CVA-01 1/700 scale scratchbuild

[Thorvic]

Whilst waiting for parts to detail my Type 381 and 382 frigates i decided whilst in a scratch building mood to create the ship the frigates were intended to help escort - CVA-01 class the next generation Royal Aircraft carrier.

The class was intended to replace the wartime built carriers which had been modified post war to operate the jet aircraft in the cold war, but being built during WW2 to a design optimised for that war meant some were getting worn out after a relatively short active career and even those heavily reconstructed still struggled operating the latest aircraft efficiently in suitable numbers.

The new carrier was designed from the keel up to operate the latest jet aircraft and to be able to accomodate the even larger and heavier aircraft the USN had lined up (TFX, Hawkeye, Greyhound - although there was no RN requirement to procure these aircraft at the time they did want to be able to support cross decking operations with the USN).


(From Richard Breddals CVA01 webpage on his Naval Matters website)

The Carrier featured a shallow angled flight deck almost parrallel to the axis of the ship, made possible by the wide sponsons. A new feature of the design was the Alaskan Highway which was a taxiway around the back of the Islane to allow aircraft to be marshalled towards the fwd catapult or deck lift without interfering with flight deck operation.

There were two deck lifts fitted, one an internal lift within the hanger as per standard on british Carriers, however this featured the new scissor lift mechanism as used later on the Invincible class which removed the need for bulk pillars the older lifts used (no awkward pillars obstructing the hanger). The other lift was a deck edge lift mounted aft of the Island to protect its use in bad weather.

Another unusal feature for a moden carrier was the fantail which allowed space for a 180 degrees arc of fire for teh Sea Dart SAM system and a rear door to the hanger to allow jet engines to be run an tested. However this space resulted in a somewhat shortened flight deck.

Airgroup was intened to be 18 Interceptors, 18 strike aircraft, 4 AEW, 1 COD plus upto 54 helicopters for SAR & ASW ops. Unlike the USN carriers of the time the airgroup carried was all capable of being stored within the hanger space without the use of a permament deck park.

Aircraft intended to operate off the carrier when it was due in service were the Phantom, Buccaneer, Ganet and Sea King. Ganet was scheduled to be replaced by the new Blackburn P139 AEW aircraft which was rather like a short fat rounder S-3 viking using the Nimrod style nose and tail radar. The Phantom and later the Bucceaneer were intended to be replaced by the new BAC/Dassault AFVG aircraft, which was optomised for the smaller European Fleet carriers (Both PHantom and Buccaneer were rather heavy bulky 50's designs and it was felt similar performance could be achieved by more modern efficient designs (AFVG being rather handy for carrier ops as the VG design allowed to smaller footprint and more compact deck parking together with common airframe and engine design for Interceptor and strike aircraft allowing for more effiecient repair and maintenance aboard ship (Somthing similar to USN practice now with the Hornets).

G

[Sauragnmon]

Nice, the CVA-01 - should be a hell of a sight to see a Real RN Carrier built up.  Who knows what might have happened had the CVA-01 actually been built - RN getting better fighters maybe?

[Thorvic]

Well nearly completed the major assembly of the hull of CVA-01, gone the simplified root this time with the lifts up and hanger closed up. Just the deck edges to clean up and sort out the walk ways before its ready for detailing. the Island should hopefully be created and detailed over the next week or so.








Progress so far, the carriers are there to put CVA-01 into perspective, top is the Fujimi USS Kitty Hawk, then CVA-01, Fujumi Ark Royal and Revell Illustrious.

G

[Sauragnmon]

She's coming along quite nicely, Thorvic - I notice you decided to take the quick and dirty answer to doing the hangar deck - can't say I blame you, it can be a bit of a pain in the arse to do all that detailing, not to mention the additional aircraft required.

Smaller than the Kitty, but she's easily going towards the biggest flat-top the RN ever floated, damn bloody shame she never came to be.  An outright Should Have Been, that.

[nev]

Great posts so far, and interesting little potted history

Is that Ark Royal the one I sold you?  ISTR the spilt flight deck...

So what are you going for with the air wing?  F-4s to make life easy, or are you going to scratchbuild some AFVGs?

Last question - are you going to do a Master for WEM?   

[Thorvic]

She's coming along quite nicely, Thorvic - I notice you decided to take the quick and dirty answer to doing the hangar deck - can't say I blame you, it can be a bit of a pain in the arse to do all that detailing, not to mention the additional aircraft required.

Smaller than the Kitty, but she's easily going towards the biggest flat-top the RN ever floated, damn bloody shame she never came to be.  An outright Should Have Been, that.

The hanger deck was included in the build to the correct shape but as this is shows i decided to keep it simple and have the lifts raisd and the doors shut (Also getting a feel the the shape of the carrier as not allot to work with to gauge the shape and the details. (only two official models and one of those was for the air flow over the flight deck and is now in the US)

G

[Thorvic]

Great posts so far, and interesting little potted history

Is that Ark Royal the one I sold you?  ISTR the spilt flight deck...

So what are you going for with the air wing?  F-4s to make life easy, or are you going to scratchbuild some AFVGs?

Last question - are you going to do a Master for WEM?   

Nev thats an almost completed kit, i do have an Eagle that i think you may have sold us.

Airgroup will be tooms and buccs to begin with as per the envisaged entry in to service in the early 70's. I'll have to see what i can do regarding creating AFVG, P139 583 etc in 1/700 and if they can be cloned.

Nope WEM wouldnt be interested, to fringe a subject for their tastes and they use third party casters so costs also prohibited.


G

[Hobbes]

Interesting project, and quite a challenge. I'm looking forward to seeing this in the flesh. Plus it has as Broomstick. No project can go wrong that has a Broomstick on top 

[Thorvic]

Hi Harro

It not quite as bad as some may think, the modern design of CVA-01 results in a pretty clean structures and shapes. The masts and radars are built into macks (masts and stacks) so no complex lattice masts and funnel to contend with. Creating the Ark Roayl, Eagle, Hermes and Victorious is a much harder build challenge even when using a kit as a basis.

The only awkward issue has been determining what is the final format of the design as the official drawing are at the NMM and would cost about the same as doing this kit in resin in 1/350th to get copies (Stored and copies as draughtmans drawings about A0 in size !).

G

[pyro-manic]

How do you build the hull form? Am I right in thinking that you layered thick plastic to get a block, and then carved it to shape?

This is very impressive. I'd love to try something like this at some point.

[Sauragnmon]

He did that at least up to the hangar deck to get the layout - you can see it in some of the earlier pictures, from the waterline up, there's the lines of laminated sheet styrene.  From there it gets kinda smooth, either built out with sheets in layers or he smoothed it over with one sheet.

Still, all in all she's quite an impressive piece of work.

[Thorvic]

Yeap the hull to hanger deck level was created from laminations of 60thou plastic card which was then sawn and sanded to get a basic boat shape
the hanger walls were then fitted to match the hanger layout from strips of 40thou which reminded me of the US and IJN carriers  .
Then i made use of evergreen strip as they do some rather chunkie blocks of strip which allowed me to block up the hullsides and allowed for the mooring access openings in the sides.

The bows were cretaed in a similar manner using some of the 6mm square rod stips to build up the bow shape quickly. Carving, scraping and filing with a heavy dity half round file then reduced this block into the flared bow shape for modern carriers.

The flight deck was then cut out of single piece of plastic card and matched to the hull so the sponson layout could be created.

The net result is a nice solid hull with a strong flight deck

I really should have taken more photos, but as i was experimenting with new materials and techniques and wanted to know if it was viable first, so it took to the hull being done to be confident in the build.

G

[Taiidantomcat]

This is amazing  Keep up the great work!

[Eddie M.]

Very nice work. I really enjoy aircraft carrier builds.

[anthonyp]

Very nice, Geoff!  Always enjoy in-progress pics.  Looking forward to seeing this one progress.