Midland Shipyard

I wanted to represent the crane, aircraft tow trucks and loader that can be seen in photos of HMS Queen Elizabeth on Westlant 18 and 20 but, whilst they are very visible in pictures of the ships, I needed better references for the vehicles. Happily davecov on Britmodeller kindly told me exactly what the vehicles were, based on information he'd gathered for his 1/350 build . 4 x Schopf F59 Tow Tractors 2 x JCB 541-70 Telescopic Handler 1 x Terex AC35 Crane From this I found plenty of reference photos and even plans for the crane and tractors that I could simplify and scale down. The JCBs looked a bit complicated with their curved cabs, compounded by not finding any plans - so I took the coward's way out and decided they were both busy in the hanger - but the other vehicles are quite simple, if a bit small and fiddly. The other details I needed were the Phalanx CIWS. Again I found some reference photos and basic  dimensions and used these to make some simplifi...

I want to capture something of the business of an aircraft carrier deck, crowded with aircraft and vehicles. As well as F35s, I wanted to have a variety of Merlins and a Chinook to represent the range of aircraft you would normally expect to see onboard. After checking out the various options in metal and 3D prints, I decided to buy printed aircraft and helicopters from SNAFU on Shapeways . The detail on these is quite remarkable and, printed in Smooth Fine Detail Plastic, there wasn't too much cleaning up to do and the characteristic layered effects are only visible at quite high magnification. I already had some photo-etch propellors that would do for helicopter tail rotors and purchased main rotors from Mountford. You can see a frame of Sea Harriers and Sea Kings in the picture too - fantastic little models - these are for other models I have in the pipeline. I soon found out the downside of tiny models with thin details 3D-printed in Smooth Fine Detail Plast...

I've read many times that small scale aircraft carrier models stand or fall by their flight deck markings. I guess the decals included in the Mountford kit (as the kit itself) must have been based on early renderings because they bear little resemblance to the markings seen in photos of HMS Queen Elizabeth during Westlant 19. From Wikipedia Commons licensed under    Open Government Licence version 1.0 The striking features for me in photos of the flight deck are the yellow-black hazard markings around the lifts and the rectangles of different greys. The colours seem to depend on the viewing angle or maybe the main deck colour has faded with time. Many pictures show the large central area and one alongside the ski-jump as bluer and the others as a much darker grey than the general deck grey, for example here among the many excellent pictures of HMS Queen Elizabeth at SeaForces.org  and at the top of this article on ' Save the Royal Navy '. Taking advice from Jef...

I next turned to the islands. At first I'd thought these wouldn't need much work but closer inspection showed that this was not the case. Although the basic shapes weren't bad, platforms were in the wrong places, badly proportioned or missing, the exhausts were completely wrong, the radars looked little like the real thing, the very obvious large display screens were missing, the conservatory (sorry, flying control position) was the wrong shape and size and the casting overall was too blobby. I decided to cut off the details and re-make them from scratch but just dress the basic casting to give the characteristic sharp edges. Because of all the angles, I couldn't possibly do this free-hand so made a set of angled sanding blocks from thick cardboard to use in conjunction with a jig to hold things at 90 or 45 degrees. The front island went very easily but I made several mistakes with the rear island and had to build things back up, hence the large amount of filler...

HMS Queen Elizabeth just before leaving for Westlant 2018. Taken from the deck of a Brittany Ferries ferry.  I first became interested in warships in the early70s and watched the TV series Sailor about the Ark Royal, just a couple of years before she was paid off and scrapped. I remember too reading in many books that the UK could no-longer afford aircraft carriers (they never quite explained why the French still could) and the future was frigates, destroyers and through-deck cruisers. It seemed a much diminished world and I regretted that I'd never seen, and now never would see, a 'proper' RN aircraft carrier. Then came the Falkands War, won only because the government hadn't quite managed to dispose of Hermes and Invincible before the Argentinian invasion. That old veteran (despite the removal of its catapults and arrestor gear) and the new 'through-deck cruiser' (despite the design being optimised for a very different war, with a small deck and even sm...