Yes, France had an aircraft carrier

Well, sort of. The Béarn was laid down in 1914 as a Normandie class battleship, but WWI interrupted her construction. By the time work recommenced in 1922, the French Navy had decided to complete her as an aircraft carrier (having first cast a covetous eye on Britain's HMS Argus). Béarn was designed to carry 40 aircraft, but she remained a battleship at heart and had a maximum speed of just 21.5 kts. By the beginning of WWII, she had to strain every sinew to manage 20 kts and 18 was more realistic. From the beginning of the war until the Fall of France, the Béarn aided in the Anglo-French effort to hunt down German commerce raiders in the Atlantic. It was intended that she be equipped with two squadrons of American-built Vought Vindicator dive bombers, but instead, these were committed to the Battle of France and rapidly decimated by German Bf-109s. Béarn then sat idle at Martinique until 1944. Obviously too slow to be a fleet carrier, she served in the Free French Navy as an aircraft transport. 

She continued as a transport after the war, moving men and landing craft to Vietnam. Béarn was scrapped in 1967 having never once launched aircraft in combat. 

Here's my effort, complete with deck decal:

I think she turned out quite well. In reality, Béarn would've been painted the medium grey color of the French Atlantic fleet, but I've gone with the light grey used by the Mediterranean fleet instead. It makes her more useful for "what if" scenarios. GHQ has recently released an aircraft pack that includes Vindicators, so she'll soon have her intended air group. 

Now that's an aircraft carrier!!

I've just finished applying the flight deck decal by WW2Central.com to the Japanese carrier Akagi. Even in 1/2400, this thing is one BIG ship!

And here's what I've finished, still sans aircraft for the moment:

If the model is this impressively large, imagine what those US Dauntless pilots thought as they dove on this thing and it rapidly mushroomed into their canopies!!

As an aside, WW2Central makes deck decals for the six main Japanese fleet carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, Soryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku) that reflect the very early period of the Pacific War (which I've used), as well as decals for their decks as they looked during the Battle of Midway. For the two survivors, they also make late war camouflaged deck decals. I don't have any association with WW2Central. I just think they have a fantastic product!

A well stocked naval wargaming library, part 2

This second post (see the first part in my Oct. 5, 2015 post) finishes off the list of reference books that I find useful for naval modeling. 

First, the Ian Allan series published in Britain from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s:

As it was the first in the series, it doesn't actually say "Commonwealth Warships", but that's what it covers. The rest are pretty self-explanatory:

The Japanese volume didn't have a dust jacket when I bought it, so the outer cover is plain fabric. 

This is the only one of my set that isn't an original edition. It's a 1982 reprint that I bought in the Ft. McPherson PX in 1984.

To cover the Soviet Navy, that the Ian Allan series didn't touch on, I use the following two volumes:

And finally, this is an excellent overview of every navy in the world during 1939-45:

Most of the volumes that I've covered in both parts of this post are still easily available through rare book dealers, websites such as Bookfinder.com, and even eBay. Depending on condition, they can vary from quite reasonable to totally outrageous. However, a bit of patience and continued checking will turn up affordable copies. I hope this helps you expand your library!

To carrier or not to carrier

That is the question. For many years, I've had a deep, yet off and on, interest in 1/2400 WWII naval wargaming. My specific love has always been cruiser actions in the Mediterranean and SW Pacific (ABDA, Guadalcanal, and the New Georgia campaign). Those were generally close in dog fights. Battleship actions, with a few notable exceptions were long-range exercises in shell lobbing. I've never really had much interest in aircraft carriers. Aircraft, yes, but the carriers themselves just don't fit into shorter range battles. Carriers sat off at a distance and sent in aircraft to do the work. 

So I never had much desire to buy carrier models. However, over the years, I've occasionally seen eBay bargains that were just too good to pass up and I've built up a stock of unopened GHQ carriers. WW2Central now makes fantastic carrier deck decals and despite having no use for carriers, I've just go to do some!! So, as a test platform, I chose the Japanese light carrier Ryujo:

which had quite an active career before being sunk by US aircraft during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. 

So, here's what I've managed to do:

Obviously, I haven't yet gotten the aircraft painted and mounted on the deck, but the ship itself is finished. I think the deck decal is incredible!! Imagine having to try to paint all that detail!! That's the majority of what's put me off doing this for so many years (decades actually). Let's do another!!

A well stocked naval wargaming library, part 1

In an effort to help new WWII naval wargamers, I think it might be useful to give a look at the titles that I've collected over the years which I refer to when researching and painting naval vessels and aircraft. 

Let's begin and in no particular order:

Alan Raven's outstanding 4-part work on the camouflage schemes of British ships. 

Terribly useful for which grey when and on which ship. Not exhaustive, but most warships and some merchants are contained. 

An excellent work, but only up through 1941. 

And these next two I bought used without dust jackets, so no illustrations on the outside covers:

An endlessly useful set of books!

And:

I have too many for a single post, so I'll do it in two parts. Gives me something to post about during the week!

The Japanese and the East Germans

Not exactly two groups that go together, but that's what I've been working on this weekend. 

First, I finished off the Japanese light cruiser Tatsuta,

sister ship of last weekend's Tenryu, as well as the Kamikaze class destroyer Yunagi:

Recently on TheMiniaturesPage.com, when I mentioned having completed Yubari and Tenryu, someone said I'd soon have the entire line-up for the Battle of Savo Island. While I'm not specifically trying to do that, it seems as good a target to work toward as any, hence doing Yunagi. As you can see from my photos, I've run out of appropriate-sized ship bases, so an order went off to Bay Area Yards on Thursday. I really cannot recommend their bases highly enough!

And now the East Germans. In any WarPac division, regardless of nationality, there was always a radio/radar intercept and direction finding company as part of the reconnaissance battalion. The company's platoons would break down into sections and roam along the division's frontline, attempting to intercept and decode NATO radio transmissions. 

The vehicles used varied quite a bit, not only by decade, but also by unit. Each section was normally two vehicles; an intercept vehicle loaded with radios etc. and a data processing vehicle full of computers and intelligence analysts. In 1981 (my scenario date), one commonly seen combination was a UAZ-452 for the intercept:

And an office-body GAZ-66 for processing:

(but with a lot more antennae than that one). Once NATO transmission sites had been located and the traffic decoded, the information was passed to division HQ for analysis and then immediately on to artillery units for targeting. 

Here's my version:

O8 doesn't make a box-body truck, except as part of the Ganef pack, so I'll just have to use a regular GAZ-66. I really ought to do 2-3 more stands of these guys. Just another thing to put onto the already burgeoning "to do" list. More next weekend!