USN WW II Ship's Names....

Ed,

I knew if anyone would know, you would.... Appreciate the response.

Tks,

Dick McC

You're welcome

Draft marks are applied similary but are painted to contrast with the background.

I have the engineering drawings somewhere of the specs for the letters & draft marks applied to Fletchers

Ed's answer is generally correct, of course, but there were exceptions.  I shall now lapse into one of my late father's favorite sea stories.  Those of limited patience - stop reading here.

Dad was a junior boat group officer on board an attack transport, the U.S.S. Bollinger (APA-234).  As an auxiliary built under Maritime Commission contract during the war, she had no name welded on her stern. 

Shortly after VJ Day, a signal came from Washington ordering that all ships paint their names on their sterns.  The Bollinger was at that time tied up somewhere or other (in the Philippines, I think) next to two other attack transports.  The captain ordered, quite emphatically, that his ship was to have her name painted on her stern before the other two did.

Dad was an architect by training, and had worked for a while in the Ohio State Department of Highways, during the Depression, making roadsigns.  So he got the job.  He figured the best way to make the captain happy would be to paint the lettering directly on the hull plating while the shipfitters were cutting the letters out of steel sheet (to patterns Dad drew for them).  The steel letters could be welded in place as they were finished.

The signal from on high had said that the name was to be applied in "black letters."  The ship being dark grey overall, Dad concluded that the signalman copying down the message had made a mistake; that it had actually read "block letters."  So he drew patterns for block letters reading BOLLINGER, gave them to the shipfitters, and got hold of a can of white paint and some brushes.

Dad, having made his living for some time as a signpainter, was perfectly capable of doing the lettering job - and apparently was the only man in the ship who could do it.  The captain, however, had a strict policy against officers doing any sort of manual labor.  (But he also wanted those letters on the stern in a hurry.)

Dad's solution was to have a couple of enlisted men lower him, the paint bucket, and the brushes over the stern in a bosun's chair.  That way, he figured, he wouldn't be visible from the bridge - and the captain, happy to beat the other two ships in the great labeling contest, wouldn't bother to ask how the job had been done.

Dad was dangling on the bosun's chair, with the lettering job about half finished, when he heard the sound of an engine underneath him.  He looked down to see the captain's gig chugging slowly around the stern of the ship - with the captain sitting in it glaring up at him.  Dad just sat there looking sheepish, and went on with the job. 

The captain never said a word to him about the incident.  And the Bollinger may, I suppose, have been the only ship in the Pacific amphibious force with her name painted white.

My father had an endless list of stories like that.  One of the biggest regrets of my life is that, though we talked casually several times about getting his "oral history" down on tape, we never did it - and now it's too late.  There's a lesson there for anybody with a veteran in his or her family.  The last time I checked, American WWII vets were dying at the rate of about 1500 per day.  The time to make a record of your relatives' memories is NOW.

My father spent almost all of WWII in the Navy.  He'd gotten a congressional appointment to Annapolis back in the thirties, but then got rejected when the medics found out he was partially color blind.  (That was news to him.)  He enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbor, and eventually got acquainted with a doctor who claimed he had exercises that would cure the color blindness.  The "exercises" consisted of helping him memorize the standard exam, which he passed - and thereupon got his commission.  (He eventually concluded the Navy had been right:  when peering through binoculars in a fog, or trying to read signal flags from a long distance, he just couldn't see as well as other guys.  One morning he was reading the newspaper at breakfast when he suddenly exploded and slammed the paper on the floor.  He'd just read a story about a plebe who'd been admitted to Annapolis in spite of color-blindness - because he could play basketball.  "The Navy didn't miss any bargain in me, but...!")

If Dad had gone to Annapolis, he would have been Class of '38.  In view of the mortality rate of the Annapolis Class of '38, I've often wondered whether I'd be here if he'd passed that initial color-blindness test.

At any rate, his seagoing career on board the Bollinger lasted about six months - from May to November, 1945.  (I worked out the dates with reference to the ship's DANFS entry - a remarkably short one.  There are a few photos of her on the NAVSOURCE site; I think one of the officers sitting on a hatch cover in one shot just may be Dad.)  During that time the ship never came close to getting into action. (She'd earned one battle star for "providing logistical support" at Iwo Jima before Dad went aboard; during his time she got to Okinawa the day after the last Kamikaze raid.)  He had no illusions about the significance of the contribution he'd made to the war effort.  But the experience stuck with him for the rest of his life.

I vividly remember, for instance, the harrowing period (for both of us) when he was teaching me to drive.  On one of our perilous evening journeys around Columbus, Ohio I backed out of a parking space on a parking lot and practically got clobbered by an oncoming car.  Dad yelled:  "You can't do that!  You're the burdened vessel!"  That must have been in about 1969 - 24 years after his Navy career ended.

He had no tales of battles or great combat leaders.  (He wasn't sure whether he'd served under Spruance, Halsey, or both.)  The most perilous moment in the ship's career while he was on board came when she returned to San Diego after VJ Day - at night.  (None of the officers except the captain had ever conned a ship in a harbor with the lights on.)  I heard about things like the day the executive officer deserted; the day the first lieutenant got thrown into the Gulf of Samar (by his brother officers); the gas-powered "handy-billy" pump that the damage control party tried to start at morning and evening GQ every day for six months - and never once succeeded in starting; the 5" gun on the fantail whose crew constantly had it torn apart for maintenance - and never hit anything with it; etc.  And once in a while he came up with something that came in handy for model building.  One year I gave him a model of the Bollinger (based on the old Revell Randall kit) for Christmas.  I'll never forget the look on his face when he put on his bifocals and saw the little spots of yellow paint, where the hands, in their ongoing campaign of chipping, priming, and repainting, were waiting for the zinc chromate primer to dry before covering it with the finish coat of haze grey.  And of course I'd put the name on the stern with white decal letters - block letters.

Dad's been gone since 1990, and every time I go to a bookstore I still find myself looking at the ones I think he'd like to read.  Every spring semester, when I'm teaching my "U.S. Military History since 1900 course," I send the students out to do interviews with veterans. I figure maybe I can stop them from making the big mistake I made.

I apologize for hijacking this thread, but I hope I may be forgiven for saying the same thing to anybody reading this post that I say to the students:  if you've got a veteran in the family, get him or her to sit down in front of a tape recorder (or some more modern recording device) NOW.  If you don't, I guarantee you'll regret it.

First my appoligies to Dick for being OT.  Jtilley was a great story to share, those old time sailors could get the Job Done ! My Father spent 23 1/2 years (odd number due to Cuban Crissis)  Serving the Navy. During WWII he spent most of his time aboard the USS Washington. After the war he became a Diver as it paid more due to Hazzardous Work ! Like an extra $15.00 a month. I feel very Lucky that I still have my Dad around to talk to. He is 90 and still going strong for his age, Every week I spend a few hrs with him on the phone  , quizzing him about various Ships and Battles.  I am sorry to hear your Father is no longer with you, but you were fortunate to have learned much of his history and storys. A lot of those old timers kept to themselves. I really like your Idea of your Students Interviewing the Vets. I am sure everyone walks away having learned something. Here is a scan of a pic I keep of my Dad on the Elevator next to my Workbench. I hope you all enjoy. Again Sorry for Being OT

  William E Davis Master Chief USN

Now I'm trying to figure out how to replicate welded letters on the stern of my cruiser. After giving this some thought, I'm coming to the conculsion that attaching individual photo etched letters and then painting over them would be the way to go. I think that this would show the name raised just enough for a scale effect. However, I've searched the net and have been unable to come up with a source for photo etched letters. Does anyone think the above would work and if so, where can I obtain letters in a block style and in 1/350th scale?

Interesting stories and reminds me of a neighbor who lived across the street from us in FL. He was a SeaBee during WWII and told the story of sailing into Pearl Harbor in the spring of '42 aboard a transport ship. Wilbur said everyone, except for essential personnel, was ordered below decks so they could not witness the devestation of 12/7/41. He went on to say that this made a lot of sense since once ashore, he and the rest of the SeaBees were assigned to a barracks which faced battleship row. For months he and his comrades were free to watch the recovery operations on a daily basis from their barracks.

Dick McC

Dick McC2 wrote:

Now I'm trying to figure out how to replicate welded letters on the stern of my cruiser. After giving this some thought, I'm coming to the conculsion that attaching individual photo etched letters and then painting over them would be the way to go. I think that this would show the name raised just enough for a scale effect. However, I've searched the net and have been unable to come up with a source for photo etched letters. Does anyone think the above would work and if so, where can I obtain letters in a block style and in 1/350th scale?

Going to my previously mentioned engineering drawings and cutting the letters from 1/4 inch steel

0.25 / 350 := 0.00071 inches (in scale)

Most commercially available PE is much thicker and the letters much larger.   Check the model railroad suppliers.   You could always etch your own by applying some rub-on letters to a sheet of 0.001 brass,  applying a resist paint to the other side & immersing the sheet in FeCl (from Radio Shack).   Finding rub-on letters in an appropriate size may be a major undertaking too.  I'll have to dig out the spec,  but if the letters are 6 inches tall, they will be less than 2 hundredths of an inch tall in scale.

Is what you're considering overkill?

----EDIT--------------------------

The letters are 5 inches tall (thats 0.0143 inches in scale).   The letter stroke is 1.5 inches wide (0.0042).  The width of the letter is proportional.  An "A" is 7.2 inches (0.0206), a "W" is 8.4 (0.024).  Spacing between letters is variable/proportional

Ed,

Once again I owe you. As usual I delve into the overkill mode and attempt to what I'm rapidly learning is nye unto impossible. However, I thought the lettering would have been a big larger than 5" or 6" in 1/1 scale. Thanks again.

Dick McC

I haven't seen any official documentation on the point, but I'm fairly certain the size of the lettering varied with the size of the ship.  I think Dad, when telling his story (usually with at least one martini or mint julep in him, and with twenty or thirty years of nostalgia creeping in)about painting the name on the stern of the APA said the order was for "twelve-inch block [or black] letters."  An APA was a pretty big ship; if the sizes of the lettering did vary, that must have been among the largers ones.

Twentieth-century warships are full of features that are just plain too small to replicate on scales like 1/700 and 1/350.  We took up this point in another Forum thread recently.  Consider, for instance, the actual thickness of the plating of a 20mm gun shield.  It's difficult to think of a material that could represent it to scale and maintain rigidity.  The same goes for those sheet metal letters. 

One trick that might, I suppose, be worth trying would be to do the lettering with either dry transfers or decals (try the N-scale model railroad department), and spray over them with the hull color.  Those decals have ink on them, and ink has three dimensions.  The ink is also covered with some kind of clear film to keep it from falling apart when the decal slides off the paper.  Maybe the outlines of the letters would be legible through a coat of paint.  I rather doubt it - and frankly I question whether the result would be worth the effort.

On the other hand - photos of H.M.S. Hood show, pretty prominently, the letters H-O-O-D on t he bulkheads at the after end of the forecastle deck.  They're apparently made of metal (maybe a bit heavier than the ones we've been discussing.)  One point where the Italeri 1/720 kit scores over the Tamiya 1/700 one:  Italeri includes that lettering.  (The Italeri kit has separate parts for those bulkheads - with ports and ladders molded on them, as well as the lettering.  Tamiya just offers blank "walls," cast integrally with the hull/deck part.)  I'll be interested to see what the two new Trumpeter Hoods have to offer in that department.  To my eye that lettering is a mighty nice touch - and though its undoubtedly too thick for the scale, to my eye the ship doesn't look quite right without it.

jtilley wrote:

I've often wondered whether I'd be here if he'd passed that initial color-blindness test.

The world is a small place.   My father had a great itch to fly.  He was slated for his second ROTC "summer cruise" to go off to the Aviation cruise evolution.  But, when they sent him off for the aviation medical test battery, he failed the Purple-Blue color vision test.

Anyway, that worked out pretty good for me, as the plane returning to Norman from Pensacola crashed.  Which was also good for my dad, as KW had just sputtered to a stop, and ROTC was about to RIF most of the program since they were suddenly over "head count."  Had my father not been commissioned, he would not have met a nurse in San Diego who would become my mother.

Aside, and back to the topic--I've an old set of 50's era draft and number plans for DDs & smaller, which might backstop Ed's WWII set.  They are filed somewhere logical in my home office (saw them the other day looking for something else).  My have to go trawling for them see about scanning them for posterity.

Sitting here this afternoon waiting for a system build to complete -- I did some research on rub on transfers which could be used to build up a paint layer which would appear as a painted-over raised letter

According to Wikipedia, one point in the Traditional American [Printer] Point system is 0.0138 inches.    I went on to search Woodland Scenics & Lettraset for rub-on transfer graphics.   A lot of the Lettraset stuff has gone by the wayside with the advances in computer graphics.  I couldn't find a complete product listing.   If you were to choose to go that route you would need to check the old artist supply shops for some 1 to 2 point rub on transfer letters.  [If they were even made at that size!]   Then there is the font to worry about.   These two items were the biggest part of my posting comment about the major undertaking of finding rub on transfers. 

Woodland Scenics still sells rub-on transfer letters for the railroad hobby but the smallest size is 1/16" (0.0625").   That is 4 to 5 times too large for the application.  Plus its the wrong font.

Oh boy, we're talking about points! *runs off excitedly to look for pica pull*

Sorry, I got all nostalgic there for a second. As a former small-town reporter I had to do a LOT of the paste-up (assembly) of the pages, and our language of measurement was points and agate; the tool used was the pica pull. Why it was called that, God only knows. It was basically steel ruler that you used to measure type sizes. There are 72 points in 1 inch, so as Ed said, 1 point type is really, really, really small. Agate type, that numbingly tiny stuff they print the sports box scores in, has 14 units to 1 inch. So the 1/16-inch Woodlands Scenics letters would be a little over 4 "points" high.

All of which means nothing, except that somehow these arcane units of measurement endure in spite of the push towards one world standard.