I have an Academy 1/72 P-47D and am thinking of scratchbuilding a section of the USS Manila Bay when it carried 37 P-47s of the 73rd Fighter Squadron, 318th Fighter Group to the Marianas. I’d like to put the P-47 on a section of flight deck, either static or taking off. Has any scratch built a section of flight deck in 1/72 scale? From what I’ve seen of paper or plastic after mark items, I’m not impressed. Any links or tutorials? Thanks for any info
Did the 47s fly off or were they unloaded by crane?
The launched because of Japanese aircraft in the area, afterwards they flew onto Saipan.
Have someone search the FSM CD for you, and then see if you can find the article, you might be able to purchase that article from FSM.
A guy used his chopper to cut out all the flat stock in the pieces he needed, then glued them together, and when he had the strip done, he made an RTV mold.
He placed that resulting “steel” strip in between wooden planks of the proper size, squared off all four sides and painted and stained it. He had his own unique carrier deck with tie-down strips for his display base.
Rex
As someone who loves modeling with wood, I would do the top level planking with wood strips, maybe on a base of styrene, or even particle board. Thin wood strips come in all sorts of thickness and widths, and nothing looks like painted wood like wood does!
Actually, I am planning a diorama of a plane landing on a WW2 carrier deck- just haven’t started the build yet, and I am planning wood on particle board.
That’s what the guy in the article did. For a US carrier, you need every 6th or so “board” to be a steel strip with the tiedown slots.
I just now remembered, Tom’s Modelworks sells a set of photo-etched tie down strips, you would set those on top of a piece of plastic, and lay slightly taller wooden planks between them. (I’m not saying that right,you need your wooden strips to be taller than the plastic ones, so that everything is the same height after you put the etched metal down)
Rex
I’d use coffee stirring sticks for the deck planking, in 1/72. As TarnShip noted, you can get photo-etch pieces for the tie-down strips. I’d put a piece of shallow styrene channel stock under the PE strip.
Yes, I have built one, but it was not a U.S. Navy carrier. I made it with balsa wood strips and sheet styrene. One concern is that the deck may warp, so you will want to choose a stable material for the foundation, and if it is wood or particle board, try not to get it very wet with glues or paints. Mine has not warped in 20 years.