90 Built

I know that the masses of people who follow this blog have been checking every day to see how the ship building is going, only to find nothing posted since early Feb...

#Clunk!

Back to reality. For the couple of people who are interested... it has been going well.

Under construction presently: Chitose (the seaplane tender version), Nippon Maru (the next in line of my scratch-built Japanese oilers) and Hatsuzuki (the second of two Akizuki-class destroyers to fit my purposes).

Did I achieve that self-appointed target of 70 ships built in 90 days? Of course not! I have, though, made a huge 'dent' in the unassembled kits.

I am not exactly sure how many of the original target of 70 that I built by the end of March. I had completed 84 in total at that point. I think 40 of them I had made prior to January, so I reckon that I managed to make 44 over January–March. My uncertainty with this came about because, in early February, I decided to stop the double-accounting and simply focus on building all that I have. Then, in March, I purchased a few more. Confused? So was I for a while, especially when I seemed to be making no progress and the number remaining to be built went up!

First of three photos showing progress with construction. Those built to the beginning of Feb are at left. To the right of the scratch-built oiler are the ships that I had built by 7th March.

There were a few hiatus in Feb. and Mar, but I am content with what I got done. I can see the end point (just over there) and it is well in sight and eminently achievable. Here are the stats 'to the minute':

The current total is 187 ships. This includes all ships, carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, transports, oilers and other 'auxiliary' vessels, a motor mine sweeper (MMS51) and six little torpedo boats, but not the Japanese miniature submarines that come with a few of the kits.

In this second photo we see progress to 24th March.

Of these, 150 have been 'constructed'. I used inverted commas since 28 of them are 3D-printed models, so came ready-made. Of the remainder, Julian built 32 in years-past and I have made 90—82 kits and 8 scratch-built ships—since April last year.

Lastly, the recently built ships, as of today. I did not notice until I cropped the photo for posting here that the last two built are out of photo to the right (part of the scratch-built Kenyo Maru just visible, Shimozuki off to her right).

So, only 37 more to go. I have set up a few mini-targets along the way, viz.:

- all Japanese cruisers built—completed!

- 30 remaining,

- 100 built by me,

- all Japanese destroyers built,

- all Japanese carriers built,

- all Japanese battleships built,

- 18 remaining,

- all RN & RAN ships built,

- 10 remaining.

The last ten will be the remaining US ships that I have: six carriers, two battleships and a couple of destroyers.

A view down the line of the remaining 37, with bits of post-it notes indicating my little interim targets.

First interim target achieved: all Japanese cruisers built.
Light cruisers to the front, heavy cruisers at the back. In order of launching (historically) from left to right they are: front row, Tenryū & Tatsuta (Tenryū class), Kiso (Kuma class), Abukuma and Natori (Nagara class), Yūbari (her own class of experimental light cruiser), Jintsū and Naka (Sendai class), Yūbari (Agano class); back row, Furutaka and Kako (Furutaka class), Aoba and Kinugasa (Aoba class), Myōkō and Haguro (Myōkō class), Takao, Atago and Maya (Takao class), Mogami and Mikuma (Mogami class), and Tone and Chikuma (Tone class). 
These are all that I 'need'/want to represent, with the exception of Ōyodo which I have ordered and will receive once it is available.

 Japanese cruisers coming your way!

With the end so clearly in sight, I aim to get back ro some painting, in addition to building ships. There are plenty of ships to be painted, of course, but I'll also get back to the figures; plus a 1/6000 representation of Alexandria.

Julian is keen to do a hypothetical attack on the British fleet at Alexandria using Henschel Hs 293 radio-controlled anti-ship glide bombs launched from Heinkel He-177s. It's part of an alt-WWII campaign that he's involved in, so will be occurring in 1943 in that 'world'. To this end, a couple of weeks ago we constructed a section of the harbour and city.

Outline of the harbour of Alexandria. The strips of plastic sprue are to represent the breakwaters.

Looking out on the azure blue southern Mediterranean.

With pieces of foam added to represent groups of buildings or larger buildings.

The town is purely backdrop, so need only be a representation. Except, I found a really nice diagram of Alexandria in 1941 from Alamy. I could not resist and had to make some changes. I added a few buildings near the lighthouse, removed some from behind the three piers (Kamaria Port) and added in the three fortresses, oil stocks and storage tanks, Gabbari Quarantine Station and laid out some thin plastic to represent the railway. None of it is really necessary for Julian's (our) purpose, but it had to be done!

Alexandria with added oil stocks and storage near the three piers, forts on hills, quarantine station and railway.

This will now be added to the items to paint! Once I have undercoated it I'll stick on the railway and then paint buildings and other features.

It has been a fascinating exercise and I have learnt lots, event though I have not delved deeply. The lighthouse on our model is not THE lighthouse, or what remains of it, that is on the other side of the (former) Island of Pharos. Wondering why there was no island in the model, I looked it up. The ancients built a bridge (mole) out to it, the Heptastadion, which progressively silted up over the centuries and lead to the land connection—and fabulous real estate potential. The Ras El Tin Palace was built on it, for one!

Six from six

That's six ships constructed over six days. I'm now down to 51 of 70 to go (or 63 of 82).

Constructed since Monday, from right to left: Enterprise, Nagato, Pensacola, Houston, Northampton and Kyokuto Maru.

Enterprise at centre with Zuikaku and Akagi to her right and left respectively to show her relative size, especially height above the waterline. I had not appreciated how tall the Yorktown-class carriers were until I made this model. She's not much lower than the Akagi, which, as a converted Amagi-class battlecruiser, was a towering ship.

Nagato (left) indicating her size compared with the earlier constructed (and partially painted) Kongo. This Aoshima model of Nagato was a particularly fine kit to build.

Check out those 410 mm main guns on Nagato (c.f. Kongo's 356 mm)! It will be really interesting to put Nagato beside Yamato/Musashi with their 460 mm main guns, but I'll not be building them until towards the end of the 70. By comparison, Bismarck with her "guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees"** 'only' had 380 mm main guns. 
**To my way of thinking, he had this lyric the wrong way around. Perhaps it says something about Texans and their sense of size? Or maybe it's because I think of the height and overall size of a tree, whereas he is thinking of the girth of one that has been cut down?

R to L: Pensacola, Houston and Northampton, adapted from the Tamiya kit of Indianapolis, beside the model of Indianapolis that Julian had built earlier (a Revell kit).

Pensacola, Houston, Northampton and Indianapolis (bottom to top). The differences are subtle, but significant. It took me a while to work out what to change and how to use the parts that I had. Paint will cover up that line of putty filler that I added after cutting the deck to make Pensacola into a ship with a 'level' deck. The Pensacola-class should be about 8 m shorter than Indianapolis, the Northampton-class around 3 m shorter, but I was not going to worry about 11 mm and 4 mm at 1/700!

Kyokuto Maru, first of five fleet oilers that I will be scratch-building. Not my most accurate attempt, but it will serve the purpose.

I have been enjoying this: crossing off the previous tally and adding the new total to make.

Yamashiro is currently under construction and I am also working on Kenyo Maru, top left, the next of the fleet oilers on my list.

I am working on Ise and Hyuga concurrently.

My aim for my next post is to be at or below 35 to go. I have 16 to make to get to this milestone. It should be a far simpler process than the recent ships that I have made as they will all be direct builds of the ships according to the kits. I'll make my scratch-builds as I go along, doing a bit on whichever one is 'in progress' while glued sections of the kit(s) are drying. Can I get there by next weekend?!!

Out on the ocean white

I finished the conversions to make HNLMS Java and De Ruyter this past week. Now I have 'launched' all of the Dutch ships that I require for the battles involving the 'ill-fated' American-Dutch-British-Australian Command (ADBA) of early '42.

L to R: De Ruyter, Java, Tromp and two Admiralen-class destroyers. All except for Tromp are only undercoated so far—'fitting out' (aka painting) will occur at a later stage.

Tromp, which I scratch-built and have featured in a post previously, is the only one of these ships that is completed. I built the two Admiralen-class destroyers late last year, simple conversions of the Tamiya kit of HMAS Vampire.

Looking more closely at the Admiralen-class destroyers

Photo of a simple 3D model of an Admiralen-class that I downloaded from the web. Prior to realising that I could adapt the kit of HMAS Vampire, I thought that I'd used this a a guide for a simple scratch-built version.

The real thing, in this case HNLMS Everston in 1942 (netherlands navy.nl).

I'm happy with the conversions to represent the destroyers as well as those of Java and De Ruyter. The former look better than that 3D-printed model and the latter two hold up pretty well against contemporary photos of the ships.

My version of HNLMS Java, from the port side.

From above. I am particularly pleased with the look of the 'wings' around the fore-funnel, which mounted anti-aircraft machine guns (you might have to zoom the photo to see them).

A photo of Java in 1942 from the website of the Australian War Memorial. Those 'wings' are clearly evident.

A photo of Java viewed from the starboard side (netherlands navy.nl).

Box-art of HMS Penelope, the kit that I adapted.

My version of HNLMS De Ruyter, from the port side.

And from above.

Box-art of HMS Ajax, the kit that I adapted.

A photo of De Ruyter viewed from the starboard side (from netherlands navy.nl).

There are now 57 of the 70 ships remaining to construct (or 69 of the ultimate target of 82). I have six that I am building at the moment. Enterprise, Nagato and Kyokuto Maru are nearly completed and I expect to finish within the next couple of days—the latter is the first of the five Japanese fleet oilers that I am scratch-building. USS Pensacola, the first of three conversions of kits of USS Indianapolis (and the one involving the most alterations) is about 50% completed. The other two, which will represent Northampton-class cruisers, are in the early stages of construction.

I am quite obsessed with making these ships at the moment and spending more than a few hours a day on them. The combination of the target, challenge, interest and pleasure are driving me on. Added to this I am finding it really enjoyable and rewarding, with tangible results at every stage! 

Ship building on target

As anyone who has set milestones, deadlines or other targets will know, the trick is to aim low, or at least below the best/most that could be done, so as to be able to over-achieve—under promise and over-deliver! Such is the case with my self-appointed target of 70 ships to be built in 90 days. I would like to average one per day, or close to it, but even I am realistic enough to know that I won't build one every day, so having 20 days 'spare' should provide sufficient latitude.

Recently constructed ships. From left to right: scratch-build Francol and Anking, three Kagero-class destroyers and two Fubuki-IIs, a couple of Japanese oilers/seaplane carriers, two transports and five Sims-class destroyers at the right.

I was going at a ship per day for the first five days of January (helped by having 'cheated' and built a couple in late December, haha), but then 'lost' nearly a week around 5th–11th as I had a visit by my brother from Queensland. He had come over to buy a car and then to drive it home (as you do). We had a top few days getting stuff for his trip, going to a couple of nights of speedway and generally have wonderful bro' time. Building 1/700 ships was not on the programme.

I have now caught up (basically), thanks particularly to building five Sims-class** destroyers. Amazingly, these are the first US ships that I have built. The other 26 US ships in the combined collection that have been 'constructed' comprise eight built previously by Julian and 18 x 3D-models that I bought (so no assembly required).

[**I crack myself up by calling these 'Sums' class, in my best Kiwi accent, in reference to 'Detictive Sums'; specially for Keith and others, like me, who enjoy the marvellous banter and humour of Brokenwood.]

My 'flurry' over the past few days means that I am now down to 59 of the original 70 ships to be built by the end of March. That's 59 to be built in 72 days, so my target is looking good.

Currently building: HNLMS Java and De Ruyter (as conversions of HMS Penelope and Ajax),  five scratch-built Japanese oilers (one in foreground) and then three kits of USS Indianapolis to convert to USS Pensacola, Houston/Chester and Northampton.

The next 10 ships could be the most challenging of all, since they are conversions or scratch-builds. I am progressing with the first two, conversions of HMSs Penelope and Ajax to HNLMSs Java and De Ruyter respectively, as well as the first of five Japanese oilers that I will scratch-build. Following these I'll do conversions of three kits of USS Indianapolis into a Pensacola-class and two Northampton-class cruisers.

I am hoping that I'll complete these ten by the end of the month, which would leave me with 49 more to build in 59 days. I did quite a bit of work on Java this arvo' after finishing the last two Sims class destroyers, so am feeling quite confident that I won't need 13 days for them.

Next in line: ships for Pearl Harbor—the Japanese battleships of the first and second divisions for the 'climb Mt Niitaka' bit# and USS Enterprise along with here cruiser escorts (described above) which, along with the Sims-class destroyers, form her carrier group for alt.-Pearl Harbor. We'll do the re-fight of the attack on Pearl Harbor at 1:6000, so I don't need the ships that were there (and they did not feature prominently later in the war after being repaired).
#Absent: Fuso, which is one of the eight that I am yet to purchase. I won't bother with Mutsu (sister to Nagato) as she did not feature at all in later actions of the war and was sunk in home waters after a mysterious explosion.

Following that: Japanese ships for the attacks on Wake Island (through to its eventual capture).

Then we have: ships needed for Sinking of Repulse & Prince of Wales, Operation C, Java Sea, Sunda Strait (others have or will have already been constructed). A notable absence is HMAS Perth. This is not counted in the 70 or the 82 since a model is not yet available in 1/700. A kit of HMAS Sydney is being produced by Flyhawk and will hopefully—HOPEFULLY— be released soon. I'll use it to represent Sydney, Perth and Hobart.

Finally: ships for Coral Sea and the actions of '42 which followed. Hatsuharu is missing from this lot, yet to be purchased.

Of course, my ultimate construction target is 82, which includes another 12 kits that are of ships that did not 'feature' until 1943 or later. I cannot see myself stopping before I have built these too and I am determined that I will build ’the lot’, while I am in ship building 'mode'. Mind you, I am yet to get hold of eight kits: two of which are part of the 70, six to make up the 82. They are not yet available in Oz, but hopefully they will be by the end of February at the latest. This is based on the expected date shown on the website of one of the shops over east (I have them on order from my 'local' shop in Perth, but they use the same suppliers).

Then there is HMAS Sydney/Perth/Hobart...