The Ship Model Forum

Thank you both for the photos, they are great help. It's a great help to see the size relationships and general arrangment. Interesting that the compass would be out in the weather. I'm working my way up the bridge, next stop: "Compass bridge! Need to figure out rangefinder bit, and then upward.

The compass was magnetically operated and needed to be as far from masses of steel as possible on an all-steel ship.

So, just need one in 1/350....

I may be able to help with that. Please allow me the weekend to work on it.

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-Steve L.

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I'm curious if the USN used a standardized compass? I following a couple of carrier builds here, I got to wondering. An unusual rig, what with steering levers and the compass seperated. Was this the same on Lex?
I notice the base kit is a decent start, but once one digs into the details...

Short answer to both questions is "yes". The drawing below is from Lexington's General Arrangement Plan. The protective housing around the actual compass itself is called a "binnacle". The binnacle typically includes a lamp which illuminates the compass so it can be read during periods of limited visibility. The two balls on each side are iron "correcting spheres" which help compensate for any magnetic deviation caused by metal objects near the binnacle such as the ship itself. The US Navy typically sourced binnacles from civilian contractors such as the A. Lietz Company which made the binnacle shown below. Binnacles were made to meet Navy specs.

Large ships often had more than one binnacle. Lexington had at least two, one inside the pilot house near the helm, and another on the platform aft of the bridge. Ships with an emergency control station or separate armored conning tower station were likely to have a binnacle inside that station as well.

On some ships like RMS Titanic, a binnacle was sited on an elevated platform as shown in the photo below.

The Trumpeter Saratoga and Lexington kits are indeed good starting points and the hull shape is good. The kits can be made into decent replicas out of box. But the kits do have some conspicuous inaccuracies such as odd features and the shape of the island, funnel and rudder are off.

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Have fun, Monkey around.™

-Steve L.

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Yet another question. At the top of the bridge stucture is a
Platform with two round structures, one to either side. Depending on the photo, they look solid or have railings. My guess is canvas wind cheaters. I'm not even sure what they were for in 1938. Photos are not clear and NavSource seems down. Any help appreciated.

did you select the correct navsource as it has a slightly different domain name then what it was before?
https://www.navsource.net/archives/02/03.htm

Thank you. Link changed. Most photos are long distance it seems.

Early photos of Lexington appear to show the station with the most clarity.

The circular platforms in those photos appear to be surrounded with 2-bar rail covered in canvas. The rails appear to flare outwards slightly at the top. The structures on Saratoga in 1936 appear to be similar if not identical.

The photos suggest that the circular platforms could rotate since the opening in the railings appears at different clock positions in different photos.

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-Steve L.

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If you are talking about the objects on the very top of the tripod, the circular areas held the "altimeter" portion of the MK-19 AA director system. A photo of one is at the bottom of page 99 in Stern's Lexington Class Carriers book. Each was paired with a main director element and these were located on that same foretop between the altimeters. Another set of directors was on the upper platform at the back of the stack. MK-19 directors on the Pensacola and Northampton class cruisers, as well those on many of the pre-war battleships, had been combined into a rotating structure more in line with how we now would expect a director to look prior to the outbreak of war.

Here are some MK-19's on Northampton. https://www.navsource.net/archives/04/026/0402626.jpg The circular extensions aft of the directors were for the altimeters, which have obviously not yet been installed.

Thank you again for the help! The good news is that the GMM Saratoga pe was restocked at Squadron; there will be some fiddley pe work ahead of me, not the least of which is the correct, swagged, chain rails for the gun galleries. My squadron book has a couple good photos, so that should be straight forward. The bridge and funnel, a bit more thought required. I thought WNW kits required planning...

The altimeter parts look at leat a bit like ship parts. I can't find any photos of the ranging parts that go in the center of the platform. The kit parts seem sadly lacking.
On rechecking the posted photos of the tops, all the ranging oarts are either shrouded, or censored.

As I said above, the objects in the center of the foretop were the main parts of the MK-19 directors, seen here on Northampton. https://www.navsource.net/archives/04/026/0402626.jpg When the directors were later mounted in a combined structure, the part seen in this Northampton photo was bolted on the front of the rotating platform, a rangefinder bolted aft of it, and the whole thing was then enclosed. See Tracy White's MK-19 page here http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/ ... 9Director/ The thing in the 4th image down is the actual director, which can be seen on the front edge of the rotating platform in the two images immediately above. That was what was in the middle of Sara's foretop. Aft of the stack, the main directors were closer to the stack with the altimeters mounted further aft on the same platform.

The MK19 DP system was on USS Houston (CA-30), both in its original form with separate altimeters (see pics), and then later as a single enclosed mount.
The latter was not well-regarded either, and various technical [postwar] complaints exist among sailors who worked in and on them.

(Date on photos approx. 1932)

HTH