The Ship Model Forum

Oh no, he's not in the least. He enjoys this WAY too much.

I'm screwed.

I prefer to think I'm "holding him accountable".

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

I’m not positive yet which deck level is showing the linoleum brown deck. Initially I thought it was the flag bridge but I can’t confirm if the back of the flag bridge had railing or splinter shielding between the flag lockers. The photo clearly shows railing on this deck so this may be the deck above the flag bridge. I don’t know what they called this deck but it had the 3” gun tubs, .50 cal machine guns and the Conning tower on it.

Well, I found a decent shot of this area and I'm convinced now that the linoleum deck is indeed the Conn deck above the flag Bridge. Notice the structure between the flag lockers. The top of that structure can be seen in the pic showing the deck.

I think this area is actually the landing for the access ladders that rise at the rear of the bridge. It is at the same level as the 3" guns, but I wonder if this linoleum is strictly for the landing, or for the entire level. The landing is separate from the deck forward.

I don't think this was just a landing on the back side of the superstructure. I believe they could walk around the side of the superstructure at this level to the front. It's hard finding a good pic of the level but this one kind of shows it. You can see it barely above the splinter shielding on the flag Bridge.


The camera man also pointed the camera forward and captured this shot. Although not much of the deck can be seen, there is a VERY small portion of the brown can be seen between the 3" gun tub and the .50 caliber machine gun splinter shield.

I agree it's really hard to tell. The navigation light does seem to be further outboard of the bulkhead behind it, with a passable space between them.

Yet another detail the kit seems to have erred on.

Yeah, I would love to get my hands on her 1940/41 Plans.

The only thing I found at NARA II was as built plans, or post-PH rebuild plans

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Homer Wallin must have kept the ‘40/‘41 plans for himself after salvage was done.
https://www.alamy.com/stock-image-capta ... 54836.html

He probably did, (said tongue in cheek, he really was the specifically "Honest" man working there)

So, how many copies of the California's BoGP were there?

Well, there's the BoS's copy, the Ships copy, and the individual record copies held at the naval yards/districts where she was homeported or was the assigned major/minor repair station?

BGP's were made of a ship's CURRENT configuration and blueprint copies distributed to the subject ship (how many copies I don't know) and virtually to EVERY USN Yard and Base, since anyone of them could be called upon to work on the ship.

Once a new BGP was made or changes simply modified on the original drawing, in theory, ALL COPIES OF THE PREVIOUS EDITIONS of BGP's for that ship were destroyed and the new ones replaced them. That is why for ships like USS WEST VIRGINIA, CALIFORNIA, TENNESSEE, etc that were rebuilt during the war, no BGP for earlier configurations should exist. But, against reg's and maybe even punishable (since they were classified documents), copies of early configurations were kept by individuals (yard or onboard ship) as mementos or for historical files. I found one and only one ship's file of BGP drawings at NARA II, that had THREE of them done on different dates for different configurations!!!

The original BGP drawings were made from Engineering Drawings when first produced and can be fairly accurate. But, as changes were made to the drawing, the accuracy depends on how much effort went into reproducing the change. Also, the scale accuracy of the copies was altered as blueprints were made. NARA II has some of the original BGP drawings, but mostly they have one or more of the LAST BGP blueprint copies made for that ship.

That's been my experience Rick searching for BoGP's at Nara, if you find anything earlier than the last known configuration, consider yourself lucky......

And there are many places to look, I've found them in places you wouldn't expect to find them like; Yard records, Bureau records, all the way down to personal correspondence, meeting minutes and other very mundane areas that seldom gets searched.....

Prewar, all copies had to be requested and signed for unless it was an issue drawing, (which was automatically sent to all yards) this is why on some of them you see the request block listing every time the plan was issued and who requested it and to whom it was sent.... If you didn't have the need, you didn't get a copy..... Each ship had it's own copy, no telling what happened with old copies, I'm sure some of them made their way into personal document collections.... It's why they occasionally show up in an officers personal correspondence....

I've been going thru my records and copies of BoGP's to see if I might have an example of this....

I do.... USS Gleaves DD 423, From wiki...


Here is the second page of her initial issued BoGP dated June 23rd 1939.... (as updated thru February 6th 1941)



On the right you will see that there is no yard periods listed and a Vandyke listing in the space....

The Vandyke listing....



This listing below shows the subsequent BoGP's issued by Bath Iron Works.... (I've combined the drawing timeline here with her initial commissioned service timeline to illustrate how the BoGP documentation process worked)

1. Laid down, 16 May 1938
2. The initial BoGP copy issued by the builder was to BuC&R (US Navy) dated July 13th 1939 (as designed)
3. The second BoGP copy issued by the builder was to BuC&R (US Navy) dated December 9th 1939 (as launched)
4. Commissioned 14 June 1940 at Boston Navy Yard.....
5. Departing for shakedown training soon after commissioning, Gleaves operated off the Atlantic coast and in Caribbean waters until returning to Boston 19 March 1941 to prepare for convoy duty.
6. The Third thru Sixth BoGP copy issued by the builder was to BuC&R and Boston Navy Yard where it's final fitting out repairs and acceptance trials would take place dated April 3rd 1941
7. She departed Newport on her first mission voyage 23 June 1941, and saw her convoy arrive safely at Iceland. After patrolling in Icelandic waters for a time, she returned to Boston 23 July.
8. Awaiting her at Boston Navy Yard was her final as built and accepted BoGP (as issued by BoNY and sent to BuShips) dated July 18th 1941

You generally do not see these Vandyke listings in BoGP's of wartime construction, or subsequent issues of BoGP's as ships were repaired or updated after the creation of the BuShips in April 1940, it is a remnant of the old BuC&R way of doing things....

One of BuShips first directives was to eliminate this inefficient system and send all BoGP's to all naval repair districts (which ran the yards) cause during wartime they could not afford the delays inherent in copying and shipping plans when they needed to be repairing ships and getting them back in commission... And note; all large ships received at least two copies, one for the ships official records and one for the engineering division, smaller ships only received one....

So the USS Gleaves BoGP I have is a copy of the original BoGP drawn by Bath from the design blueprints.... (updated to BuShips standards by Bath as of February '41 with modifications and equipment updates and I only have pages 2-4)

One thing to note on the BGP (ALPHA dwg) you posted, it may be last dated 6 February 1941, but the configuration shown is from after she has been updated with two twin 40-mm mounts. USS GLEAVES (DD-423) wasn't upgraded with twin 40-mm mounts until March-April 1944 (she was the LAST 5-Gun GLEAVES class unit to be updated to that configuration), at NYNY. As you said, they didn't bother updating the latest upgrade dates on the ALPHA drawings.

As a side note for those not familiar with the USN ship drawings at NARA. The bulk of the BGPs for WWII and Post-WWII are in what are called "HULL" for BuShips plans (1941-at least 1970s in some cases). Earlier drawings (up to 1940), like the above date back to before BuShips was created and are listed as "ALPHA" drawings. The bulk of HULL plans are Blueprint BGP copies with a few (very few) original BGP drawings mixed in. Whereas the ALPHA drawings at NARA are almost all original drawings. However, with age many of the ALPHA drawings are tearing and have been withdrawn from examination by researchers. In most cases NARA staff have made scanned copies for researchers to examine and those are what gets copied if someone wants a copy. Another group of drawings that are interesting, are the "PORT" drawings. These are the CONTRACT DESIGN DRAWINGS generated for bidders to use in generating their proposals to build a ship or group of ships. These are of interest for seeing what the USN had as a baseline concept as they sent out requests for building a ship(s). The bidders (included USN yards!!!) took these drawings and generated Engineering Drawings of how to build the ship. That way they could cost of materials and labor involved. During this "proposal" phase, many suggestions were made as to how they thought that the ship(s) could be built cheaper/easier/according to that builders's Standards/etc. Also, sometimes they had issues as to how much the ship would weigh based on the design drawings. In the end an agreed to configuration design was made the standard for ALL bidders, like for a large class like BENSON or GLEAVES or FLETCHER class destroyers with multiple builders involved.

USS GLEAVES (DD-423) original BGP drawings were done under the ALPHA category and subsequent changes to the drawings under BuShips control were continued with that category.

Not exactly images of the Pearl Harbor battleships on 7 December 1941 or earlier, but this is an illustrative image reported as taken on 10 February 1942 at SF of USS PENNSYLVANIA, USS NEW MEXICO and USS KITTYHAWK (APV-1).

This image is I believe illustrative of 5-N on USS PENNSYLVANIA (still being applied), 5-H and 5-N (Ms 22) on USS KITTYHAWK, and Ms 12R(mod) on USS NEW MEXICO.

I think that is a great comparison of what 5-N, 5-S & 5-O actually looked like side by side in the same light all in the same shot......

Pennsy going into in 5-N with 20B decks

Kittyhawk in 5-S with 20B decks

And the New Mexico in Ms.12m clearly showing the superstructures 5-O base color with 20B decks.....

And the deck on each ship are the same color in the image.....

I think that answers relatively against one another directly all question of what the side colors actually looked like....

That's a great shot Rick.. Thanks much for that....

Jumping back to Linoleum brown decking for a minute. USS Wasp also had linoleum brown decks as seen here as she wears MS-12 Mod. camo in 1942. I think we are starting to see a trend...

Sorry, Im referring to the brown decking on the superstructure and platforms on the sides of the flight deck.

I can't be sure, but I question if the upper half of her camo is 5-S. It could be 5-H (or maybe 5-O). You can see that she has the lower dark band in this March 1942 image. I scanned this same image, but this was easier and quicker than up loading the image. It isn't "officially" Ms 22, not yet anyway. But, appears to be "original" Ms 12.

.... http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/17/09170107.jpg ...