Illustrations - RevuAIR

How does one correct a primary source?

By fStop Fitzgerald | 30 August 2023

It happens. Not often, but it does occur. A trusted primary source of information has a verifiable glaring error.

How does one go about correcting it?

In writing my most recent column for Naval History about the USS Iowa (Battleship No. 4), I naturally searched for photographs. One of my favorite sites for pre-World War I imagery is the Library of Congress. Among their many collections are the glass images from the Detroit Photographic Company.

If you are not familiar with Detroit Photographic images, a quick Google search will get you to a myriad of photographs all from the late 1800s and early 1900s. The quality, because most are from large glass plates, is generally phenomenal, and the detail is exquisite. The subjects span the gamut of American history. Check out your old home town to see what it looked like during that period. Or railroads. Architecture. Shipping. Commerce. Farming. Literally anything you can think of, the photographers of the Detroit Photographic Company have it.

I found an interesting image for my search, LC-D4-13000 det 4a08494. It is titled, “League Island Navy Yard, U.S.S. Iowa and monitors, Philadelphia ca. 1900.”

I am always a sucker for monitor photographs and the thumbnail looked interesting with the bright white and buff colors of the battleship contrasting with drab gray of the monitors.

Surendranagar But . . .

While the photograph did not disappoint. It is beautifully detailed, well composed, everything a photographer could want. Except the subject is wrong.

The battleship is not Iowa, but Indiana (Battleship No. 1).

This is not me saying so on a whim, but from basic knowledge.

The Iowa was built as the first American sea-going battleship with blue-water operations taking the fore. Three battleships (not including the second-class Texas and Maine, a long Navy procurement story) had been built before Iowa—the Indiana class, which included Indiana (Battleship No. 1), Massachusetts (Battleship No. 2), and Oregon (Battleship No. 3).

The primary difference between No. 1/2/3 and No. 4 was the Iowa had a forecastle deck that stretched back to the aft secondary 8-inch gun turrets. This added deck made the Iowa much more blue-water friendly than the very wet Indianas.

Some other physical notes of differences include the location of the forward secondary turrets farther aft, behind the fore funnel on the Iowa and also a deck lower at the same level with the fore main turret. Compare the drawings with the photograph.

Cropping in tight on the bow of the battleship shows only one row of deadlights, not two as one should see with the Iowa. This lone row is a hallmark of the Indiana class.

For the record: only one other class of U.S. pre-dreadnought battleships was constructed without a forecastle deck. It was the the Kearsarge class, which included Kearsarge (Battleship No. 5) and Kentucky (Battleship No. 6). However, neither of these could ever be confused with any other class because of the unique arrangement of their fore and aft turrets.

This is the aft turret of Kearsarge. Note the stacked main and secondary armament in circular turrets atop each other. The two could not rotate independently. Also note there is no similarity with the Indiana class or Iowa, for that matter.

Given that we now know the class of the so-called Iowa in the questionable photograph is actually an Indiana, which of the three—Indiana, Massachusetts, or Oregon—is it?

In their as-built condition, each ship carried a unique bow decoration (not called a figurehead, but a “bow decoration”).

This is the decoration on the mystery ship. While hard to “read,” the center escutcheon appears to feature a left-looking portrait.

This is Battleship No. 1’s bow decoration. Note the escutcheon contains a left-facing portrait.

Battleship No. 2’s decoration is very similar to Indiana‘s but features an eagle.

There is no mistaking Battleship No. 3 Oregon‘s shield for any other.

And to totally rule out Iowa from the discussion, here is Battleship No. 4’s decoration. One additional note in comparing the four bow views is the distance between the ornamentation and the bow torpedo tube. In the Indianas, the tube is almost part of the decoration, while Iowa‘s is far removed.

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Based on the bow ornament, the mystery ship can only reasonably be Indiana or Massachusetts as much of their ornamentation matches. Iowa and Oregon are impossibilities. While I could say that there is more relief shown in portrait of Indiana than the eagle of Massachusetts, and that the mystery photograph appears to show stark relief. That does not make it certain that the ship is Indiana.

I find certainty in the ship’s boats.

Note in both the mystery photograph and a verified photograph of Indiana, the ship’s boats are marked with a capital “I.” Perhaps this is what convinced the caption writer a century and a quarter ago.

To the point of all this…

I cannot be the first person to have made this identification in 125 years. Where are the others? Certainly someone let the Library of Congress know. Why is there not an annotation for this on the link to the images? I appreciate that archivists are bound to the information they are given and Detroit Photographic engraved this on the plate. But isn’t it also within an archivist’s purview as a historian to set the record straight? Especially when there is compelling evidence?

I will try to contact the Library of Congress and let them know about the issue. Don’t hold your breath, I’m not holding mine.

What an Addition to the Aviation Bibliography

By fStop Fitzgerald | 18 July 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Boeing B-47 Stratojet: Strategic Air Command’s Transitional Bomber

By C. Mike Habermehl and Robert S. Hopkins III

Specialty Press, 2018. 320 pages. $44.95.

The Stratojet was every 1950s kid’s ideal of U.S. aviation might. It was big. Six jets hanging out there on the wings for all to see. It was fast. It even looked like it was going 600 mph when it was just sitting on the ramp. When discussing “clean” aircraft, the B-47 is among the first mentioned.

It was among the first designs released by Revell in 1954 once that company began producing plastic models from their own molds in 1953. It was re-released in 2006. Yes, the big jet caught the public’s attention. And the Soviets’ as well.

There are nearly a dozen significant books about the B-47, most published since the type went out of service. Thus, they should be very informative about even some of the most classified aspects of the bomber’s operations. Habermehl and Hopkins have very obviously capitalized on this and produced the most recent and perhaps the best on the topic.

This is an impressive work. It easily replaces—replaces—at least five books on my shelves. Few books can make that claim. One gets that sense that the narrative is an airframe-by-airframe, minute-by-minute account of the B-47’s history. It is, however, only a sense. The prose never has the staccato recitation of aircraft and dates. The hardcore airplane junkie readily finds that information in the expansive 66 pages of appendices.

It is the authors’ attention to detail—significant detail—and their logical presentation that yields the sense, but not the reality of information overload. Despite six decades of following aviation, I found many revelations in their work, a number of them surprising. For instance, the Air Force’s FICON (Fighter Conveyor) wingtip-tow project is well known. But the authors, in a section called “Drawing Board Disasters,” discuss not only a B-47/dual F-86 combination, but also a B-36/dual B-47 concept. Surprising as it is, they note that aerodynamic studies supported the feasibility of both projects. But these never got off the drawing board.

The physical presentation of the material is in a word “fantastic.” All books should be printed with this quality. The paper is thick, glossy stock, which reproduces the well-exposed and processed photographs as close to their original state as possible. Of course some images could or should be larger, but in the interest of more being better (more images, more information), they are reproduced large enough for the detail to be seen. Excellent informative graphics and charts are strategically placed throughout the book, further enhancing the narrative.

In this day of paying $50 for specialty books being the norm, this is an unequivocal no-brainer. If you want to know everything about the B-47, if you are interested in the early days of jet-propelled bombers or the Strategic Air Command or simply the evolution of an aircraft, this book not only belongs on your shelf, it must be read and re-read.

D-Day: Remembering Scotty

By fStop Fitzgerald | 6 June 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Bob Frascotti never made it to the beaches of Normandy, yet he was a veteran of that invasion. He was one of the first to die that day.

Just four months past his 21st birthday, Bob—known as Scotty—was to fly one of the first missions of the day. His fellow pilots recall his “superb” singing voice, reminiscent of Vaughan Monroe, and his rendition of “Racing With the Moon.” A fellow pilot from that fateful morning recalled with some grim irony that clouds scudding across the face of the moon that morning may have robbed Scotty of a few vital seconds of visibility that literally meant life or death.

The night before, ground crews of the Eighth Air Force’s 352nd Fighter Group hastily painted their pristine ships with white and black invasion stripes. “Breakfast” was at 2200 on the 5th, with the briefing set for midnight. The “Blue-nosed Bastards of Bodney” were then informed that D-Day had truly begun. Their mission was to fly aerial cover for the landing forces to protect them from air attacks. The 486th Fighter Squadron, Bob’s unit, would be the first to launch at 0230 and he was assigned to the second section of four.

It was Scotty’s 89th mission. Night operations were unfamiliar to the group, which was used to protecting bombers on daylight raids over the continent. Their field, at RAF Bodney, England, USAAF Station 141, was grass. It’s lack of a well-defined illuminated runway compounded a pilot’s issues as the turf blended into the night sky like “black velvet.” A string of temporary lights had been laid, but one of the taxiing Mustangs had snagged and broken the power cable. The pilots had no recourse but to position and orient themselves as best they could in the drizzle and darkness.

RAF Bodney, USAAF Station 141 [© English Heritage, NMR.]

An armorer, Sergeant Jim Bleidner, watched as the red and green position lights on the wings bumped in the night as the planes moved from the dispersal area to their take-off position near the tower on the western edge of the field. A new, second tower was under construction at the east end of the field, directly in the path of their take-off.

Frascotti’s plane, with a pale, weather-worn blue nose, was P-51B-5-NA, 43-6685, named Umbriago. This could be a corruption of the Italian word umbriaco, which means ‘drunk.’ More likely, however, it was taken from the 1944 song Umbriago by Jimmy Durante about a dear friend by that name. The lyrics end: “So when you feel low, better send for my friend, Umbriago.”

The flight lead, Lieutenant Martin Corcoran, turned his fighter into the wind and taxied forward a few feet. Without knowing, he was slightly to the right of the intended take-off line. Using the flame from his exhausts—described by Bleidner as “tiger’s teeth”—as a guide the other three slotted into position. At Corcoran’s command, all four fully laden Mustangs waddled forward in the dark, slowly gaining speed. To fly, the fighters needed an indicated airspeed of 150 mph.

Lieutenant Bud Fuhrman, to Bob’s right, held his craft down as it gained speed. Lieutenant Charles Griffiths, trailing slightly, thought his plane was “glued to the ground.” From his position, he could see the lights of Corcoran’s plane that indicated he was airborne, Then those of Furman, also up. Frascotti, however, off to his left, were slightly lower. Then, at near flying speed, Umbriago slammed into the unlighted unfinished control tower.

The new, unfinished Bodney control tower in the aftermath of Bob Frascotti’s collision.
[© 352nd FG, USAAF]

The unit’s history described the aftermath: “An enormous smear of fire, spewing like dragon’s bile, burned over the tower balcony and flared malevolently onwards as the aircraft disintegrated.” Bob Frascotti was no more.

Griffiths pushed on, his plane still on the ground, but eventually making into the air somehow after striking a net post on sister 328th FS’s volleyball court. In the 328th’s briefing room nearby, a blinding flash lit the area followed by a concussion and flying .50-caliber bullets as Bob’s ammunition cooked off in the flames.

The rest of the group took flight guided by the flickering flames of Umbriago.

D-Day

By fStop Fitzgerald | 5 June 2019 | Comments 1 comment

**LST-60** carried six LCVPs during the Normandy invasion.

Two harbors and a ship

Seventy-five years ago young Americans and their Allies took a big gamble with the largest invasion force ever assembled. On 6 June 1944, they stormed ashore to gain first a toe-hold, then a foot-hold, and then more on the European continent and bring the ground war to Nazi Germany.

While their actions and sacrifices cannot and should not be minimized, their tenuous clutches at the beach and later their forays through the boccage of northern France could not have be accomplished without support in additional men and material. Much logistical planning—some have said even more so than that of the invasion—occurred in the months leading up to the landings.

One of the primary concerns of the planners was that there were few quickly obtainable ports in the north of France. Cherbourg was captured early, by the end of July, but its port facilities had been comprehensively destroyed and booby-trapped. Antwerp, Belgium, was captured on 4 September, but its wasn’t opened until the end of November after the Germans were pushed from its approaches. Boulogne and Calais were not opened until October and November, respectively. So without the prospect of decent port facilities, planners decided to bring their own.

Two synthetic harbors—named Mulberries—were planned for the Normandy beaches. Mulberry A was to be set up off the American’s Omaha Beach and Mulberry B was created for the British off Gold Beach. These had to accommodate the large tidal fluctuation on the beaches while providing a minimum of 18 feet of water for supply ships and transports and direct offloading to the shore. The solution was a set of floating piers connected to shore by a series of floating steel bridge segments.

The Mulberries consisted of a number of literally moving parts—including curiously named Corncobs, Gooseberries, Bombardons, Lobnitzs, Phoenixes, Whales, and Beetles—all of which required time for planning, design, construction, movement into position for the invasion. Construction consisted of 23 Lobnitz pierheads, 10 miles of road bridge comprising 660 80-foot spans (Whales), 670 floats (Beetles) to support the bridges, 8 shore ramps, 50 Bombardon floating breakwaters, 61 blockships (Corncobs), and 213 concrete Phoenix caissons. In all, 210,000 tons of steel and one million tons of concrete were used in the construction.

The major parts of a Mulberry harbor are shown.

The plan for Mulberry A was never completed because of the three-day gale starting on 19 June and the loss of many of its components at sea during the storm while in transit to the beach.

Three different types of breakwaters were provided to shelter the piers, bridges, and ships.

Bombardons were farthest from the beach and were connected to each other by hemp ropes and anchored to form a mile-long deep-water breakwater for ships to anchor as they waited their turn to unload or the tide to be right. These curious 200-foot-long by 25-foot wide and tall 1,500-ton objects were used in water too deep for the other breakwaters to function. They were hollow watertight steel constructions in the form of an equal-armed cross. In the water they floated with the horizontal arms just beneath the English Channels surface. Omaha used 24, while Gold had 26.

The bombardons float with about six feet of their surface exposed.

Six bombardons under construction in a British drydock.

Bombardons off Gold Beach are highlighted.

The second tier of breakwaters was constructed from concrete caissons—called Phoenixes—of six different sizes, sunk in water of 5.5 fathoms or less, displacing between 6,044 and 1,672 tons. These were designed and built to provide the Mulberry’s primary protection. The Phoenixes—the largest 204-feet long and 56-feet wide—were sunk in position end to end. Mulberry A was to have 47. They got their name from the fact that after construction they were sunk and then later refloated for the invasion.

Two Phoenixes are shown, both equipped with antiaircraft artillery. The one at right is sunken to its operating depth.

Phoenixes off the coast of Omaha Beach await their placement.

Five lines of Phoenixes are highlighted in this image of Mulberry B on 27 August 1944.

The third tier, called a Gooseberry, was placed in relatively shallow water—2.5 fathoms or less—to provide shelter for smaller craft. Each consisted of a number of Corncobs, blockships prepared in Scotland by cutting holes in bulkheads of surplus ships and placing scuttling charges below their waterlines. Gooseberries, numbered 1 through 5, were assembled off each of the five invasion beaches. The number of ships in each varied by the needs of the beach. In number order from Utah (10 ships) were: Omaha (15), Gold (16), Juno (11), and Sword (9).

Sunken corncobs in form a gooseberry in one of the Mulberries.

The line of corncobs in the center foreground shape a gooseberry of Gold Beach.

The harbor facilities consisted of floating pierheads connected to the shore by a system of floating bridges and roadways. The Lobnitz spud pierheads were 1,760-ton barges 200-feet long by 60-feet wide, which were positioned and anchored to the seabed by four 89-foot long legs—called spuds—at each corner. When positioned, the spuds were lowered to the sand and forced down until they could move no further. This firmly anchored the pierhead and allowed it to ride up and down the spuds with the movement of the 24-foot tide. Ships unloaded their cargoes directly to the pierhead.

The free floating barge of the pierhead slides up and down its spuds with the rise and fall of the tide.

***LST-543*** approaches a pierhead off Omaha Beach guided by a U.S. Army tug.

The pierheads had to be positioned far enough from shore so that they could be used by ships at low tide. Thus, they needed similar floating roadways. The answer was found in the Whales and Beetles.

This diagram shows both low and high tides and their effect on both the pierheads and the whales and beetles. Note the relationship between the pierhead and its spuds.

Whales were 80-foot-long steel girder bridge sections supported at both ends by floats called Beetles. The beetles accommodated the tidal fluctuations and provided a firm base for the bridges when the tide was out. Expansion whales were inserted in the chain at intervals and connected the chain to a pier. These adjusted for the change in length as the tide rose or fell.

Lines of four sets of whales are highlighted at Mulberry B on 27 August 1944.

75 years on, a bridge over the Moselle River near Cattenom, France, still uses five spans of whales used during the Normandy invasion. [Source: Foxandpotatoes]

At Omaha, the task of assembling the Lobnitz, whales, and beetles was assigned to the 108th Naval Construction Battalion of the 25th Naval Construction Regiment. They began their work on 9 June and received its first ship—LST-342—at 1400 on the 16th.

Over the next 3 days, 15 LCTs and 22 LSTs delivered 1,168 vehicles to the beach until a nor’easter from 18–22 June—the worst June gale in more than 40 years—destroyed the pierhead and bridging units. They were not placed back into service after the storm.

The gale wreaked havoc with the American Mulberry while the British port fared much better. Some reports indicate that the U.S. facilities were not as well anchored as the British, but what was more significant is that Gold Beach had a natural protection in the Calvados reef. Because a number of Mulberry A’s sections were lost in the Channel during the storm, the American Mulberry was abandoned.

Some of the damage at the American port.

Portions of A were salvaged and used by the British for what they now called “Port Winston.” It remained in use for a full six months until the opening of the port of Antwerp.

How effective were the Mulberries?

The Americans were not very impressed. While their loss of its facilities to the gale may color this thinking somewhat, numbers don’t lie. The Yankees—by design at Utah and by chance at Omaha—were forced to land their reinforcements and supplies primarily by LSTs.

At the American beaches, 6,614 tons of cargo was landed in the first three days. A month later, they handled 9,200 tons. A month after that, they were off-loading 16,000 tons per day. The Mulberry harbors, however, provided less than half the total even on good weather days from the start.

The crowded beachhead had some aerial protection in the form of barrage ballons.

Average Daily Tonnage of Supplies Landed
Beach/Port	D+30	D+60
Omaha	1,200	10,000
Utah	8,000	6,000
Total U.S. beaches	9,200	16,000
Mulberry B	6,750	6,750

Planners had obviously underrated the capacities of open beaches and the utility of the LST. The tremendous tonnage capacities developed at the American beaches must have been one of the most surprising and welcomed features of the entire invasion.

Landing Ship, Tank (LST)

Arguably the most important ship type involved in Operation Neptune, these ships were among the most robust and versatile types put into service during the war. Their enormous capacity—each could transport an equivalent of 18 M4 Sherman tanks, 160 troops, and an LCT (landing craft, tank)—combined with the ability to put equipment and troops directly on a beach made them invaluable. Further, despite being called by irreverent crewmembers as “Large Slow (or Stationary) Targets,” they suffered few losses throughout the whole war—26 to enemy action and 13 to accidents and weather—compared to their number and wide-spread heavy combat operations.

Displacement	1,625 tons
Length	328 feet (overall)
Beam	50 feet
Draft	8 feet fore; 14.3 feet aft (full load);
	2.3 feet fore (unloading)
Speed	11.6 knots
Armament	8 40mm (some had 1 5-inch)
Complement	110

Brodie System

By fStop Fitzgerald | 28 May 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Mini Aircraft and Carriers to Match

Norman Polmar’s March-April 2014 for Historic Aircraft in the U.S. Naval Institute’s (USNI) Naval History magazine concerned the smallest of aircraft carriers and perhaps its (and the Marine Corps and Army’s) smallest aircraft.

The tiny aircraft—OY-1/2 in the Navy and Marines and L-4 in the Army—are often mistaken for the ubiquitous and similar Piper Cub. Their “carrier” was an LST.

An artist’s depiction of a U.S. Marine Corps OY-2 BuNo 03929.

In the July 1943 invasion of Sicily, LST-386 was fitted with a flight deck to launch the so-called “grasshoppers.” The runway was 12-by-216 feet and constructed timber with a metal mesh covering in just 36 hours. While also carrying her normal full load of troops and cargo, she also launched four grasshoppers.

The flight deck as installed on LST-906. Crewmembers watch as one grasshopper takes off and another waits its turn, foreground. Note the aircraft stowage and their side codes.

At Salerno in September 1943, LST-356 was fitted with a similar deck and launched five grasshoppers before a sixth hit a guardrail and crashed. The crew was rescued, but the other two planes the LST carried were not launched.

During the invasion of southern France in August 1944, three LSTs, among them LST-906, were configured as grasshopper carriers and launched more than 30 aircraft. A similar LST also operated in the Pacific with Army and Marine aircraft.

*LST-906* with a grasshopper preparing to launch from its deck.

An L-4B takes off from LST-906 during the invasion of southern France, St. Tropez, circa August–September 1944. Note the aircraft stowage. [Society of the Third Infantry Division]

An Army lieutenant, James H. Brodie, developed a system for launching and landing light aircraft from ships. While the system could be easily adapted to virtually any ship large enough to carry the airplanes, the LST was the ship of choice. For the operations, a tripod assembly was attached to the planes nose and wing with a locking hook at the apex. This was somewhat akin to that used by the Curtiss F9Cs to attach themselves to the airships Akron (ZRS-4) and Macon (ZRS-5).

The Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk had a lockable hook attached above its wing to latch onto a trapeze in the bottom of the airships Akron and Macon.

Two booms were angled off the side of the ship with a reinforced cable connecting them about 40 feet clear of the water. For launching, a plane was hoisted up and connected to a trolley on the cable. The plane would run the length of the cable gaining enough speed to remain airborne and trip a release at the end freeing the plane for flight.

To “land” the plane, the pilot would fly parallel to the ship and hook onto a trapeze attached to the trolley, which had a braking system to stop the aircraft.

During training on LST-776, three Marine aircraft were lost, with no casualties, and five pilots qualified.

At Iwo Jima in February 1945, the Brodie system was activated aboard LST-776, making four launches of Marine OY-1s. No recoveries were noted. At Okinawa in April, LST-776 successfully completed 25 Army grasshopper launches and recoveries.

Mr. Polmar’s column goes into greater detail. In the end, only one graphic was used (below) but it only shows the landing aspect of the process because it was more complex. Four photographs were published, three showing a take-off from a deck and one showing LST-776.

Two photographs of LST-776. Note that the overhead oblique shows a catapult with grasshopper amidships. This was mounted only during the early training off San Diego and was removed before the LST entered combat.

Grumman F-14A Tomcat (III)

By fStop Fitzgerald | 28 May 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Part III

As beloved as the Tomcat is in many Navy aviation circles and in portions of the general public, there are a few remaining on active duty, but with a potential adversary—Iran.

Norman Polmar’s article goes into that. All I will share here is my work on the images of two of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF).

My primary source for the drawings was Tom Cooper and Farzad Bishop’s Iranian F-14 Tomcat Units in Combat, #49 in the Osprey Combat Aircraft Series.

I also used a number of images from the internet, primarily from Airliners.net, which has many international contributors.

One interesting sidelight to the Iranian use of the Tomcat is their testing of U.S. Army MIM-23 Hawk missiles, provided to them during the Iran-Contra Affair, as air-to-air missiles.

This was unusual enough that I chose to include it on one of the drawings.

Here are the pair that resulted:

Grumman F-14A Tomcat (II)

By fStop Fitzgerald | 27 May 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Part II

Although the majority of the work was done in Illustrator, I did use Strata 3D for some of the smaller detail work, primarily the missiles. Drawings of the AIM-7 Sparrow III that I had were not very detailed, but good enough for the scale of the aircraft.

The drawings I had of the AIM-9 Sidewinder, however, had a surfeit of detail and therefore resulted in a better model.

The same was true for the AIM-54 Phoenix.

All too often, however, details—such as a reasonable representation of the ejection seats—are forgotten. I did not have a good 3-view of the Tom’s GRU-7A seat, but starting from an outline and referencing photographs such as the two below, I was able to at least create a flat view of the seat. It is reasonably accurate (per the photos) and good enough for the work required.

Because I wanted to the Tomcat both clean and with the gear down, canopy up, and refueling probe out, I chose two different squadrons, VF-1, the first to receive the ‘Cat, and VF-84, because they sported the classiest marks around.

I worked from about 25 photographs such as these from VF-1:

The work marks looked like this:

Before resulting in this:

I used fewer than a dozen photos from VF-84. Primarily because I did not need to look for the standard marks such as national insignia and placards. Here are a few:

They resulted in this (again pretty thin because of the standard marks):

And the final drawing:

Part III will be posted soon.

Grumman F-14A Tomcat (I)

By fStop Fitzgerald | 27 May 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Part I

Norman Polmar’s contribution to his Historic Aircraft series in the April 2012 issue of Naval History was one of his most ambitious. It covered three pages instead of the usual two and featured two of my illustrations. Could the F-14 Tomcat deserve anything less?

It also was the perhaps the most complex project for me because there is so much information available about the Tom. There was so much to work with that the first difficult aspect of the project was selecting a base drawing to work from. In the end, it turned out to be base drawings. I ended up with 15 folders of work that included nearly 40 base drawings and hundreds of photographs.

These are a few of my reference drawings.

I think the Japanese do some of the best line work and drew primarily on Famous Aircraft of the World Volume 83 of March 1977 and Volume 89 of September 1977. The Russians also do good work. I used a couple of their books as well. I’ve never been impressed by Kinzey’s work, most of his drawings are little detailed, but I did have his F-14 In Detail & Scale, as well as all the usual offering by Squadron Signal for generic information. Danny Coremans’s Uncovering the Grumman F-14 A/B/D Tomcat is a fantastic picture book that provides a wealth of detail information. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

Because again of time, I opted for 2D. This was a lot of fun because it forced me to work with the interaction of compound curves and light. Still not a master but the end results are acceptable.

Part II to come.

Curtiss N-9H

By fStop Fitzgerald | 27 May 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

BuNo A-2453

This Burgess Company-built Curtiss N-9H was powered by a 150-hp Hispano-Suiza engine and thus received the H suffix. It was received by the Navy on 24 June 1918 and flew only 74 hours and 25 minutes before being stricken from the Navy List on 12 February 1919. Its “body” was broken in two behind the rear seat after a crash at Miami, Florida, on 5 February during a “fast landing.”

I also illustrate aircraft for Norman Polmar’s long-running column, Historic Aircraft, in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Naval History magazine. Depending upon the subject (primarily how much information is available) and time constraints, I will create it in 2D software with a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, or 3D using Strata Design working from Illustrator lines.

This first blog entry on the aircraft I’ve done was published in the October 2018 issue of Naval History. This is its link: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2018/october/historic-aircraft-floatplane-trainer

I found some rather nice drawings for source images in the February/March 1966 issue of Air Progress drawn by Bob Parks.

While there is adequate information to make a 3D version of the drawings, deadlines on other projects turned this into a 2D drawing.

Because I like to do specific aircraft that have something of a history or story behind them I research serial numbers (known in the Navy as Bureau Numbers or BuNo). My primary source for BuNos is the U.S. Navy’s official reference United States Naval Aviation 1910–2010, a book that I happened to edit. Very few were printed and they are virtually impossible to come by, however, the excellent news is that the book is available FREE in pdf form to anyone.

It is a large book, two volumes, the first is the chronology of Navy aviation, the second consists of data, including BuNos. Because it is so large, the files are broken down into easily downloaded bits. You can find the master link at this address: https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/publications/publications-by-subject/naval-aviation-1910-2010.html

An alternative—and extremely worthwhile and accurate—site is Joe Baugher’s aviation site. I have it bookmarked because I use it so often and it has yet to fail me.

From there I looked for the Navy’s Aircraft Record cards. Short of doing research at the Naval History and Heritage Command archives, they have a fair number of early cards, filed as Aircraft History cards. Sadly, because of lack of resources and time, only aircraft A-52 to A-3999 cards are available online. Gladly, this was good enough for me.

It was going to be hard to pick a particular N-9H, virtually all had the same story—crashed, damaged, or otherwise lost during training. I settled on BuNo A-2453 manufactured by the Burgess Company of Marblehead, Massachusetts, in June 1918. It existed for barely nine months before being written off at Miami in February 1919.

The record card states: “Body broken in two back of rear seat. Radiator damaged beyond repair. Bottom sucked off of pontoon. Plane sank and nosed over after making a fast landing. Tail was broken off in righting the plane to tow it in.” It only had 74 hours and 25 minutes of flying time.

USS St. Lo (CVE-63)

By fStop Fitzgerald | 24 May 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

The subject of my second column was a little personal. My wife’s uncle lowered himself into the Philippine Sea hand-over-hand on a line from the bow after “abandon ship” was announced. It was the second time during the war that Petty Officer Ashley Cherry had a ship sunk from under him. The first was at Pearl Harbor’s berth F-12 on 7 December 1941 aboard Raleigh (CL-7).

This is the link to the column: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2016/june/historic-ships-very-short-life

The little CVE should be remembered. She was lost at the Battle of Off Samar on 25 October 1944, the first major victim of a Japanese kamikaze plane during the first organized suicide mission. Few know of the destruction of St. Lo because her loss was overshadowed by that of her sister, Gambier Bay (CVE-73). She was lost the same day to Japanese cruisers, becoming the sole U.S. carrier sunk by enemy surface ships.

Within two minutes of being struck by the kamikaze, a major explosion blew *St. Lo*‘s after elevator skyward and destroyed much of the after section of the ship’s flight deck. (U.S. Naval Institute)

The Action Report of St. Lo‘s loss at the Battle Off Samar.