Building a Liberty Ship

Here is a list of all the Libertys built at Oregon Ship. It would be tedious, but you could go through it and check the sites with pictures for these ships. Then at least you'd have a picture of a ship built in the same yard as the Linderman.

http://www.usmm.net/l/oregonvanc.html#1210

Here is an old forum thread re the paint:

/forums/582670/ShowPost.aspx

There are a couple of extensive threads on Libertys. 

I painted mine with MM Light Gull Grey, just because it closely matches the color of the plastic. In reality, they were colored gray, rust, and soot. :)

If you do a full hull model, don't make the mistake of using the Trumpeter waterline to delineate the redish anti-fouling line. Liberty anti-fouling only went up to the 10 ft draft mark, so it was often completely submerged when the ships were loaded.

Fred 

Hopefully Chis Friedenbach will chime in here. He is the expert.

The Armed Guard website also has some good pics, but again, not one of the Linderman.

http://www.armed-guard.com/ag15.html

OK, thumbing through the list, the Frank B. Linderman was laid down Nov. 1, 1943, launched the 20th, and completed Dec. 3, 1943, so you can see that that yard had really ramped things up if they were cranking them out in a month or less! She survived the war and was scrapped in February 1962, no doubt as the government started thinning down the defense reserve fleet.

Given those construction dates, she should have the cutout in the bulwarks at the aft deckhouse, which I'm pretty sure the Trumpeter kit has. But honestly, I would not get too hung up on building an exact replica - as with my Dad when I was working on the model of his Victory ship, that was more than 60 years ago ... he's not going to remember if there were cutouts in the bulwarks or where the extra life rafts were stowed or the colors of this and that. As long as it looks like a Liberty ship, I'm sure your generous gift will be well received.

And Ed is right about the gray, the civilian yards did not adhere to US Navy specifications, so pretty much any medium gray shade you pick will be OK.

Michael,

Unfortunately I don't see the Linderman listed on this excellent website for U.S. Maritime Commission ships:

http://www.us-maritime-commission.de/query.php?abfrage2=EC2-S-C1&typeofquery=Pictures

 If you can't find a pic of the actual ship, you could look up other Libertys built at Oregon Shipbuilding.

Also, much of the variation between ships was in the type and placement of the armament, so you could ask your father-in-law what type of guns she had. Many didn't mount the 5 inch aft, and had a smaller gun instead.

The placement of life rafts also varied.

Fred

bondoman wrote:

I used Haze Gray on my 1946 Pine Island. I bought a couple of bottles of acrylic Polly Scale Haze Gray, which airbrushed beautifully with about 20% water in them at 20 psi. I think it's much too dark though, no doubt a scale problem. I'm going to use the second bottle on my Mission Carmel with some white in, not sure how much yet.

Haze Gray is probably not correct for WWII era Merchant Marine cargo ships.   I wish I had a direct link to the pictures,  but the photo collection of the US Army Signal Corps Hampton Roads (Virginia) Point of Embarkation

http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whatwehave/photo/index.htm 

click the US Army Signal Corps link,  Put ship into the search tool and search.  Click selected and view. 

The photos show that most of the Liberties which called in Norfolk & Hampton Roads were a much darker gray.   Ocean Gray (5-O) would be a more accurate color call-out.  Haze gray (5-H) is a mid-tone between Ocean Gray and Light Gray (5-L).

bondoman wrote:

There's also one in Richmond: http://ssredoakvictory.org/mission.htm

The Red Oak Victory is a Victory ship.  Liberties and Victories are often confused.  The fact that they are both gray adds to it -- but the similarity ends with them both being WWII era cargo ships.

 Edit -- Oh, and Toms Modelworks offers an excellent photo CD walkaround of both the O'Brien and Brown.  The photos show some of the differnces between the two.  There are also some archival pictures (in darker gray than 5-H).

BraniffBuff - you need to do a search through the Ships threads for the name Chris Friedenbach. He is a volunteer crewman on the O'Brien and is very knowledgable about the tweaks needed for the Trumpeter kit to make it an accurate O'Brien.

As to how close the model is to your Dad's ship, that's tough to say ... there were variations from shipyard to shipyard and over time as they found new ways to cut corners. I will dig through the references I accumulated for my Liberty Ship build and see if I can find any specifics on your ship.

BTW, there are two Liberty ships preserved in their wartime appearance:

• Jeremian O-Brien in San Francisco - www.ssjeremiahobrien.org/
• John W. Brown in Baltimore - www.liberty-ship.com/

Both websites have some good photos you can use for reference.

Interesting!! I can see the O'Brien from the bridge  (most beautiful in the world) that I drive over twice a day. Never thought...? In general the Liberty Ships are really ugly tubs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Jeremiah_O'Brien

There's also one in Richmond:

http://ssredoakvictory.org/mission.htm

From what I've seen in this forum in the past I'm not sure the Trumpeter kit even represents the O'Brien that closely!

From what I've seen in photos etc I don't think any Liberty ever looked as pristine as does the box side illustration - mine's gonne be very faded grey peeping through rust.

Michael 

Well, you've come to the right place, sez he on the outside looking in. I'm getting my feet wet too (sorry) on a couple of ships for the first time and would like to see what you pull up. I started a thread called Revell 1:400 ships that gained me a lot of info and some very courteous and helpful answers. Check that out.

I used Haze Gray on my 1946 Pine Island. I bought a couple of bottles of acrylic Polly Scale Haze Gray, which airbrushed beautifully with about 20% water in them at 20 psi. I think it's much too dark though, no doubt a scale problem. I'm going to use the second bottle on my Mission Carmel with some white in, not sure how much yet.

Oh, and here's a funny thing. I used Tamiya Dark Gray for the decks, which painted like a dream straight out of the jar. But my work lights are cool fluorescents, and you CANNOT tell the difference in color. Strictly a sunlight inspection deal.

I tried the recommended quick technique of spray down first with deck color and then up, to about level with the hull color and it actually worked really well, to the point where my attempts to touch up afterwards were counterproductive (must be those lights, just kidding).

One really good website is http://navsource.org/

And, on the modeling side:

http://www.steelnavy.com/