Liberty ship Airplane Transport

Tom's discontinued those metal planes, but I have a few.

http://www.steelnavy.com/TomsP38&P47.htm

But it's not in their catalog and I couldn't find any on eBay.

Wrong ship, but I reckon the Lightnings were wrapped up thus.

When I was on the JOB years ago they had the engine turning over slowly. On the big crank shaft they had a plunger that went up and down in a 55 gal drum, their laundry machine! It was interesting and discouraging that the bridge and quarters were very familiar to me. I could test gear and sail with almost no orientation, in 1988.

Dad says all the planes were below deck on his trip. I'm going to have all or most of the hatches open.

Do you have any transport photos etc.? Great project!

Those drawings remind me of my only visit to the JOB.

My daughter was dating a guy who was a volunteer steam engineer on her. He did all kinds of stuff to get on my good side- pieces of plate and cable, and a tour behind the scenes in the engineering spaces.

He got a big kick out of the bubble levels built into their big lathe, useless as anything.

My daughter had been on board before and was eager to get me to go down the shaft tunnel to the end and back- oh hell no! That one lonnng shaft!

Did she have those big racks on deck, or was it all in the holds?

I've gotten underway on this. The first step is to cut out all the old hatch locations from the deck:

Thanks for that Ed. Floating docks would make sense to me given the time and place. But I just consulted with my 88 year old eyewitness and he is sure it wasn't a floating dock. It was a dock parallel to the shoreline long enough for two Liberty Ships. I also took a reconnaissance flight over the south and east coasts of Biak via Google Earth ( what a world we live in!). Just off the modern airport is what looks like a long submerged causeway going perpendicular to the shore. Dad says that is not familiar either. So i guess I'll go with pilings.

For a means of transporting your aircraft ashore, check with Carl Musselmann at Back Aft Models for pontoon barges and floating wharf sections

Carl also has a link to a 1946 Popular Science article with diagrams of different pontoon barge applications

I've started on a water base. It's plaster poured over pebbled bathroom glass as a mold, painted with acrylics and coated with Future. It's supposed to look 'tropical'.