WWII Cranes -- Part 1

Alliance Model Works designs accessories for building shipyard dioramas. Among them, cranes of different origins and configurations.

At first, there weren't cranes. There were davits...
Mare Island 1870:
Sir William Armstrong constructed the first hydraulic crane in 1838, marking the beginning of modern cranes. Half a century later, the following specimens were constructed according to modified Armstrong designs. The Venice crane sadly only one survived till today.

. La Spezia (1876) . Bombay (1877) . Liverpool (1881) . Malta (1883) . Taranto and Venice (1885) . Pozzuoli (1887) . Japan (1892 and 1905)
Earliest modern cranes were built to load cargo, that changed when ships with steel hull started to appear, and with it, the demand for heavy construction cranes.
A crane needs to lift and reach. Lifting wasn't so hard once there were steel cables, but reach was difficult to obtain. This was why there were floating cranes before giant cantilevers.
One of the earlest floating cranes was the "Langer Heinrich" built by the Duisburg company Bechem & Keetman in 1906. It wasn't very tall, and did not have much reach. Nevertheless, it could move around ships and was able to hoist heavy items onto deck. Langer Heinrich went through a series of restoration and rehabilitation in the 1980s and 90s, and is still operating today.
Another German company, Benrather Maschinenfabrik AG started marketing their 150t designs the same year. Britain, building dreadnoughts at the time, became immediately interested, and made several purchases in the years followed. One by Harland & Wolff was used to construct the Olympic-class ocean liners.
Gantries also started to appear around this time. Still no sign of cantilevers. A few Armstrong cranes were still operational.

1:350 U.S.NAVY and IJN Ship Marking Decals

The tradition of marking ships had long been established before there were navies. Sometimes more subtle than others. The Greek hero Achilles arrived in Troy onboard a myrmidon ship with a pitch black sail.
Rome employed sophisticated marking systems. Each ship displays color of its legion at the bow or stern. Towers were painted for identifications.  Unit emblem or figure of commander depicted on the hull...

Today,  warships carry hull markings for visual identification. Here we introduce 2 decal sets for marking ship models in 1:350 scale. One set for U.S. NAVY, including options for both modern and WWII era. The other set is for WWII Imperial Japanese Navy.

The U.S NAVY used 48 inch number on its destroyers before WWII. A sets of numbers on each side of the bow, and 2 sets for stern. All painted white with black shadow, stood out against the light gray or ivory background colors. Bigger ships used larger numbers, In the case of carriers, numbers painted on islands can be very tall. The decal set provides numbers up to 8 feet in height (15", 24", 48", 60", 72", 96"). Also includes letters and numbers in black and white without shadows, for auxiliary vessels such as sub chasers and mine sweepers.

During the war, numbers were reduced to 24 and 15 inches, and shadow color switched to gray to make them less visible.  Then after the war, they were revamped to the pre-war standards.

The Imperial Japanese Navy ships carried markings for their names and units. Numbers on each side of the bow indicates unit of the ship, and ship names were spelled out on sides of the hull in Katakana (Destroyers) and Hiragana at stern.

Before the war, Hiragana ship names at sterns were brass, replaced by painted version during the war, that were white with narrow black shadows. The decal sheet includes choices for all of the specifications.

More on hull numbers and ship names
USN
IJN

NW35039 1:350 USN Hull Marking decal set
NW35040 1:350 IJN Hull Marking decal set

1:350 U.S.NAVY and IJN Naval Flag Decals

To become a hero, one would usually need to be victorious, and also dead, more often than not.

Such was the case with Horatio Nelson. He had always been a brilliant strategist, but wasn't elevated to hero's status till after Battle of Trafalgar, he was victorious, but for that he also gave his life (out of all things, to a musket ball from a sniper sitting atop the mizzentop of the French ship of the line Redoutable). 

Brits won because pretty much everything went as Nelson had planned. Unable to direct much of the action that day, being mortally wounded. The exact count of orders Nelson issued during Battle of Trafalgar was...2. 

These messages were broadcasted to the fleet via signal flags hoisted up the mizzenmast (the mast immediately after the main mast) on Nelson's flag ship Victory.  They were displayed word by word, each word represented by a 3 flags arranged according to the 1803 Popham's code book.  Illustrated below.

The last 4 letters D-U-T-Y were each signaled by 2 digits. Interestingly, this system omitted the letter "J"  due to sailor superstition. More interestingly, such tradition is still in place today.

Nelson's last order was illustrated with 2 flags, for the letter O. Or in other words, a code within a code. The letter "O", when displayed alone, meant " Engage the enemy more closely".

In the above example, we also saw use of the first substitute flag.
A substitute flag is used to represent another flag that's currently being used. 

In the common 4 letter system, there are 3  substitute flags, for repeating first, second and third letter in the message respectively without requiring the same flag at 2 positions simultaneously.  (Or a second set of flags would be required). There are also systems that use 5 flags, with a 4th substitute flag.
F-O-O-D  =  F-O-2sub-D
T-R-E-E  =  T-R-E-3sub
A-A-R-O-N  =  A-1sub-R-O-N

More on codes

The systems used by militaries today are derivatives of the international signal system installed in the 1850s, but differ from country to country.

Here are our upcoming 1:350 signal flag sets. One for U.S. Navy, and the other for Imperial Japanese Navy.

The U.S. Navy decal includes 2 size 10 sets and 2 size 3 sets of flags, also all the special flags, pennants and rank displays. The size 3 set, is mathematically equivalent  to size 10 in 1:700, so this product actually suits both scales.

The Japanese decal includes 2 types of flags. One set according to WWII Japanese Navy regulation, and the other based on measurements from the impressive flag collection of the Mikasa Museum.

Design of hoists are different on the 2 sets, the 2 navies had different ways of hanging their flags. The decals come with detailed instructions.

Another use of signal flags is to display ship's ID. Each ship has a 4 letter ID, also known as radio call sign.

More on ship ID
USN
IJN

Some examples of ship ID and messages.

A century after Nelson's death, Japanese Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō displayed a similar message to encourage his men during Battle of Tsushima (Russo-Japanese War). This time, the long message was pre-assigned to one specific flag (Z) and hoisted up on Mikasa. Hanging of Z-flag became a Japanese military tradition. One example being the carrier Akagi displaying the Z-flag before the attack on Pearl Harbor.  

NW35041 1:350 USN Flag decal set
NW35042 1:350 IJN Flag decal set