WAK USS Salt Lake City 1:200 - Page 9

**Hathaway Veteran** · #81 07-02-2013, 05:49 PM

I like your recoil springs. Not sure about laser-cut or etched brass 1/200 sets.

**RAFleischman** · #82 07-02-2013, 06:13 PM

Etched stuff is so expensive. I use laser cut for railings & ladders. I also have a laser set for the radar antennae, which right now I'll be damned if I can find!!

russ...

**RAFleischman** · #83 08-04-2013, 09:55 AM

Once again, it doesn't seem like I'm making much progress!

I finished the last four 40mm AA units and I'm working on the catapults.

russ...

**Don Boose** · #84 08-08-2013, 12:22 PM

Great catapults, Russ!

Sorry to be late in commenting on your latest post of this build. Been tied up with the summer teaching and have now begun the new academic year. Two weeks ago, we finished up the two-week-long Distance Education Second Resident Course (which includes my Pacific War Strategy graduate seminar and the Gettysburg Staff ride).

The graduate seminar went well. A very interested group of students (Army and Marine lieutenant colonels and colonels). Lots of good discussion.

During the seminar, I gave a short pitch on the inter-war naval treaties and the impact on ship design and doctrine. I used an image of Salt Lake City to illustrate the U.S. treaty heavy cruisers and an image of Richmond to illustrate the legacy WWI light cruisers, which also gave me a chance to mention the Battle of the Komondorski Islands (I also used an image of Monaghan to illustrate the treaty destroyers, once again mentioning the Battle of the Komondorskis and touching briefly on the 1944 typhoon in which Monaghan was lost, along with sister Hull and the Fletcher-class, Spence, and which inspired Wouk's The Caine Mutiny). Keeping you in mind, I also used Suzuya to illustrate the Japanese treaty cruisers that originally had the 15-6.1-inch gun armament and to which the Brooklyns were a reply. The point being that in was in part due to the 1930 London Treaty that the U.S. Navy had these powerfuly-armed light cruisers available in World War II. San Francisco, of course, illustrated the later U.S. treaty heavy cruisers and the surface actions in the waters of the Solomon Islands.

I just finished re-reading Samuel Milner's Victory in Papua (the Army Green Book) and am, in parallel, re-reading John Miller's Guadalcanal: The First Offensive and John Lundstrom's The First South Pacific Campaign, and reading for the first time John Prados's Islands of Destiny (Solomons Campaign) and Michael John Claringbould and Luca Ruffato's Eagles of the Southern Skies (The Tainan Air Group in WWII, Vol. 1: New Guinea). Refreshing my memory on the South and Southwest Pacific operations of 1942 and 43.

Looking forward to seeing your next steps on Swayback Maru.

Don

**RAFleischman** · #85 08-12-2013, 05:32 PM

Thanks for the update Don. I always enjoy hearing about what you are teaching.

One of my recent non-modeling accomplishments is to finally buy myself a decent bookshelf. I had books stacked everywhere! Two and a half shelves of WW2 books with most of them about the Pacific war.

I've been struggling through War Plan Orange by Edward Miller. He goes into great detail about the people who wrote the plans and the plans themselves, but never really puts the plans into the context of the political situation between the US and Japan, or the weapons systems to be used in the war. It pales in comparison to Kaigun.

Perhaps I should stop reading and get building!! (Is there a Hellcat in my future??!!)

russ...