St Lo would be a 1.5 unit ship with .75 gpm pump at the minimum fleet speed of 22 knots. While short on units, she is allowed to have spurt guns if you wish (due to being class 1), and can also take advantage of the 2 minute rule as opposed to 5 minute rule (also due to being class 1). With the hull volume on an escort carrier, and only having to wait two minutes to pull out of the water, the CVEs should be darned near impossible to sink.
Although our current rules concerning units are probably not perfect. There was a lot of thought put into how we wanted to go about alloting units to the carriers. So as to the idea of giving the armored deck aircraft-carriers something.. That might be the case already. As an aircraft-carrier with an armored flight-deck would weigh more than another carrier of equal size that does not have an armored flight-deck. So it might already have more units to utilize for cannons, and/or pumping capacity. In the case of the aircraft-carriers. There seemed to be no perfect way to go about units. Air-groups was considered, armor was considered. We decided that tonnage was as easy and fair as anything else, mainly because it was working fairly well for all of the other classes of ships. Not perfect in their cases either, but a working system, that was fairly easy to utilize. I think in the long run the fact that it was simple to understand was a factor as well. Making any system too complex to follow and understand might be counter-productive for the club. Mikey
After seeing that fantastic site on the construction of a static 1/144 scale model of the Hiryu, reviewing the Soryu plans Rob has, and checking the stats, I think I have to do a mold for one of them. The Hiryu would be an easier build because the most minute detail is visible on the static model but I don't have hull lines. On the other hand the Soryu plans Rob has are quite detailed. Note that both ships are twin ruddered and that the rudders stick out from the hull at at about a 30 degree angle from vertical. That could make for a complicated rudder linkage or separate servos for each rudder with a Y-connector on the rudder channel. I'm OK with possibly reducing Ibuki's combat units in 2010. I'm not sure a 38gm CO2 cartridge would fire all 125 BBs if Ibuki had 3.0 units, but it would easily handle 75-100 with plenty to spare if it had 2.0 units or 2.5 allowing for the cruiser side armour. Bob Bob
The rudder that you describe sounds much like what the picture of the Soryu sounded like (Eric described the picture to me since I am a big Soryu fan). I don't think we have had nearly enough discussion on changing the units yet based on airgroup. If that had been proposed for this year, I'd have voted no just as as much as I did the sidemount rule. I don't think we have enough information yet to make any kind of fair determination of what's needed and what's not. Perhaps using a range of aircraft to determine units would be better. Say for instance anything with under 20 aircraft is 1.5 units, 20-25 aircraft is 2.0 units, 25-30 aircraft should be 3.0 units 35-40 aircraft should be 3.5 units 40-45 aircraft should be 4.0 units etc. Perhaps we could look at giving carriers with an armored flight deck a bonus 0.5 or 1.0 units which would reflect the compromise the designers accepted in aircraft...or allowing them to use BC pumps as I suggested in a previous post. The bottom line is, right now I think there is too much unknown about how carriers will currently perform. Getting ideas and talking about the pros and cons though I think is a good thing, so that if we DO decide that carriers are lacking and in need of some help (or overpowered and in need to be toned down!), we have several different ideas we can look at to make sure that things are as reasonable as possible.
Hey Mike, I think that some of the reasons that the air arms on the American and Japanese carriers were so big is because of the vast area in which they faught. I was looking at a couple of the larger Jap carriers and dare I say find them very interesting. Very interesting.
Those Japanese carriers are nice. They had decent sized airgroups, most of them had 2 rudders (although some were inline) and are as fast as greased lightning. I don't think a Hiryu/Soryu/Unryu can be beaten under the present rules.
I like the Soryu and the Unryu. Hiryu looks weird to me with her bridge on the wrong side. My favorite Japanese carrier is the Zuikaku though. 5 of six carrier battles....she was there and did it all.
The problem with making a hull mold for Shokaku and Zuikaku is that they were huge: 844' LOA. With about the same R/C combat armament the much shorter and faster turning Hiryu and Soryu are better hull projects. Bob
Oh I agree with you...as combat ships, I believe the Hiryu and Soryu are superior, although I think the Shokaku class might be 6 units as opposed to only 5. I'd have to look them up. If I was going to build a carrier that large though, it would be USS Yorktown (CV-5) at 809 ft IIRC. All things being equal though, I am not interested in having models that huge anymore. I'll stick to my smaller class 4 BCs and class 3 CA's/CVLs and be happy with them. Even the Salem is a little longer then I'd like and will probably be gotten rid of once the Salt Lake City and Chikuma are on line.
My increasing dislike for large models is the reason I've had partly completed Vanguard and Rodney hulls siting in the basement for 3-4 years. There's more incentive to convert my new Furious battlecruiser hull to a fast (32 knot) Class 5 Treaty carrier and test both straight forward/aft and wider firing arc gun set-ups. The fact that Furious was bizarre looking is another attraction. (+ I've found 1/144 Swordfish for it.) Bob
I like querky (spelling) looking ships myself. I always liked the turn of the century industrial look.
I'm a big fan of the post-SBD modification Hiryu myself. It's the way all Axis ships should have been rearranged. Most of them were!
Mike, What's SBD? I've seen plans for Hiryu as she appeared in WWII but it would be a very complex hull plug to make if details like ventilator trunks above deck stringer level were included. Have a look at the 1/144 Soryu build on-line. A search for '1/144 Soryu' should get you to the modelling website. I'm assumingg the details on the two hulls would be similar. Bob
Or I guess any Dive Bomber/Scout used by the USA. But by 'post SBD modification' I'm thinking Midway.
That's correct, the Douglas Dauntless. The designation is SB for scout bomber and D for the manufacturer, so it's the SBD. Same thing with the Devastator, or TBD for Torpedo Bomber, Douglas. F was the Grumman designation which is why the Avenger is the TBF and the fighters are F4F and F6F (the number being equating to the number of types of fighters supplied to the Navy by Grumman). The "SBD modification" would be the bomb hits scored at Midway, blowing a pretty sweet looking hole in the forward flight deck!
I've been looking at carriers some lately (been reading some books about the early carrier battles) and finally decided to take a look at some Brit CVs, and I have to say, I was very surprised at what I saw. The Illustrious class in particular looks interesting. She's got a waterline length of only 710 ft (I thought she was closer in size to a Yorktown class...not 100 ft+ shorter) and three shafts, single rudder @31 knots. She gets 5 units off the top of my head. The guys I've talked to who have had Prinz Eugens have claimed they were fairly maneuverable ships with their triple shaft, single rudder layout. Compared to the Illustrious, PE is only 4 inches shorter at the waterline, has 2 inches less beam and only gets 1 second more speed. Illustrious also has the bigger class 5 rudder, and gets an extra 75 rounds of ammo to divide up, with a WHOLE lot more hull volume. On paper, these Brit CVs look like they might be rather dangerous in a cruiser type role. I'd imagine fitting one out with triple sterns and a 75 round bow gun, and could see them laying out some very serious pain on any fast BBs that tried to chase them.
