1:72 Complete Iowa Battleship 16"-50 cal Turret with interior down to the magazine

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I'm starting a new project for the USS New Jersey; the Mark 28 5"38 twin secondary battery turret cutaway. I'm attempting to do the same with this as I did with the 16" project. It's already been accepted by the ship if I build it. I'm at least building it down to the ready ammunition room that sits below the turret, and if I can get more data, I will also build down to the magazines that lie two more decks below.

As with the 16", I was going to make use of a Takom 1/35 plastic model of the Mark 38 turret in use by the destroyers and would have modified it for battleship use, but my hobby shop sold their last one and there were none to be found elsewhere. The battleship turret is armored with 2.5" armor and I will use 0.040" styrene which will be pretty close to scale. The Mark 38 was much lighter construction.

I decided to go cold turkey and scratch-build the entire thing, but I changed the scale from 1/35 to 1:48 for a number of reasons, most importantly fitting on my 3D printer.

I realize that it's not aircraft, although it is WW2, and if there's interest, I will post a start-to-finish build thread here along with posting on some other forums. I've already started the design and printing process on the turret proper.
 
You just keep on posting this. All of us enjoy seeing a true artisan in action.

By the way, what was the reaction of people for your 16" turret on display?
 
You just keep on posting this. All of us enjoy seeing a true artisan in action.

By the way, what was the reaction of people for your 16" turret on display?
That's a good question. I haven't had any direct feedback from the curator, but he was very eager to accept another model from me. I was atttempting to take a fact-finding visit this last weekend since we were back in the Philly area visiting family, but wasn't able to. I have pretty good data on all the turret details, but have gaping holes about the actual floor plans of the magazines. The WW2 version of the Iowas had 10 turrets (five on a side), but only 6 magazines (3 on a side). The fore and aft magazines served two guns and the midshp one served a single turret. Add to than wrinkle was no two magazines were exactly the same floor plan. To make matters worse, they weren't directly under the guns they served. They fed powder cartridges and projectiles up through chain hoists that followed curved paths. The curves were deliberate to prevent direct paths for fire.

I'll post it under a new title so watch for it.
 

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