Liberty ship- Convair POGO training platform- Finished

[sandiego89]

Even with the revised flight controls, the unique landing configuration of the production version of the POGO proved challenging. A cheap and reliable training ship was desired before sending pilots to the fleet.  A Liberty ship was pulled from the ghost fleet in Orange, Texas and was sent to the yards for the fitting of an aft flight deck.   

The kit- 1/700 Skywave/Pit Road USS Bootes.

POGO's will be from ancient Skyrays (1/800?) and lots of scratch.

[PR19_Kit]

I LOVE that idea. 

[kitnut617]

My Dad during WWII made a Liberty ship from plans which required use of soldered cut-up tin cans for it's fabrication and had a white spirit fueled boiler. It floated quite well. My Bro' has it now so I should go down to his place and see what scale it was. IIRC, my Dad said it was 1/72

[Rick Lowe]

My Dad during WWII made a Liberty ship from plans which required use of soldered cut-up tin cans for it's fabrication and had a white spirit fueled boiler. It floated quite well. My Bro' has it now so I should go down to his place and see what scale it was. IIRC, my Dad said it was 1/72

Old-School Scratchbuilding at it's finest! And a working model, to boot - c'mon, we've got to see pics of this! 

[PR19_Kit]

My Dad during WWII made a Liberty ship from plans which required use of soldered cut-up tin cans for it's fabrication and had a white spirit fueled boiler. It floated quite well. My Bro' has it now so I should go down to his place and see what scale it was. IIRC, my Dad said it was 1/72

Old-School Scratchbuilding at it's finest! And a working model, to boot - c'mon, we've got to see pics of this! 

And it's got to be BIG too, over 6 ft long at 1/72 scale. 

[Rick Lowe]

Interesting to recall the 1/1 ships were welded together also...
I remember the story of an Uncle who was on Convoy protection duty telling his family (my Mum and her siblings) that apparently they 'split like tomatoes when torpedoed'... 

And the LCSs these days are welded too... and the welds are already under stress, from the 'slices' the ships are made in being forced into alignment... hmm.   

[Hobbes]

Liberty ships were hastily slapped together, built for a life span of a few years at most. They were also among the first ships that were welded instead of riveted, so there's bound to have been a learning curve.

Modern welding techniques are better, and welds can be inspected internally using X-rays. As a result, welded ships are considered to be stronger than riveted ones. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=424429)

[Dizzyfugu]

Very cool idea, I like the concept. 

[zenrat]

To me this seems ambitions for a week.  Go for it!
 

Do you have a ghost fleet in your stash?

[kitnut617]

My Dad during WWII made a Liberty ship from plans which required use of soldered cut-up tin cans for it's fabrication and had a white spirit fueled boiler. It floated quite well. My Bro' has it now so I should go down to his place and see what scale it was. IIRC, my Dad said it was 1/72

Old-School Scratchbuilding at it's finest! And a working model, to boot - c'mon, we've got to see pics of this! 

OK I'll try to get down to my bro's sometime and get some photos taken of it.

And it's got to be BIG too, over 6 ft long at 1/72 scale. 

Hmm! you got me thinking now Kit, might not be 1/72 scale but it is nearly 3ft long

[Weaver]

Nice to see this: everyone concentrates on the tail-sitter fighters but I've never seen much about the ships they were intended to operate from.

[Captain Canada]

Sounds like a great idea. But then again, all of your naval projects do !

[PR19_Kit]

Nice to see this: everyone concentrates on the tail-sitter fighters but I've never seen much about the ships they were intended to operate from.

I'm not sure that the US Navy thought too much about the ships either! 

[joncarrfarrelly]

Interesting project, you might want to consider a forward mounted platform as well, as in most cases, it would be free
from eddies caused by the superstructure and the warm air exhausting from the stack, both of which could impact the
Pogo's handling while in vertical mode. Perhaps the fwd deck for general landing practice on a stationary ship, the aft
deck for underway landing training.

The Liberty structural problems were from embrittlement of the steel used and design errors rather than welding per se.
The notion that 'weld seams' split is erroneous, the failure was to the steel next to the welds, and the cracks would
propagate across the surface for long distances.
BTW only three are definitively known to have sunk because of cracks, out of 1200 that displayed cracking to various
degrees.

[kitnut617]

I've got a story for you then Jon.
When I first came to Canada I worked at Dominiom Bridge, one of the first friends I made was an old welder. Amongst all the stories he would tell was one when he worked at a shipyard during the war where he weled up Liberty ship sections. These sections where made up all over the country and then shipped to the assembly yard on the coast.  He told me they were on 'piece' work and got paid by the feet of weld they laid down each day. To bump up his footage he said they would put all sorts of scrap into the joint and then cap it off with a weld.  I'm not surprised at all about the stories I've heard since I got told that.