Calling all HMS Ark Royal (WW2) fans

[Maarten Sch�nfeld]

Include here a clipping from the complete hull lines plan in the NMM Greenwich. Very frustrating, the figures aren't readable.

Ark Royal 1934 Hull lines.jpg (48.05 KiB) Viewed 7529 times

[Maarten Sch�nfeld]

Can anyone tell me what the max Beam was for HMS Ark Royal at the water line ?

95 feet 9 inches - unconfirmed though.

This is the same as the original figure for the Illustrious class, and I have no better data to go by.

[MartinJQuinn]

List of available kits and gallery entries added to the first page

[dhogue]

Does anyone know when the Ark Royal got the port side Pom-Poms? I would think that she received them early in the war due to the importance of the ship

[Captain Morgan]

Does anyone know when the Ark Royal got the port side Pom-Poms? I would think that she received them early in the war due to the importance of the ship

I read somewhere it was May 1941, but the only place she could have got them in May was Gibraltar.

[iangazeley]

There is a CAFO that lists the fitting of AA armament to RN ships, which includes Ark Royal's port pom-poms, but I can't now find my reference to it, but from memory I think it was May/June 1941. I've also not found a photo of a Skua and the port pom-poms, and 800 Squadron Skuas finally disembarked in April 1941.

[tjstoneman]

Although only a secondary source, Kenneth Poolman Ark Royal (London: William Kimber, 1956) states "Just before Ark Royal sailed [for Operation Halberd, September 1941], her new port midships multiple pom-pom guns arrived on the dockside [in Gibraltar]. ... got them hoisted inboard and bolted down just in time." The book then says that the mountings (with extemporised crews) shot down two Italian torpedo-bombers in this operation.

[dhogue]

Thanks for the Pom Pom info. Anyone have an opinion whether or not the open compass platform would have corticene or painted deck?

[Rob-UK]

Here's a photo that we may not have seen before:



The Royal Navy Nelson-class battleship HMS Rodney and the Revenge-class battleship HMS Royal Oak can bee seen tied up at anchor as viewed from the flat top flight deck of the fleet aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal in Portsmouth Dockyard on 23 November 1938 in Portsmouth (Photo by Reg Speller/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images). Copyright: 2016 Getty Images

Those who know Portsmouth will get a good feel of the setting of where she is, and shows her deck fairly close up. Nice to see the two legendary battleships in the background too.

[drasticplastic]

What color is the flight deck at time of sinking? Also 507c?

[MartinJQuinn]

What color is the flight deck at time of sinking? Also 507c?

Bronze Grey, according to Mike W's earlier post: viewtopic.php?f=46&t=4870&start=240#p737564

[drasticplastic]

Was that the same, or similar, color (sea-sick - gray/green/yellow) shade that some Semtex deck coverings came in?

[drasticplastic]

According to the Bronze-Grey paint formula, the main colors are yellow ochre and black, which gives an Olive-Drab color (the same combination US army used for vehicles, tanks, etc), but lightened with a considerable amount of white. So...a reasonable match could be made with Tamiya US Olive Drab and white? "Bronze-Grey" sounds like a confusing misnomer because neither of those two colors are in the mix!

[SovereignHobbies]

If you actually mix the formula up, you get this:

[drasticplastic]

So...that's just the same as US Olive Drab!!

[drasticplastic]

Was Bronze-Gray meant as a camo measure? Was it used on gun sponson decks and catwalks (ie. all horizontal surfaces), or were these deck gray, and Bronze Gray only on the flight deck?

[SovereignHobbies]

Howdy.

All I know about this stuff is that it was introduced by AFO 1949 in 1933 which was entitled "PAINT FOR SPRAYING OF FLIGHT DECKS (AIRCRAFT CARRIERS)", and its formulation is given in the Rate Book in 1933 as well as 1937(??) again but with the pigmentation adjusted as the RN had switched to a new black which was much stronger staining than the old black paint which was used, and the black was reduced accordingly to preserve the resultant shade.

I lost my copy of AFO1949/33 in a hard drive crash and haven't been back to Kew to retrieve one yet. (it's not included in the set sent to the RAN and available to download from there, possibly because there were no aircraft carriers in the RAN and it would have been irrelevant). I don't recall that AFO1949/33 said anything either way about the choice of colour and its purpose, although I suppose a dark olive isn't the worst colour one could choose to conceal from above against the dirty coloured Home Waters in overcast conditions.

There is nothing special about Admiralty Pattern 631 Bronze Grey as a paint to make it more or less suited to flight decks. The AFO merely prescribed its use for aircraft carrier flight decks and gave instruction on how it was to be used in conjunction with red lead primer and saw dust to create a surface for a flight deck. I dare say the mechanical properties of the flight deck is so far as the tyres on aircraft wheels would care would have been identical using any of the linseed oil paints they used.

[dick]

The AFO is quite specific. It was for the flight decks:

[mister me]

hello,

as it seems (at least to my eyes) that Ark royal did have 2 Taylors type anchors (?) starboard side and one Wasteney Smith type anchor (?) portside, and that 1/350 merit anchors are known to be too small, do you know if there are some aftermarket replacement parts existing ?

[rpledm]

Is there a missing partial deck at the stern for this ship? There are six half walls installed to support it.