Hi guys. this is where I will post progress of my Corsair diorama. I am basing it off of this picture-




A few members over at the Model Shipwrights Forum were particularly helpful in telling me what aircraft carrier is. The USS Charger. I was able to find some reference at various sites, and here is my progress so far.

basic layout-

The blue tape marks the beginning of the conning tower. Any suggestion as to layout? I think it needs a bigger base. What say you?



I also don't know if I am going to build the conning tower at its full height, or will have it cut-off.

-Thanks for looking.

What is that base made of?

As far as size... I wouldn't enlarge it more than an inch or so. You want the focus on the Corsair not the deck. You can pack a ton of stuff in the size you have. The snapped cabels going to the open side will be a challenge because they will be 'free floating' The anchor point on the port side will not be in the diorama. I would use wire or string coated with white glue to make it stiff.

The conning tower... I would not go much higher than the 1st platform. I would do a cut off type of deal and to add drama you could go one of two routes. One route is a straight cut high on the bow side, low on the aft side. Or you could make a jaggad top edge - neat, and obviously cut off (painted with a red edge), but not startight.

This damned site ate my reply

I'll write it again when I get a chance tonight... I've got info for you.

@Scott- it is a clear acyrlic "box-style" picture frame. I back painted it German Grey. I have used this base to display models on,. and it looks very cool and professional, I also think it looks much cooler than a wooden base. Or as my friend put it "very James Bond"

OK, let's hope this thing doesn't log me off again.

"Conning tower" is not really the proper term, "island" would be better. The ship in question is ACV/CVE Charger in July of 1943, and the island on the Charger was rather small, only having three levels, the top one being the platform. Sides are pretty basic, albeit the port side (left for you landlubbers) did have some protrusions. There is one photo of this are I have been able to find, on Navsource's CVE-30 Charger page in the special photos section titled "The Men Part 2)." It's the fourth image from the top, captions, "The Flight Deck Gang."

That's a watertight door behind the sailors and you should probably represent it closed if it's during flight ops. The striped plate at the foot of the right most sailor is part of the barricade system that the Corsair is in the process of chewing through in the photo you posted. It wasn't part of the arresting system but instead was flipped up on the forward section of the ship to prevent the plane from striking other aircraft parked in front of it. Hit it wrong and you would wind up doing a head stand or flip, as your bird did.

I'm not sure how true to the picture you want to stay, but the markings on the fuselage should read 1-OF-12.

As to ship colors, Charger would have been painted in accordance with Camouflage Measure 22, so all of the vertical surfaces you have to worry about were in Haze Gray. Horizontal metal surfaces would have been Deck Blue, and the wood stained #21 Flight Deck Stain, which was similar in appearance to 5-O Ocean Gray. Since Charger was based out of Chesapeake and used pretty much for flight training her staining would have been fairly fresh most of the time and less of the wood color showing through.

None of these colors have an exact FS equivilent as they pre-date the FS system. the Haze Gray mentioned above was an earlier formula than used now, with a blue tone to it, so most of the Haze Grays you see now aren't quite correct for it. White Ensign carries colors that are direct matches though.

I started out as an airplane modeler, but I'm a bit of a carrier nut now, so feel free to ask me any questions you might have.

Looking at the original picture you could probably skip the island all together. Focus the diorama entirely on the Corsair. Especially if you weren't going to build the island to it's full height. Just my thoughts. Either way it should look pretty impressive when it's all done. I'm a big fan of the old Corsair. Such a cool airplane.

-Matt

I'd go with the an island section. What you see in your photo is, as Tracy said, about as high as they go. Very simple shape and construction. The second reason to include part of the superstructure is to give the scene some sort of balance to the story, ie: not just a scene of a plane doing a headstand, but showing the viewer it's a carrier deck.
My thoughts anyway.

Wow, Tracy thanks for all of the help with the photos and colors, it will be very helpful. My original idea was to only do the Corsair crashing, but after sketching it out, with the "island" it was much more dramatic. Post more progress soon.

I must say you are very ambitious William! Getting that corsair to stand up on the bent over engine as shown in the pic will be a task. I would definitely not even pay attention to the island on this dio if I were looking at it in person. I would be much more interested in just the corsair. Good luck with this build--I will check back on the progress!

This picture from the site Tracy provided, shows the Corsair just aft of the bow stradling the "30" as seen more clearly in the second picture. It appears to be resting on the third or fourth broken line back from the bow about where the black line ends.
To include the bridge realistically to your references would require a lot of dead space. The inclusion of the "30" would identify the ship and let viewers know it was a ship.

Thanks for all of the help so far. pics will be up soon

That's where it CAME to rest, but if he's doing it as it went over it needs to be farther aft, just about in line with the island. If you look at the picture of the plane flipped over again you'll see one of the barricade wires trailing aft at a rather sharp angle.

Patrick: The engine isn't bent as much as it's completely broken off... the engine mount was probably ripped right off of the firewall. The "good" news from a modeling standpoint is that he won't need to distort the fuselage all that much... just represent it with the fuselage sitting on the engine as it rolls over. It'll be a lot of detailing, but it should also give him plenty of good ways to hide any support he needs to build into the plane to hold it and the engine in place.

Alright, here is what I have so far-

I did some base-coating with the interior, and some washes and slight weathering. The Tamiya instructions call for "medium blue" for the plates behind the gagues. I think this looks wrong, but I'm sure a Corsair expert will help me out.-






THe work I did on the engine cowling-



I bent the prop with my hand, so I would get a sharper angle, for the distortion-



The next step will be to scratchbuild the stuff behind the engine, like the exhaust pipes, which will be all mangled, as well as the transmission.

I got these great reference photos from a site featuring a scratch-built corsair build.






And here is the photo Al was referring to-




-Thanks for looking!

That's definitely an ambitious project William! The 'after' photo would be hard enough