in part also it sounds like to raise the hull a bit to account for its draft. So, I think I'll borrow from your approach - not to mention, I like really the idea of drilling holes into the hull halves to allow for more glue penetration along the bottom. Fantastic idea!

For the bow deck, I agree with you that it appears to be wood, as represented by Pit Road. Five Star represents it with PE as a metal deck, but that seems to be incorrect. What I will likely do is cut off that section of the kit part, and use it and the Five Star PE part to create another deck, add wood laminate, and then add the various bow deck features (or sand off the details as you have on the kit part which actually is probably much easier now that I think about it). One thing I noticed from the You Tube build is that the forward most bulwarks at the bow are incorrectly positioned inward from the hull lines. From the Notoro pictures, it appears that the bulwarks should follow the line of the hull, so like you and the You Tube build, I will cut those off the kit part and add new bulwarks in the proper position.

I think your diagram of the actual Notoro deck looks very plausible. Thinking on this some more, it seems like it would be a logistical nightmare to try to raise and lower planes onto that middle deck if the deck did not extend all the way to the starboard side of the hull, particularly with the upper decks/platforms extending past the midline of the ship. I originally thought that having the deck level with the edge would be a safety issue for the crew, but looking at pictures of the Kamoi, the decks/platforms appear to extend all the way to the hull edge on both the starboard and port sides - albeit above the level of the bulwarks. Granted, the Kamoi was converted to a seaplane tender in 1932, eight years after the Notoro's conversion, but it sounds like the conversion generally followed the approaches with the Notoro conversion. This website describes the Kamoi as:

"Former tanker. At conversion experience with Notoro was used. Differing from the [Notoro] seaplanes have been better protected from bad weather at the expense of light hinged platforms over upper deck. Seaplanes flied off from water and landed also there and lifted to a deck by cargo booms."

https://www.navypedia.org/ships/japan/jap_aux_kamoi.htm

I also like how you extended the linoleum on the starboard side from the stern to just forward of the bridge. If the middle deck extended all the way to the starboard side, then it seems reasonable that the Japanese would not have put down a wood floor covering the original linoleum deck as that would have been wasteful.

I'll have to think on this some more, but I am leaning towards thinking that you might be correct that the middle deck extended all the way to the starboard side of the hull. I like your cut-outs showing additional sections of the original linoleum deck. For simplicity, I might just model mine similar to the cover picture on the Pit Road box . At least I have some time to make a final decision while preparing the base hull. On the one hand it is a bit frustrating that the available pictures do not give a perfect rendition of the actual ship, but on the other hand, at least it gives a bit of artistic license to come up with a scheme that seems to make sense since nobody can point to pictures to say it was wrong.

Thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts on this interesting ship! I'll be sure to do the same.