Some weeks ago i started to do the three ships of the Independence class that stayed in duty with the US Navy in the 1950th. These three ships are the USS Monterey (CVL-26), the USS Cabot (CVL-28) and the USS Bataan (CVL-29).
Looking for a good base model to convert these ships to there outfit from the 1950th i found the USS Cabot from Alberto (jagl04) and he gave his permission to use his fine ship to start work on.
The USS Bataan (CVL-29) took place in Korean War. Both other ships had been used as training carriers. The USS Monterey (CVL-26) got a special mission after the hurricane in Honduras in Sep.1953. For this mission she carried helicopters on her deck.
USS Bataan (CVL-29) and USS Cabot (CVL-28) were converted for sub hunting missions. USS Monterey (CVL-26) lost all her weapons to be a training carrier. All three models will have all the differences they got in real.
As my Essex-Class carriers they will get different deck layouts and also that working barrier.
Some history (from Wikipedia)
Adapted from the design for the Cleveland-classlight cruisers, this class of ship resulted from the interest of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in naval air power. With war looming, the former Assistant Secretary of the Navy noted no new fleet aircraft carriers were expected to be completed before 1944. He proposed to convert some of the many cruisers then under construction to carriers. Studies of cruiser-size aircraft carriers had shown the type had serious limitations, and on 13 October 1941, the General Board of the United States Navy replied that such a conversion showed too many compromises to be effective.
Undeterred, President Roosevelt ordered another study. On 25 October 1941, the Navy's Bureau of Ships reported that aircraft carriers converted from cruiser hulls would be of lesser capability, but available much sooner. After the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the need for more carriers became urgent. The Navy accelerated construction of the 34,000-ton Essex-class aircraft carriers, but these large ships could not be finished quickly. So in January 1942, the Navy also ordered that a Cleveland-class light cruiser then under construction be completed instead as a light aircraft carrier. It became USS Belleau Wood, the first ship of the Independence class.
Plans developed for this conversion showed much more promise than expected. Two more light cruisers were reordered as carriers in February, three more in March, and a final three in June 1942. The Independence-class design had a relatively short and narrow flight deck and hangar, with a small island superstructure. The hangar, flight deck, and island represented a significant increase in the ship's topside weight. To compensate for this, blisters were added to the original cruiser hull, which increased the original beam by 5 feet (1.5 m). Ships of this class carried a small air group – only about 30 aircraft. This was originally set to consist of nine fighters, nine scout bombers, and nine torpedo bombers, but later revised to about two dozen fighters and nine torpedo bombers.
These were limited-capability ships, whose principal virtue was near-term availability. Their limited size made for seakeeping difficulties in the many typhoons of the Pacific, and their small flight decks led to a relatively high aircraft accident rate. However, being based on a light cruiser, they were fast ships, much faster than the Casablanca-classescort carriers. The cruiser hull and engineering allowed them the speed necessary to operate with the main fleet carrier task groups. Their names followed the US Navy's policy of naming aircraft carriers after historic navy ships (Independence) or historic battles (Cowpens)
There was little margin for growth, as the ships' post-war careers showed. Independence was expended as an atomic bomb target, and the rest were laid up in 1947. Five returned to service in 1948–53, two with the French Navy. Two were used as training carriers, while Bataan saw Korean War combat duty with Marine Corps air groups. She and Cabot received anti-submarine warfare modernizations in the early 1950s, emerging with two funnels instead of the original four. All but the French ships were decommissioned in 1954–56 and were reclassified as aircraft transports in 1959. Cabot got a new lease on life in 1967, when she became the Spanish Navy's carrier Dédalo, serving until 1989 (in Spanish service, she was the first carrier to regularly deploy the Harrier jump jet). Despite efforts to preserve her, Cabot was scrapped at Brownsville in 1999–2003. Preservation efforts continued until the hull was half scrapped.
Work on this carriers made a good progress over the last week. So i will show some pictures here as the look till now.
FSX
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