Even the SOCs snubbed up in unladylike fashion after hitting the arrestor gear that day. As for the F2As, we took a few extra wave-offs, snugged up shoulder harnesses and kept our teeth off our tongues and succeeded in getting all aboard in sound condition just as Captain D. and a good Landing Signals Officer willed it.” JG Richard S. Rogers USN, on landing the air group of USS Long Island on December 7, 1941 after learning about Pearl Harbor while the carrier was at anchor off Bermuda. (The Little Giants, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1987, by William T. Y’Blood, at page 13) |
World War Two was the most massive
and destructive conflict ever engaged in by humanity. The status of world powers
were radically altered by the war. Obviously the vanquished powers of Japan,
Germany and Italy lost all or most of their fleets. However, among the victors,
the impact was as great. The Soviet Union suffered mass casualties and
destruction but shortly would emerge as one of the world’s two super powers.
The United States became by far the most powerful naval power in the world.
Great Britain on the other hand started her long slide away her preeminence as a
naval power. Her economy was shackled with debt and could no longer afford the
massive costs of a world class naval building program. For centuries the Royal
Navy was the supreme naval arbiter on the ocean’s of the world but no longer.
One type of warship may in some part demonstrate the passing of the torch of
naval supremacy from the Royal Navy to the United States Navy and that is the
Escort Carrier.
In a way the Escort Carrier had two fathers,
the USN and RN. Of course the defining characteristics of an Escort Carrier were
the facts that they were based on merchant hulls, were smaller than fleet or
light carriers with a smaller air complement, and that they were significantly
slower than purpose built carriers. In that regard both of the first Escort
Carriers met the standards, however, their designed purpose differed. The Royal
Navy commissioned HMS
Audacity in June 1941. Converted from a small German
cargo/passenger ship, Hannover,
the carrier was only 434-feet long and carried a miniscule six aircraft at 15
knots with a displacement of 10,231 tons. Her primary, almost sole purpose was
to defend a convoy against enemy aircraft, primarily the Fw-200
reconnaissance/bombers. Across the Atlantic another merchant conversion was
underway. As with Audacity,
this design matched the description of an Escort Carrier, but was far more
capable than Audacity and became the
patriarch of all other escort carrier designs.
The actual father of the escort carrier was
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a dyed in the wool Navy Man, and
if any American President deserved to have an aircraft carrier named after him
it was FDR. After World War Two erupted in Europe, Roosevelt had supplemental
navy bills pushed through Congress, which would greatly increase the size of the
USN in all conventional types of warships, including aircraft carriers. However,
it takes a long time to build a fleet carrier and as 1939 gave way to 1940
Roosevelt observed the events in Europe and the Atlantic and saw a need for a
ship to supplement the USN until the large carrier program came to fruition. The
US was supplying aircraft to Great Britain but it was cumbersome to have them
delivered piece-meal in cargo containers. It would be far more efficient to have
them delivered already assembled. Another mission would be submarine defense.
Aircraft were the great killers of the Atlantic U-Boats but there was a huge gap
in the middle of the Atlantic, in which land based aircraft could not reach at
the time. The answer would be a small carrier that could escort the convoy and
provide ASW ability. The result was the escort carrier of the USN.
In October 1940 FDR ordered
the navy to purchase a merchant ship for conversion into a platform to carry
autogiros, as the first helicopters were called. The purpose of the autogiros
would be to locate submarines and mark them with smoke bombs for ASW warships.
This proved impractical because the rudimentary helicopters just did not have
the performance to adequately handle the envisioned missions.
Rear Admiral William Halsey also saw the need for a merchant ship
conversion for an auxiliary carrier but his idea was for the design to train new
pilots and to transport aircraft. Halsey hated employing the limited number of
USN fleet carriers on aircraft transportation missions. It is ironic that on
December 7, 1941 it was those very same aircraft transportation missions that
had Halsey’s Enterprise,
as well as other carriers at sea, rather than in Pearl Harbor.
Admiral Stark, the USN CNO
at the time, didn’t think much of either Roosevelt’s or Halsey’s ideas. He
could ignore the opinions of a Rear Admiral but not those of the President. Two
merchant ships, both C3 cargo ships, were acquired for conversion. They were the
Mormacland
and Mormacmail.
The Mormacmail
was purchased in January 1941 with the conversion to be started that March.
Roosevelt mandated that the ship be converted into a carrier in three months.
The USN didn’t think it possible but put the new ship on the highest
construction priority at the yard at Newport News starting March 18. In fact
only one other ship shared the same highest priority, the fleet carrier USS
Hornet. The merchant quickly morphed into a carrier with the
addition a 362 feet flight deck. There was no island, as the bridge was under
the forward edge of the flight deck, as with some Japanese designs. Displacement
was 14,005 tons (fl) but 1,650 tons of this figure was through the addition of
extra ballast, as the freeboard was so high ballast had to be added to lower the
center of gravity for safety. The new design was commissioned on June 2, 1941 as
USS
Long Island, later CVE-1. In contrast to the six aircraft
capacity of HMS
Audacity, the Long
Island could accommodate 16 aircraft. The other merchant Mormacland was also convert
into an escort carrier but was transferred to Great Britain as HMS
Archer.
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USS Long Island
nee SS
Mormacmail, was launched January 11, 1940 for the Maritime
Commission, started conversion March 18, 1941, and commissioned June 2, 1941.
Her standard displacement was 7,886-tons but jumped to 14,005-tons full load.
Her overall length was 492-feet, width at waterline 69.5-feet, width at flight
deck 70-feet and draught 25.5-feet. The flight deck was 58-feet above waterline.
Powered by diesel engines developing 8,500 hp, Long
Island had a maximum speed of 16 knots. Her final armament
configuration in 1945 was one five-inch/51 surface action gun, two three-inch AA
guns and twenty 20mm Oerlikon AA guns. Her complement was 970.
The Long
Island was designated APV-1, Transport & Aircraft Ferry. Her
first squadron was VS-201, which operated seven F2A Brewster Buffaloes and
thirteen fixed landing gear SOC-3A Seagulls. The USN experimented with the new
design in determining the breadth of the missions this small auxiliary carrier
could accomplish. Obviously, she could ferry assembled aircraft. Also with the
Seagulls, she could undertake tactical reconnaissance, and observe and report of
the splash of shell in a fleet battle. That summer she provided air cover for a
practice amphibious assault, which she accomplished with flying colors. In
August 1941 Long Island was part of the
squadron, which took FDR to meet Churchill off of Nova Scotia. Undoubtedly both
men looked at the Long Island, since Roosevelt
had created it and Churchill was acquiring US built ships of the same type. The
new baby carrier was designated as ACV, Auxiliary Aircraft Carrier, in 1942 and
finally as CVE, Escort Carrier in 1943.
The appearance of the Long
Island yelled “Merchant” with every fiber of its being. There is no grace to the
design, as like the Langley built upon a collier,
the Long Island clearly feature a
wooden deck attached to a merchant hull with a Byzantine roller-coaster of
lattice work. The flight deck did not extend the length of the deck, leaving
exposed forecastle and quarterdeck. The forward 60% of the flight deck were well
clear of the hull, with one exception, and were raised above the hull on a
series of steel trusses of different heights. The aft 40% of the flight deck sat
atop superstructure in which were the hangar and machine shops. During
summer operations it had become obvious that the ship needed a longer flight
deck. At Nova Scotia with FDR watching, one of the Buffaloes came close to
smashing into the seas immediately after launch. On September 12, 1941 the Long
Island received a refit, which extended the flight deck forward
by 77-feet, added two internal transverse bulkheads to increase survivability,
added a catapult, removed the bridge that had been underneath the forward edge
of the deck, added a short radar mast with SC array to the forward starboard
side of the flight deck and threw in five additional Oerlikons. Full load
displacement rose to 14,953-tons. With no bridge the ship was conned from open
navigation platforms extending for both sides of the flight deck forward.
Aircraft complement was raised to 21. As the first of the escort carriers and a
one off design to boot, the Long
Island primarily served as a training carrier and was not subject
to the constant alterations and refits visited upon combat carriers.
One of her first training missions after her
refit was for VT-8, later disappear, leaving only one aircrew survivor, at
Midway. She was at Bermuda on December 7, 1941 and landed her air group while at
anchor. She quickly made her way back to Norfolk, where she arrived December 22,
1941. On the 26th Long
Island pulled out of port and headed for Newfoundland in
preparation for convoy escort duties. During the month that she was off Canada
her only action was when three of her SOCs depth charged a “U-Boat” that in
reality turned out to be a whale. On January 28, 1942 she was back in Norfolk in
a repeat of her carrier qualification duties for new squadrons. On April 2 the
sad sack Buffaloes were replaced by Grumman F4F Wildcats. On May 10, 1942, at
the peak of the Japanese conquests in the Pacific, Long
Island was transferred to the Pacific. The Japanese carrier
striking force under Admiral Nagumo appeared unstoppable, winning victories over
hapless allied warships wherever it appeared. USS
Lexington had just been sunk at the Battle of Coral Sea, Yorktown
was severely damaged in the same battle and Saratoga was laid up
repairing from a torpedo strike. With only Enterprise
and Hornet
available in that month for combat duty, it appeared that even the ungainly Long
Island might be required to offer its meager supplement to the
fleet carriers in future efforts to stop the Japanese. At the start of June Long
Island was at San Diego. The fleet carriers had pulled out of
Pearl Harbor. Acting upon intercepts, Admiral Nimitz gambled that he could set
up a trap for Nagumo’s carriers at the atoll of Midway. On June 5 Vice Admiral
Pye steamed out of San Francisco with seven battleships with the Long
Island providing their air cover as a back-stop in case of a
Japanese victory at Midway. Even though the immediate crisis passed with the
spectacular US victory at the Battle of Midway in June, the Japanese Navy still
held the edge in carrier aviation.
Long Island
stayed in the Pacific fulfilling other duties. In July she ferried aircraft from
San Diego to Pearl Harbor and then took another load from Pearl to Palmyra. She
was integral in the planning for Operation Watchtower, the invasion of
Guadalcanal. On August 2, 1942, loaded up with USMC aircraft (19 F4F Wildcats of
VMF-223 and 12 SBD Dauntlesses of VMSB-232) and accompanied by the destroyer Aylwin, Long
Island glided out of Pearl, tasked to transport them to
Guadalcanal to stock the Japanese airfield to be captured by the Marines on
August 7. Because of the unmitigated disaster of the Battle of Savo Island, the
carrier was redirected to Suva in the Fiji Islands, to await an opportune time
to continue her mission. From Suva she made her way to Efate New Hebridies,
where she picked up Helena and two destroyers as
an escort. In the afternoon of August 20 she reached her launch location, 200
miles southeast of Guadalcanal. All aircraft were safely launched and arrived
without mishap at Henderson Field. Long
Island then received a new mission in support of the Guadalcanal
operations. Directed back to Efate, she loaded nineteen F4F Wildcats of VMF-224
and twelve SBD Dauntlesses of VMSB-231. There was a difference in her delivery
this time. Instead of approaching Guadalcanal for the launch, on August 28 and
29 she launched the aircraft to land at Espiritu Santo, from which they would
then be flown to Guadalcanal.
With her month in the Big League complete,
FDR’s baby was sent back to the safety of San Diego where she arrived on
September 19, 1942. There were a number of reasons for her lack of further
missions to combat areas. New and better escort carriers were steadily entering
fleet service. In contrast to the high deck of Long Island, their decks were
much lower to the waterline giving them improved stability with better
compartmentization and stronger construction, as well as being faster than the
glacially slow Long Island. For the balance
of 1942 and into 1943 the Long
Island provided a platform for west coast pilot training. In 1944
and 1945 she served primarily as an aircraft and personnel transport. Also in
1944 she traded her SC radar for an SC-2 array. After the Japanese surrender she
returned US servicemen to the US in Operation Magic Carpet. On March 26, 1946
she was stricken from the navy role. However, unlike most of her newer combat
veteran sisters who straight to scrap, FDR’s baby had more than two decades of
life ahead of her. First she was sold to a shipping company and reconverted to
the merchant ship Nelly. In 1953 she was
renamed Seven Seas and continued on
shuttling cargo. Then in a rebirth she became a floating classroom, until
permanently anchored at Rotterdam in 1968 as a floating dormitory for medical
students. (History from: The
Little Giants, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1987, by
William T. Y’Blood)
The Loose Cannon Long
Island
"Cool!"
I couldn't help it. As I first looked at the hull of the 1:700 scale USS
Long Island from Loose
Cannon, I expressed my first gut impact of this resin and brass model of
FDR's baby carrier. I'm a sucker for the oddball and with grotesqueries such as
the Long Island,
it is no wonder the producer of this kit chose the name Loose Cannon. This box this kit came in is packed the rafters with
the glorious and bizarre. The kit reflects all of the hallmarks of this one off
design. The original was an emergency rushed conversion whose completion was
ordained, not by military necessity or by a prudent development timeline, but by
arbitrary presidential fiat. The design is so ungainly with a flight deck high
above the waterline, supported at the bow by an intricate, byzantine welter of
riveted trusses worthy of the skeleton of a skyscraper and at the stern by a
soaring hangar slaped onto a bluff, obviously humble merchant hull. The Loose
Cannon Long
Island has all of the ingredients to duplicate this intoxicating
design mixture. The Loose Cannon
instructions contain this warning, "This kit is a complex
assembly...." Trust them, because of the numerous, intricate support
trusses forward, this kit is not for the beginner. No aircraft are provided,
hover of companies provide Wildcats and Dauntlesses for Long
Island's Guadacanal appearance but good luck finding a 1:700
scale Brewster Buffalo.
The Hull
There
are no sleek warship lines to the Long Island, just the tubby form of a
peaceful merchant, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The hull sides
are rather slab sided with a wide civilian bow of a cargo ship with a modest
cutwater in place of the knife-like thin cutwater of a warship. At least the Long
Island was built on a modern cargo ship with a graceful, if wide,
cutwater as opposed to the straight stem older merchant designs. Also, there is
a good sheer forward, which adds a touch of a warship appearance to the merchant
hull. At the top of the cutwater is a drainage hole flanked by one on each side
through the solid bulkheads surrounding the raised forecastle. There is a raised
line, almost like an external degaussing cable that runs the length of the ship.
For most of the ship it is flush with deck level but at forecastle and hangar it
runs below the top of the hull. A degaussing cable was the only purpose that I
could come up with for it. It is near the stern of the model where the sides of
the hangar were added atop the merchant hull. Instead having a fleet carrier’s
roller doors to open to provide ventilation, the hull has a series of sliding
covers, which serve that purpose. The aft face of the hangar has a good detail
of detail with duct work and support beams and doors at quarterdeck level.
Casting is very good, as I could not find any voids or other defect. There is a
very small bit of casting flash at the waterline that is easily removed. It is
only with feeling it with your fingers that you know that it is there because it
is so minute that you don’t notice it with the eye.
Deck detail on
the hull really adds a good amount of character. Very few structures are built
on centerline, which only adds character to the model. The actual forecastle
deck is a separate piece, so there is no detail on the hull casting. About the
first half the ship is entirely open at deck level and will have a forest of
brass flight deck support trusses soaring a good height above the main deck. The
most significant structure here is an oddly shaped deckhouse offset close to the
port side of the hull. There are a couple of doors but most of the interest
comes from the odd shape. Aft of this deckhouse are a couple of nicely detailed
winches and a small deckhouse. Four deck coamings round out the deck detail for
the first half of the model. At this point is the 01 level of the
superstructure, slightly inset from the hull edge and have portholes running the
length of the level before ending with the hangar. The short quarter deck has a
solid bulkhead with a drainage oval on each side. The drainage vents needed to
be opened up with a hobby knife. There are twin bollards cast as part of inboard
bulkhead. I would have preferred these features to be cast from the deck, since
there was separation from the bollards and bulkhead but this is only a minor
quibble. Free standing quarter deck detail consists of a winch and windlass.
Smaller Resin Parts
The largest part of the model, other than the hull, is not even resin. The
flight deck is some sort of plastic, different from standard injected plastic.
Deck detail includes the single elevator outline and single catapult off set to
port. Arrestor gear equipment plates are shown, as well as athwart ship metal
panels. The plastic flight deck rests on top of a two-piece resin sub-deck.
Since the plastic deck is attached on top, most of the top of these parts have
no detail. Rather, these parts provide the deck edge galleries and Oerlikon gun
tubs, which were slightly below deck edge. The resin sub deck also allows
support structure running along the bottom of the flight deck to be detailed. A
large resin casting sheet provides the largest additional resin parts, other
than decking. Found on this sheet are the 02 and 03 levels of the
superstructure, the navigation bridge, forecastle deck, and three gun mount
bases. The superstructure levels have portholes and doors but it is the
navigation bridge that will be located underneath the flight deck that adds
another large measure of quirky detail found throughout this kit. It has wood
panel deck detail and separate deck houses on the bridge wings but quirkiest of
details is a long t-shaped observation platform jutting far forward like a spar
torpedo or bowsprit. Use a hobby knife to open up the platform, as there would
have been no internal blocks to stop walking up and down the platform. Loose
Canon provides an additional, separately cast version of this same part.
Apparently you use the separate part as opposed to that cast on the sheet. The
only difference that I noticed was that the separate part had a slightly reduced
length of the forward observation walk. The short forecastle piece is covered in
detail. You can’t turn around without tripping over some fitting or another.
Detailed anchor machinery, bollard plates, deck access hatches, and multiple
lockers are all found on the short forecastle. The smallest resin parts include:
ship’s boats, detailed deck guns, ducts, mast house and pole mast, mast
platform, bollard fittings, various sized carley floats some of which are double
stacked, anchors, search lights, supports and a few other fittings.
Brass Photo-Etch Frets
The brass included with the Long Island is another of the many
strong points of this fine kit. There is extensive use of relief-etching, which
reaches run-amok proportions with these frets. There are actually three frets
and the one with all of the relief-etching is of a substantially heavier gauge
brass because of the nature of the parts. The brass is of a heavier gauge
because most of the parts on this fret are for the numerous and heavy support
structures rising from the main deck to support the flight deck high above. More
than half the length of the flight deck is supported by these structures, so
they are very prominent on the model. In the bridge building business, each of
these support structures would be called a bent. It is extremely important to
pay very close attention on all parts used and to constantly double check that
the right parts are used at the right location. Because of the deck sheer the
bents are of different lengths with shorter bents at the bow where the deck
sheer rises and the longest bents amidships where the freeboard is lowest. The
locations are not interchangeable. I recommend only removing the parts for one
bent at a time to avoid mixing up the parts. Build and attach that bent first
before going on the next, in sequential order. The instructions are very
specific about the procedure and because of the complexity of this stage of
assembly, the kit is not recommended for beginners. The parts are metal panels
with weight-saving voids, flanked with heavy support beams and pillars. It is a
high iron workers dream come true and promises to be spectacular on the finished
model. This fret also contains so other parts as well. Among them are the
arrester arms less the wires, davits and assorted other parts.
Another large
fret is of much finer brass and contains light weight structures. All of the
light support structures are found here for radars, platform supports, carley
racks, platforms, railing, inclined ladders, accommodation ladders, vertical
ladder, radio tower, Kingfisher wheels for those that wish to convert the SOC
floatplane to a wheeled version, two bladed and three bladed propellers, life
buoys, carley raft bottoms (you would have to remove the cast on resin carley
bottoms to use the brass parts), ducts, and arrestor wires. There are a lot of
parts on this fret. The third and smallest brass fret provides parts for 28
Oerlikon guns. Each single gun consists of gun/pillar piece and gun shield with
folding gun cradle and shoulder rests. Loose Cannon also provides two decal sheets with 1941 markings with
red circle and 1942 circle-less markings. Unfortunately the red circles are not
centered in the star. Also included on the sheets are US NAVY markings and two
sizes of flags.
Instructions
Loose Cannon provides a very
comprehensive set of instructions with special care given to the exact sequence
of construction of the flight deck support structures. Some pages are back
printed and some are not. The majority is stapled together but three sheets were
loose, apparently having been late additions after the initial collating and
stapling. Page i of the main body contains a assembly warning/alert about tricky
parts in assembly in order to eliminate pitfalls for the modeler. Page ii shows
support structure assembly. An unnumbered page has photos of the two large brass
frets. Page 1 starts with superstructure assembly with pages 2 and 3 completing
this sequential process. Page 4 starts the attachment of bents from
superstructure forward showing attachment of individual pieces attached before
the bents are attached. Get these parts in place before attaching the support
bents go on because if the process is reversed the attached bents would likely
preclude attachment of the resin parts. Page 5 jumps forward to the bow to the
navigation bridge and includes all of the other supports for things such as the
navigation platform wings. Page 6 goes to the bents between the bow and
superstructure steps and includes boat and davit placement. Page 7 goes back to
the bow for the bents in front of the navigation bridge. On page 8 you start
attaching the resin flight deck support base with the smaller bow part and page
9 features the larger aft resin base and plastic flight deck attachment. Page 10
has quarter deck details, flight deck light support details, flight deck
attachments/bracing and floater net baskets. The next page is unnumbered and has
profile and plan details to clarify part attachment locations. The last page of
the stapled instructions has colored profiles for both sides of the Long Island
for the Ms 12 (mod) camouflage pattern of 1942 and Ms 39/9A dazzle pattern of
1943, as well as a single plan view of Norfolk deck stain 20-B flight deck. All
three of the loose individual sheets are back printed. One is unnumbered and
shows all three brass frets on one side and a resin parts laydown on the
reverse. The next sheet is numbered 11 on one side and has railing and carley
position details while the reverse is page 12 with Oerlikon and arrestor gear
details. The last sheet is numbered 13 on one side with 1943 mast, radar and
mast platform assembly and the reverse is page 14 with 1942 mast assembly, radio
tower detail and smaller support and mast stay detail.
Verdict
The Loose Cannon 1:700 scale USS
Long Island is an extraordinarily impressive kit packed with
detail and a large number of parts for construction of FDR’s baby, the first
USN escort carrier. It presents a delightful mixture of odd, asymmetrical and
generally bizarre construction features for a carrier conversion slapped on a
merchant hull at the President’s direction and features a profile higher than
any other escort carrier. Because of the intricate and numerous brass flight
deck support structures, the Long
Island is not really suitable for beginners.