Duke Maddog's Tin Can Navy. WARNING! Lots of Pics!

I have a small recorder I got back in high school and a couple of hundred hours of tape. One memerable occacassion back in 1983 was when two church elders came to visits. One was a navigator in B-24s and the other, named Otto, was a mechanic in the Luftwaffer. 40 years after the war and here they were, side by side, in the same church. They both recounted they feelings and experiences on the war and how they put it behind them.

They couldn't believe my interest in their experiences, so I showed them my hobby room where I was building a 1/48 B24. I told them I needed the storries in order to put a more accurate feeling towards my build.

Now I have my pensized digital recorder which is a must when hanging around vets. My church has a few WW2 vets left, and every sunday they make funny comments to each other about the service since one guy was in the aircorps, one in the infantry, and one in the airborn. Although they are in their 80's they still act like a bunch of twenty somethings around each other.

Those relationships won't be around for long, and its their goofing off with each other that brings about the true history of that conflict.

Duke, I commend you for sharing your fine collection with us. I built the 1/700 scale Spruance class destroyer as the Hayler, since I did some time on her, and found out she just was sunk as a target. I find your O'Brien compliment to the class.

Were is the time going? Seemed like a few days ago we were disscussing at model meetings the "new" Spruance and Ticonderoga class ships, now they are being decommissioned, scrapped, sunk, or turned into museums.


Scott

One moral to this story: if you know a World War II vet, pick his or her brain for all its worth. Those folks are passing away at a rate of about 1,000 per day.

In my modern history classes I require every student to do an oral history inteview with two people who can remember some American military conflict. I recall one student in particular - a civilian employee at Camp Lejeune USMC base, where I was teaching in the evenings. She interviewed her father, an Air Force veteran of Korea who was in a VA hospital at the time. She spent about two hours in his hospital room with her tape recorder, chatting about everything he happened to remember about his days in the service. When she left the room he had the happiest expression she'd seen on his face in years. Two days later he died.

My father never came close to getting into combat (his ship arrived at Okinawa the day after the last kamikaze raid), but he was a walking library of anecdotes that didn't get into the history books. We talked about doing an oral history session a couple of times, but we never got around to doing it. There never seemed to be any hurry. Then he got cancer, and other things seemed far more important. That former student of mine has her father on tape. I don't.

If you know somebody like that, the time to get out the tape recorder is now. Believe me, stories about yellow and grey paint are just the tip of the iceberg.

QUOTE: Originally posted by dawnrazor Excellent stuff!, how about weathering one of them? I'm building USS Randall APA224 (Old Revell Kit) and have decided to give it a weathered look, before I build USS Enterprise CV6 (after spending more than the cost of the kit on PE)

Thanks dawnrazor! I will try to weather them later, once I learn how to do it!

I also builtr the Randall, but I didn't weather her. I'll have to post a picture of her next.

jtilley, thanks for the comments! I also have a 1/700 scale frigate done as the Sam Eliot Morrison; I just haven't gotten a pic of her yet. I'll have to get one. I have 6 frigates built.

Also, thanks for the great story! I love reading about things lime that from people who were there!

Handsome models, DukeMaddog! I've got that 1/700 Skywave frigate on my list of "must do" projects. I want to make it the U.S.S. Samuel Eliot Morison - one of two professional historians so far as I know) who've had U.S. Navy warships named after them. (Hmmm....That suggests a slightly tricky trivia question. Does anybody else know the name of the other individual in question?)

Dawnrazor - I can't resist passing on a tip regarding weathering for attack transports. (I've mentioned this a couple of times before in this forum; if you've already read it, stop reading here.) My father was a boat group officer on board the U.S.S. Bollinger (APA-234). Among the many bits of interesting trivia that he told me about over the years (I'll always regret that I never got him down on tape), he remembered that the eternal occupation for the enlisted men on board that ship (and virtually every other one in the navy) was chipping paint. At virtually all times during the daylight hours, several gangs of guys were scraping grey paint off rusty spots (or those that the chief said were rusty), priming them, and, several hours later, applying a fresh finish coat. The primer used in the wartime navy was a sickly, very slightly greenish yellow (presumably based on zinc chromate). At any given moment lots of little spots all over the ship, ranging in size from a square foot or so to entire bulkheads, would be painted yellow, waiting for the painters to come back with the finish coat. The one exception was the exterior of the hull, which was off limits to the painters while the ship was under way.

Dad also recalled that one enterprising paint crew, in a typical effort to save time and labor, mixed half a can of primer and half a can of finish coat together, figuring one coat of the resulting color, a really nauseous green, would be plenty. I doubt that any of the textbooks on warship color schemes mentions that one.

I gave Dad a model of the Bollinger (based on that old Revell kit) for Christmas once, and his eyes really lit up when he saw the tiny spots of yellow on the superstructure. I've used the same trick on a couple of other models, and they always bring grins of recognition to Navy vets. (Q: What do you do if you see a cleat in the deck? A: Either leave it alone or chip the paint off it.) It's important to make the yellow really dull, so it only attracts attention on really close inspection.

Good luck. Attack transports make fascinating models. Incidentally - if you're interested in APAs and haven't read the novel Away All Boats, by Kenneth Dodson, you have a major treat in store. The movie based on it, with Jeff Chandler, isn't bad either. I believe the Revell kit was released in response to public reaction to the movie, in which the Randall played the starring role.

Excellent stuff!, how about weathering one of them?
I'm building USS Randall APA224 (Old Revell Kit) and have decided to give it a weathered look, before I build USS Enterprise CV6 (after spending more than the cost of the kit on PE)