Haskell-class APA minutia

...any pics yet of this project?  I equally anticipate the water...!

I think I can answer the ventilation question.    I'm assuming the personnel spaces even in these old ships were air conditioned.  In conditioned spaces (either heated or cooled), only about 10% of the total air circulated through these spaces is replenishment air (aka, fresh or outside air).  The other 90% is recirculated.   This 90/10 air mix is heated/cooled, then supplied to the spaces by mechanical means (usually vaneaxial fans), then returned to the heating or cooling coils, where it repeats the cycle.   Replenishment air is introduced into the ventilation system strictly to keep the inside atmosphere fresh.  An excessive amount of replenishment air leads to additional energy required to cool or heat the air in the system, compared to relatively less energy to heat and cool recirculated air.  The introduction of replenishment air to the system is 'balanced' by the exhaust of equal volumes of air from spaces such as heads, galleys, etc., where odors collect.  Basically, for every cubic foot per minute of replenishment air introduced into the system, a cubic foot per minute of 'stale' air is exhausted from the system.  Thus, you can surmise that there may not be many vent openings on a troop transport.  Cargo spaces, however, are normally ventilated with non-conditioned air, and their large space volumes require a certain number of air changes per hour.  Thus relatively large vent openings for their supply and exhaust air.  Machinery spaces (engine and boiler rooms) are also ventilated, but not conditioned, thus relatively large fans and vent openings as well.

mfsob wrote:

Another one for the vast and all-knowing forum (or at least the few of us who like ships that aren't laden with guns) - Lights. Specifically in the Haskell AKAs, does anyone have a clue what the colors and arrangement of the fighthing lights was on the forward kingpost? I know they're going to be small in 1/700, but what the heck ...

Fighting lights are a form of IFF.    Their colors varied according to the plan of the day.    The idea was that you were not supposed to shoot at the fellow with the correct sequence of lights.   If you refer to some of the documents at destroyerhistory.org which contain the plans-of-battle for the operations in the Solomons you will find references to the fighting light sequence.

You need to find an equivalent document which identifies the sequence for your ship for the day/operation you are modeling.  Good luck.

I would suggest that you paint them whatever sequence you wish (i.e. red over green over red) and dare someone to tell you that you are wrong.

As far as stern lights you may be seeing two things.  One may be the stern navigation light with its baffle.   According to the rules of the road,  the white stern light is to be of limited visibility at the stern.  There is a 120 degree baffle (+/- 60 degrees) which limits the visibility of the light from forward aspects.

The second may be a wake light.  This was a small, typically blue, lamp which projected down onto the wake of a ship such that a following ship in a blacked out convoy would be able to see the wake of the ship ahead and not run into the ship.  Blue would not be visible at great distances at night.  

Like fighting lights, operational conditions may vary the use of navigation lights.

Another one for the vast and all-knowing forum (or at least the few of us who like ships that aren't laden with guns) - Lights. Specifically in the Haskell AKAs, does anyone have a clue what the colors and arrangement of the fighthing lights was on the forward kingpost? I know they're going to be small in 1/700, but what the heck ...

Also, it appears that on the stern, directly under the 5-inch gun, are two small square structures that I'm guessing are formation or convoy lights of some kind. Or are they something else? Any info would be appreciated as I plod towards a conclusion!

mfsob wrote:

Ahhhhhh, OK. I thought those were frame numbers running down the centerline of each plan, but I had assumed it was like with airplanes, where they start with 0 feet at the nose and measure each rib or stringer in feet on back to the tail. What I've been doing to get some measurements is using my dividers held up against the screen, with an LCVP (36-feet) as the scale. That has helped me work out things like the length of the paravane cranes and the placement of certain vents, reels, etc.

I would point out that the datum (o line) on an aircraft is an arbitrary line determined by the manufacturer - on most single engine Cessnas, it isn't the nose, rather the engine compartment firewall - Some twin engine aircraft  use the leading edge of the wing @ the fuselage.  On most a/c the datum for the wing ribs is the C/L of the fuselage.  And all measurements are in inches, not feet. 

mfsob wrote:

I was fitting railings around the deckhouses on my Haskell build last night when I suddenly realized something - There are no funnels or vent scoops on the ship. Anywhere. At first I thought maybe Dave Angelo at Loose Cannon Productions had had a major oopsie, but no, looking at photos showed the same thing. Which leads to the question: How did the troops packed into these things in the very hot and humid environment of the Pacific keep from getting broiled alive? Surely the berthing spaces weren't air conditioned?

I served for a while on Lexington (CV, CVA, CVS, CVT, AVT-16). We had a chill water type of air conditioning that used seawater. The salt in the sea water played havoc with the piping and  didn't really reduce humidity per se, but the mechanically chilled water did cool down the interior spaces a bit. That was 1940s technology that might have been used on APAs and the like. We need to get an old timer Machinist Mate to chime in on this one. Newer builds of ships didn't utilize intakes like the big old ones. They had electric fans that forced air from vent openings on the bulkheads and overheads.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect those funny-shaped vents on the tops of the kingposts were to vent the troop/cargo spaces.

Fred

I was fitting railings around the deckhouses on my Haskell build last night when I suddenly realized something - There are no funnels or vent scoops on the ship. Anywhere. At first I thought maybe Dave Angelo at Loose Cannon Productions had had a major oopsie, but no, looking at photos showed the same thing.

Which leads to the question: How did the troops packed into these things in the very hot and humid environment of the Pacific keep from getting broiled alive? Surely the berthing spaces weren't air conditioned?

Prof Tilley presents a fine discussion of the technique to scale a drawing using a copy machine.  And with it, the question about the numbers on the bottom of the plan drawing is moot.

However, ddp59 provided the correct answer - those numbers are frame numbers on the ship.  And "frame spacing" varies between types of ships.  Might be 18"; might be two feet. (It would certainly be written on the legend of that drawing if we could see the whole thing, but they just copied the obvious stuff)  And look really, really close at that drawing.  The Zero spot is not at the exact pointy end - the forepeak.  It is at the perpendicular that runs through the waterline.

Those frame numbers are also used for identifying compartments inside the ship, by their forward bulkhead.  So a space with the fwd bulkhead at the third frame will have a 3 in its "address".  (there's more to the address story, but I'm only talking about the frame number component.)  And if the fwd bulkhead is forwardof the waterline, like the chain locker, it will have an A or a B in its address, depending on how many frame spacings it is from the forward perpendicular.

There we go again - minutia R us!

I hope I don't insult anybody's intelligence with the following, but lots of people seem to have problems converting measurements and drawings from one scale to another - not because they don't understand the concept, but because they make the calculation process more complicated than it needs to be.  I never took a math course beyond high school (and math was my worst subject), but I find the following system easy.

So here's a rough-and-ready technique for re-sizing plans to match the scale of a kit.  It requires a good, accurate ruler (preferably one marked in 64ths of an inch) and a photocopier (or scanner) that can reduce and enlarge to specific percentages.  (I used to have to drive to Kinko's whenever I wanted to resize a drawing; now I can do it with my very own, $125 Epson printer/copier/scanner.)  You don't need to know the scale of the original drawing, or, for that matter, the exact scale of the kit. (That's just as well.  If the drawing has been reproduced before it may or may not be the same size it was originally, and we all know that kit manufacturers can make downright gross dimensional errors).  The calculations can be done with pencil and paper, but the job will be faster, and errors much less likely, if you've got a pocket calculator that works in feet, inches, and fractions.  (You can buy such a gadget nowadays at Wal-Mart for less than $10.  I've got three of them; they're among the most used tools I've got.)

The math is just simple arithmetic.  It may be a little hard to follow as I type it here, because the font doesn't lend itself to typing fractions, but believe me - it's really quite simple.  If it wasn't, I wouldn't be able to do it.

Pick a measurement that you can take conveniently and precisely from both the plans and the kit.  The bigger the better.  (The length of the hull at the waterline is often the best.)  Measure carefully (preferably to the nearest 64th).  Write down the two measurements.

Since the reduction and enlargement ratios on the copier are based on percentages, you need to convert the ratio between the kit and plans measurements to a percentage.  Assume for the moment that the plans are on a larger scale than the kit.  The relevant equation is:  kit dimension over plans dimension = X over 100.  So multiply the kit dimension by 100 and divide the result by the plans dimension.  Key the resulting number into the copier, and (assuming the copier works right) it will disgorge a copy of the plans that will match the kit. (Check it, though.  You may find that the reduction ratio in the copier isn't exactly right.  If not, click the percentage up or down by 1 and try again.) 

Example.  Say the dimension you took off the plans is 9 7/64", and the equivalent dimension on the kit is 5 7/32".  The equation is 5 7/32" over 9 7/64" = X over 100.  Dredge up your memory of what your fifth-grade teacher told you about cross-multiplication.  Multiply 5 7/32" by 100; the answer (according to my little calculator) is 521 7/8".  Divide that figure by 9 7/64", and the calculator will tell you that X=57.289879.  So set the ratio on the copier at 57%.  (And if the resulting copy doesn't match the kit, try 58% or 56%.) 

If the drawing you're working from is on a smaller scale than the model, just flip the first half of the equation.  Make it: plans dimension over model dimension = x over 100. 

There will be a limit to how much the copier can reduce or enlarge.  (On my printer/copier/scanner the limits are 25% and 400%.)  If necessary, make the reduction in two (or more) steps.  Reduce the original as much as the copier will let you, then take the dimension off that copy and go from there.

If you're working from a big set of plans that won't fit on the copier glass, you obviously have another problem.  One solution is to make the initial reduction in several overlapping parts, laying the plans on the copier glass and sliding them around.  Then (very carefully) fasten the copies together with tape or a gluestick.  A better approach, if practical, is to take the plans to an architectural printing company.  Such places have huge copy machines that can handle blueprint-size sheets.  The firm in my town will reduce a 4-foot long drawing to 25% of the original size for about $5.00.

You can, of course, make model-size copies of particular parts of the plans.  For that matter, you don't need to make model-size copies of the plans at all; you can just figure out the dimensions of the parts you're making and work from there.  Personally, though, I find that it's always helpful to have a set of model-size plans on the workbench.  Reading this post will take at least five times as long as the actual process. 

Practical, personal example:  some years ago I was working on a coversion of the Tamiya 1/700 Enterprise to the Yorktown.  There are quite a few differences in the island structures.  I ordered a set of plans for the Yorktown from the Floating Drydock.  They're fascinating drawings, reproduced from the original "Booklet of General Plans."  And they're on the scale of 1/8"=1' (or 1/96).  I didn't have my own printer/copier in those days, so I took the big plans down to Kinko's and laid the relevant sections of the sheets showing the island on the copier glass.  It took several steps (and a couple of dollars), but eventually I got a workable elevation and plan view of the Yorktown's island in 1/700 scale.  Those copies tipped me off to the fact that the island in the Tamiya kit was ludicrously skinny - and that fact had all sorts of implications for the details of the flight deck; I eventually gave up on the project.  Maybe some day....  

Again, I apologize to anybody who already knew all this.  But I'm often surprised at how many people don't realize how simple it is.  I really feel sorry for our predecessors in the days before reducing copiers and calculators.  Just about every old book on ship modeling starts out with a chapter on how to resize a set of plans by drawing grids and plotting curves on them.

So much for good intentions ... I was going to post a few in progress shots now that it's starting to look like a ship instead of random blobs of resin, but my computer rolled over and died last week and is currently in the shop, hopefully to be fixed "soon."

I did manage to solve the mystery of the running lights, onyxman - a marvelous person at this website, http://www.dobrinkman.net/lowndes/ship.htm , scanned copies of the deck plans! And it shows a "light box" on each wing of the bridge deck.

Now if I could just figure out how those plans are scaled. There's what I thought was a rule in feet down the centerline of each plan, but the way it's marked it's obvious the numbers don't signify however many feet back from the bow. Sigh ...

I wonder what the signal said?

As far as side lights, I did a quick scan of some of the pictures on navsource and you are right MF, nothing conspicuous. The best shot is this one:

http://www.navsource.org/archives/10/03/100320809.jpg

Is that a black running light shield at the end of the bridge wing? ( the lights themselves are small, the shield is black, not red or green as is sometimes depicted)

Personally, I'd say if the sidelights are so inconspicuous in the photos, they be inconspicuous in 1/700 scale.

Fred

mfsob, I grieve to announce that you have just triggered another round of my insufferable second-hand anecdotes, passed on from my father.  (One of the biggest regrets of my life is that, having required my students to get literally thousands of military vets down on tape, I never did an oral history interview with Dad.  Now, eighteen years after he died, I have to rely on my own highly-defective memory.)

His ship, the Bollinger, never came close to getting into combat while he was on board.  (She got to Okinawa the day after the last of the kamikaze attacks.)  The war ended while she was at sea in the Pacific.  The captain celebrated by letting the enlisted men take their shirts off:  "In honor of this occasion, sunbathing will be permitted on the weather decks." 

Dad said that, for everybody concerned, the scariest moment of the war came when the ship arrived off the California coast in the middle of the night.  The wartime blackout had just been lifted, and, with the exception of the captain, not a single one of the officers (almost all of whom were reservists who'd been civilians in 1941) had ever navigated a ship in a coastal area with lights on.  White lights, red lights, green lights.  Lights mounted on ships, lights in buildings; some of them moving, some of them standing still.

Dad was junior officer of the deck; the officer of the deck was the ship's writer.  (Regulations didn't require him to be in charge of a watch, but he was a nice guy and wanted to make himself useful.)  The lights disoriented him so much that he sent a messenger to wake up the captain.  The captain came up to the bridge in his bathrobe, took a look around, said "what's the problem? Everything looks all right to me," and went back to bed. 

The ship's final arrival at the pier in San Diego was not quite as memorable an event as the return of a battleship or carrier.  The big ships had bands playing, either on board or on the pier; the Bollinger got one enthusiastic little man playing patriotic songs on an accordian.  ("He was good, too," said Dad, who was a accomplished accordian player himself.)  The other feature of the grand arrival was a guy walking along the pier with a big gunny sack full of half-pint cartons of fresh, cold milk, which he tossed up to the sailors lining the rails.  (Dad always said that, in his experience, sailors on liberty after a long time at sea went after milk in preference to booze.  I have my doubts about that one, but he was quite emphatic about it.)

A couple of nights later, with the ship safely (and somewhat miraculously) tied up to the pier in San Diego, the following exchange took place between the officer of the deck, the chief signalman, and one of the junior signalmen.  (The OD was on the navigating bridge; the other two, communicating with him via speaking tube, were on the signal bridge, one level up.)

Officer of the deck:  "Signalman, that ship over there has been flashing his signal lamp at us for five minutes!  Why haven't you relayed the signal?"

Junior signalman (plaintively):  "Chief, that's not a signal; the OD's looking at car headlights.  They're flashing because the cars are going past gaps between the buildings."

Chief:  "Shut up and take the signal."

Sure.  The replacement for those nasty blobs of 20mm gons, and also the 40mm guns, are resin parts in 1/400 scale from L'Arsenal of France.  (http://www.larsenal.com/Source/catalogue/larsenal/AC_400_03.jpg).  I used the 40mm guns for the Vietnam-era Haskell class USS Navarro APA that I am nearly finished building.  They are beautiful, and elevate the quality of the Revell kit considerably, without changing anything else.  Strictly, the Revell kit is 1/375 scale, and 1/400 scale guns should be a bit too small, but they look fine to me.  You could go with 1/350 scale parts if you would rather, but I really recommend the 1/400 parts. 

Ordering them from the L'Arsenal website was much easier than I expected - M. Druel speaks better English than some of the high school graduates that graduated with my kids in the last couple of years.  http://www.larsenal.com/  Try it, you'll like it.

Rick heinbaugh 

I should check this forum more often.....I do mostly armor but also a few planes and ships.  My father also served his WWII time in an APA, APA 120, USS Hinsdale.  I heard many stories about the ship and his experiences and his shipmate's experiences.  He was with her at Okinawa and Iwo Jima where she was hit by a Kamikaze on the aft port side close by the engine room.  One of the bombs of the plane landed on the rudder post but did not detonate and a bomb squad from the USS Colorado came aboard defused it and removed it.  If you google her or the Haskell class you can find pictures of the holes in her side.  They patched her up after Okinawa and she limped home to Hoboken for repair.  Dad brought home an M1 Garand from the beach on Iwo and a couple of pieces of the Kamikaze which I still have.

Years ago I got the Revell model of the Randall and did a very young and sad build of the model.  Well, I eventually gave it away and later regreted that.  Recently I purchased another Revell Randall and intend to build her eventually as the Hinsdale....maybe with the Kamikaze damage.  One of the bad things in the kit are the 20mms....really minimal.  Anyone know an answer to that short of scratchbuilding all of them?

Oh, and yes those are waste water "pipes".... 

Good luck on your build!  I sure look forward to seeing it finished! 

Sorry I couldn't get in on this facinating thread sooner, but I was on my annual migration to the summer digs in Colorado.

I concur, up till at least the early 70s, everything went over the side. I distinctly recall being in a lifeboat lowered during a drill and getting a very pungent gift "package" from some clown who shoulda known better than to use the head during a drill.

But really, weren't a lot of municipalities still discharging raw sewage back then too. Come to think of it, the city of Victoria, BC still does.

On a ship that would have boats alongside on a regular basis, it would have been important to have those downspout half pipes on all the overboard discharges.

It occurs to me (finally) that nowhere but in the scale modeling community would there be such a serious and purpose-drive discussion about, well, poop. I'm thinking more and more that Dave Berry hit the nail on the head when he said, "There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness.' "

Now, about how those paravanes are rigged on the bow ...

Surface_Line, one of the things I am sure about from the WWII days is that pretty much everything unwanted went over the side directly into the ocean, harbor, river or wherever the ship happened to be - garbage; oily wastewater from the bilges; excess dunnage; ummmm, sewage stuff; you name it. My impeccable source for this is Dad, an ex-Victory ship merchant mariner, who had a real good laugh at my expense when I asked the exact same question.

 Right up into the seventies, nothing was "retained-on-board".When "sweepers" was passed, at sea, the crew was directed to "dump all trash over the fantail". Many photos clearly show the garbage chute used for this. Inport, dumpsters were provided on each pier.  Yes, even raw sewage was discharged via through hull fittings, directly into the water (Sea, River, Harbor, whatever) It was in the late fifties/early sixties, that pleasure boats began installing holding tanks, and somewhere in the mid sixties that enforcement of waste onboard storage, began in earnest. The sewage discharge fittings were generally slightly below the waterline. The ones with the darkened area below their ends, were probably overboard discharge for bilge water, and grey water, and the dark area, a buildup of oil, dirt, or running rust.

 Interesting side thought.....in drydock, hoses were rigged to the overboard discharge fittings, which carried discharged materials, to a drain system in the floor of the drydock.

I can't claim to have researched (or had much inclination to research) this particular point, but I suspect mfsob has it right.  It's perhaps worth noting that some (not all) of those pipes have very dark, smeary stains under their mouths in photos.

The most glaring examples of this sort of thing I've bumped into are the photos taken after the Bikini atom bomb tests.  Several shots show USN personnel cleaning up the ships that survived the tests (i.e., those that were a few miles away from the center of the blasts).  The sailors, invariably, are swabbing the decks in T-shirts, shorts, and bare feet.

It would be interesting to learn how many of those guys eventually died of radiation-related illnesses.  My suspicion is that the Navy doesn't know.

Surface_Line, one of the things I am sure about from the WWII days is that pretty much everything unwanted went over the side directly into the ocean, harbor, river or wherever the ship happened to be - garbage; oily wastewater from the bilges; excess dunnage; ummmm, sewage stuff; you name it. My impeccable source for this is Dad, an ex-Victory ship merchant mariner, who had a real good laugh at my expense when I asked the exact same question.

There was no environmental consciousness in those days, and only the dimmest understanding of things like hazardous materials and MSDS sheets. One example - he said when they used spray guns to paint the ships, they usually did it as stripped down as possible (Respirator? What's that?) and then scrubbed themselves off with kerosene on the fantail. Why? Because they only got two sets of work dungarees, and it was hell to try and get the paint out of those. Much easier to paint almost naked and then scrub yourself off with a flammable liquid.

Coincidentally, I was just at the point of putting these things (the subjecet of your #2 question) on my Navarro (also Haskell class) build last night.  My best reference is an 8x10 print of a postcard style photo that I bought many years ago of Magoffin (APA-199), showing the part side of the ship in bright sunlight.

The only place I found this photo on the  web is at http://www.ussmagoffin.org/mg.gif, as part of a nasty animated gif.  I couldn't blow it up to a usable size from the online version, so I didn't spend any time trying to break it out of the animated gif.  I can scan my photo and send it to you if you'd like.  

At any rate,  here's what I can see.  There are many of them - 30 to 35 on the port side alone.  They start from different heights above the boot topping - maybe three different heights above the boot topping: one foot, three feet and four feet.  Or so.  They end at different distances below the boot topping - two to three feet?  And, as you originally surmised about Landing Craft rubbing rails, each vertical pipe has a pair of rubber bumpers around the base of the pipe in an "H" shape, I think to protect the bottom of the discharge pipe from being crushed by boats coming alongside.

 What are they for? From my experience as a shipboard Chief Engineer (in the 1980's, not the 1940's), I would doubt that they would be for the toilets in  the troop spaces.  I'd accept that they come from showers and sinks (grey water) rather than toilets (black water, sewage, that nowadays would go to the ship's Collection, Hold and Transfer - CHT - system).  I don't really know how raw sewage was handled in the old days, but I don't think it went directly to the sides of the ship.

You may find something helpful at http://www.rpadden.com/apablueprint/blueprint.htm 

 Good luck.  I normally work in 1/700 and was looking forward to the Loose Cannon kit of the Haskell class, but I am so sick of it after this Navarro build that I don't think I will ever build another APA. 

 Rick Heinbaugh 

Times do change....One of the more amusing spectacles to be observed in North Carolina can be seen when the Marine armor is on maneuvers at Camp Lejeune.  You're minding your own business driving down a fairly busy thoroughfare when a tank comes roaring out of the woods and crosses the street (at the carefully marked "Tank Crossing" - meaning the spot where the pavement has been reinforced).  Then it stops and two enlisted men jump off carrying brooms.  They carefully sweep up any debris the tracks left on the pavement, then re-embark and the tank thunders on its way.

Generals Patton and Vandegrift must be rolling in their graves....

jtilley wrote:

This subject interests me; Haskell-class APAs were a big part of my childhood because my father served on board one of them.  I think your guess on the first question may well be right (though quite a few other lines could just as well be run through the bullnose), and I'm pretty sure your guess on the second one is on target.  For his birthday one year I gave Dad a framed picture of his ship, the Bollinger (APA 234) that I'd ordered from the Naval Institute.  I remember him showing it off to some dinner guests, one of whom asked about the dark smears running down the sides from the bottoms of those pipes.  "Those are overboard discharge pipes."  "What are they discharging?"  "Well, they lead from the heads in the troop berthing spaces?"  "What's a head?"  "."  "Oh, so that's what we call pollution."  "Yep - the real stuff." In fairness, various other liquids, such as overflowing condensate from the engine room, also come out of overboard discharge pipes.  But my guess is that the ones you mentioned did indeed lead to the troop berthing spaces. Please keep us posted on your progress - and, if possible, show us some photos.  One of these days I'd like to tackle another model of the Bollinger.

On a somewhat unrelated note, when I was building the Pine Island I came across a reference to how the ship discharged fuel onto the sea to make takeoff operations possible.

This subject interests me; Haskell-class APAs were a big part of my childhood because my father served on board one of them.  I think your guess on the first question may well be right (though quite a few other lines could just as well be run through the bullnose), and I'm pretty sure your guess on the second one is on target.  For his birthday one year I gave Dad a framed picture of his ship, the Bollinger (APA 234) that I'd ordered from the Naval Institute.  I remember him showing it off to some dinner guests, one of whom asked about the dark smears running down the sides from the bottoms of those pipes.  "Those are overboard discharge pipes."  "What are they discharging?"  "Well, they lead from the heads in the troop berthing spaces?"  "What's a head?"  "."  "Oh, so that's what we call pollution."  "Yep - the real stuff."

In fairness, various other liquids, such as overflowing condensate from the engine room, also come out of overboard discharge pipes.  But my guess is that the ones you mentioned did indeed lead to the troop berthing spaces.

Please keep us posted on your progress - and, if possible, show us some photos.  One of these days I'd like to tackle another model of the Bollinger.