Trumpeter 1/350 Hornet conversion to Yorktown

The Yorktown/Enterprise had a differently shaped bridge than the later Hornet.

  Nautilus Models makes a resin conversion to backdate the Trump Hornet to a '42 Yorktown/Enterprise

The shape of the flight deck forward also differed between the Yorktown/Enterprise and the Hornet.  Again Nautilus comes to the rescue with a laser-engraved flight deck correction

http://nautilusmodels.com/enterprise.htm

Thanks very much.

I'll continue searching online for the right paint scheme, but this will be a huge help.

Measure 12 as lost at Midway.  http://www.shipcamouflage.com/usn_cv.htm

Description here http://www.shipcamouflage.com/measure_12.htm

Pcalder wrote:

I bought Trumpeter's 1/350 Hornet with the intent of building it as the Yorktown to make a companion for Trumpeter's Coral Sea Lexington. So, I would want to build the Yorktown as she appeared in May of '42.

Won't it be easier to buy Trumpeter's Yorktown 1944 and convert it to 1942 version? I still have this one in my stash along with CV-14 Ticonderoga.

Model Maniac wrote:

Won't it be easier to buy Trumpeter's Yorktown 1944 and convert it to 1942 version? I still have this one in my stash along with CV-14 Ticonderoga.

No, in fact it would be very much harder to do it that way.   You see the Yorktown, sunk in 1942 at Midway was the lead ship of the Yorktown class.  She was launched in 1936 and commissioned in 1937. 

CV-10, also known as Yorktown II, was a member of the Essex class.   Launched and commissioned in 1943 she was significantly different from the earlier Yorktown/Enterprise/Hornet carriers.  Longer, completely different island structure, different armament, differnt flight deck, different hull ...  

You can't get there from where you are proposing to start.  Well you could, but you would still need the Hornet kit,  the Nautilus island, and the Nautilus flight deck to do the conversion correctly.   You would probably reuse the anchors from the Essex kit 

That Nautilus island appears to suffer from one rather big problem (though how big, of course, depends on how picky the modeler is).  Like every Yorktown and Enterprise kit ever put on the market, it lacks The Gap.

I've mentioned this in several other Forum threads; it's a rather curious, but conspicuous feature of the first two Yorktown-class carriers.  I found out about it quite some time back when I was starting a conversion (which, like most of my ambitious ideas, I never finished) of the Tamiya 1/700 Enterprise to the Yorktown.  I ordered a copy of the "Booklet of General Plans" for the Yorktown from The Floating Drydock.  (They are, by the way, fascinating - and an excellent, reasonably priced source for anybody working on a model of the ship.)  The first feature of the drawings that caught my eye was that they made a defect of the Tamiya kit ludicrously obvious:  the kit's island is way too skinny.  And on the plan view of the uppermost deck of the island - the deck, that is, that forms the bottom of the big, slablike funnel structure - there was a space, between the tripod mast and the front of the foremost funnel itself, marked "Void."

I guess the plating of the funnel structure was conceived as a fairing around the three stack uptakes, to insulate them and, maybe, make the whole structure look better.  According to the plans, there was a fair amount of empty space surrounding the stacks themselves (except at the very top, where the whole structure was capped off by a platform with three holes in it for the stack uptakes.)  At the forward end of this structure there was a considerable space - I'll guess it was ten feet wide or thereabouts - where, to put it in plastic modeler's terms, the port and starboard halves didn't meet.  There's no explanation on the plans for this; I guess the idea was simply to increase air circulation around the stacks.

It's a rather significant feature of the funnel structure.  The problem is that, due to its location, it's extremely difficult to see in photographs of the ships.  But if you know what you're looking for you can make it out in some pictures.  It looks like there's a wide, black stripe painted on the front of the funnel structure, all the way from the deck to the cap.  The Gap can also be seen in a few of the published photos of the wreck of the Yorktown.  (You may be tempted to think you're looking at an example of corrosion, but you're not.  The National Geographic Society used to have some beautiful shots of the wreck on its website, but not any more.  I guess the public's lost interest.)

For some reason or other the design of the Hornet's island was changed.  There's no Gap in it; the plating runs all the way around the funnel structure.

My good friend Mike F6F is working on a 1/700 Enterprise in which he's taken pains to get The Gap right.  It's fairly easy to add in the process of correcting the Tamiya island; as you add spacers to make the rest of the island fatter, just leave the two halves of the funnel structure as they are.  Here's a link to Mike's thread, which contains some good, accurate information about the point - including a photo of the real ship:  /forums/1145160/ShowPost.aspx .

Adding The Gap to a cast resin aftermarket island would be a bigger challenge - and I don't blame any modeler who concludes that it isn't worth the trouble.  I have to confess that The Gap is one of the first things I look for when I see a model of either of those two great ships, but that's undoubtedly a characteristic of fundamental weirdness on my part.

Another small, but visually conspicuous point.  Sometime before the war started the Yorktown's bridge structure was modified.  The platform immediately below the armored conning tower was altered; if I remember correctly the captain had requested the change, so he'd have a more convenient, open area to observe flight operations.  The new configuration is shown in this shot:  http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/020503.jpg .  She had that platform configuration throughout her wartime career.  The photo of the Nautilus island that Ed posted doesn't seem to have that detail.  Maybe the kit includes a separate resin part for it.

It seems odd that this famous and important ship has attracted so little attention from the kit manufacturers.  There are lots of Enterprise and Hornet kits on the market, and for a while Revell sold its (rather basic) 1/485 Yorktown-class kit in a box labeled "Battle of Midway Carrier," in which configuration the modeler supposedly could build it as any of the three ships.  But the only kit specifically labeled as the Yorktown that I can think of is a 1/485 version Revell released in (according to Dr. Graham's book) 1968.  It was in fact a reissue of the mediocre Enterprise kit, with some of the anti-aircraft guns omitted and instructions to paint the SBDs silver and yellow. 

Seems like the Yorktown deserves more attention than that.  To anybody building a model of her - bravo and good luck.

Pcalder wrote:

...I know that pre-war the Yorktown had the distinguishing "Y" painted on the bridge island, but I can't find a picture showing it after the war broke out and it would stand to reason that distinguishing features like that would be painted over. Likewise with the "YKTN" painted on the flight deck, but most of the wartime pictures I've found either are very unclear or don't show that part of the ship...

I don't think any of the posters responded to this specific point yet, so if I may, yes, you're correct.  The Yorktown received the Measure 12 camo in 1940, if I'm not mistaken, at the same time that the Navy implemented the overall light gray camoflage color for aircraft, and certainly before Pearl Harbor.  Everything was painted over, or stained over, in the case of the flight deck.

I have to add a statement in defense of the old Revell kit, too.  It has its inaccuracies, but as a nostalgia builder, I still remember it fondly from when I built it as a kid, as the Enterprise, and I have a copy of it in my stash now for a future build.  Classic Warships' "Yorktown Class Aircraft Carriers" shows what can be made from that kit.

Regards,

Brad

Here is a shot of the Yorktown in drydock at Pearl Harbor between Coral Sea and Midway. Note the small number 5 on her bow. She did not have time for a new paint job while in drydock bewtween the two battles. Just touch up work.

the Baron wrote:

The Yorktown received the Measure 12 camo in 1940,

Erm.... nooo Measure 12 didn't come about until late fall 1941.

For Deck Colors read this. She did have deck striping, it's just hard to see in photos of her at Midway.

Heres a great shot of her at Midway after being torpedoed (and probably abandoned by the look)

Tracy White wrote:

the Baron wrote: The Yorktown received the Measure 12 camo in 1940, Erm.... nooo Measure 12 didn't come about until late fall 1941. For Deck Colors read this. She did have deck striping, it's just hard to see in photos of her at Midway.

Thanks, getting my dates incorrect (though that's why I qualified the statement by saying that she was repainted before Pearl Harbor   ).  And I agree, the deck was striped, but I'm pretty sure the recognition markings ("YKTN") were not carried forward to the camoflage scheme.  Or were they?

I know that the Yorktown CV-5 has modified several times along the war until his sinking, and there are several photos available on the web, I can't remember the complete link where you can see these ones, but you can "google" the name, the only one I recollet is about "history navy" (the URL name) is a large database of files of american navy related to all warships of that war, several photos are only in grey.

Unfortunely much of them are so blured, but there are a kit in resin to replace cpompletely the Yorktown island from this truimpeter kit.

I have the old Nautilus Models Yorktown conversion set for the Revell model and recently acquired the old Revell Yorktown kit as well.  I know it isn't the Trumpeter Hornet kit, but I am looking forward to this build!

Bill Morrison 

I picked upthe Nautilus conversion, and it will be interesting to use. It will be my first experience with any resin, but I'm looking forward to the realism of a wooden flight deck.

The Measure 12 is just the dark blue color on the Yorktown, right? Any photos don't seem to indicate any sort of pattern that I can tell - unlike the Hornet which had the bizarre pattern that the Trumpeter kit gives it. Was it the only early war US carrier to have that sort of camo? Lexington didn't have anything at Coral Sea, and it doesn't look like the Enterprise did at that time either. If I recall, the Wasp was still in the Atlantic with the Ranger.

Measure 12 is banded or graded.   The Hornet had Measure 12R (or Ms 12Mod) which was splotched/wavy.  It was the only carrier in the Pacific in such a measure.   The Enterprise was in overall blue for most of the war.

As you can see from the photo associated with the measure from the Shipcamouflage site the lower hull is dark.   Shipcamouflage calls it 5S Sea Blue.   That was getting phased out so 5N Navy Blue may also be seen.   The hangar deck was a band of 5O Ocean Gray.  Look closely you can see that it extends into the shadow under the deck overhang forward.  Above that on the island is 5H Haze Gray.

If you go back to the caouflage database I referenced before you will see the progression of camouflage measures and how they changed as the threat evolved.

I just thought that I would add this artrist's rendering of Yorktown in her final resting spot. The "gap" is visible at the top of the island structure.

Pcalder wrote:

I picked upthe Nautilus conversion, and it will be interesting to use. It will be my first experience with any resin, but I'm looking forward to the realism of a wooden flight deck.

A tip on the wooden deck.  Use a good hardware store type spray sealer, like Krylon, to seal both sides and all edges of the wooden deck.   If you want to stain the deck you can use a thinned-down version of the an enamel paint before sealing,  or paint it after sealing.  A water-based acrylic will cause the thin wood to warp.  Even humidity in the air may cause warping.  Sealing the wood with a solvent-based material reduces the chances of warping