Time for a stroll around the tank deck.
Talk a bit about the real ship before doing the modelling bit.
Down the (single) ladder on the port side. Turning sharp left avoiding bumping into the cargo tank hatch and under the hydroplane deck extension and probably tripping over the spare anchor. This area had an odd purpose during WW2. Under the focsle head was all storage space, with a dry cargo hold below (both areas could be accessed via the cargo hatch on the focsle). Under the canopy and within the focsle was racked storage space for about 50 tons of bagged coal. Coal? During WW2? Surely ships weren’t still coal powered? Nope, but many of the older ships still had coal fired galleys, so the coal was pretty important. The focsle, then as now on an RFA was also the main storage space for all the spare RAS gear. Amazing how many hoses could be needed, not to mention what appears to be miles of coiled wire rope, manila and so on, plus tons of “hardware. More down the hold, which could also hold stuff possibly required/requested by RN ships that didn’t have the carrying space. I presume that the ammo was kept here as the “ready-use” lockers are just that and don’t hold much. But you get the idea.
Emerging from the focsle door (still during WW2), you will probably be confronted by a fairly high stack of long wooden boxes secured in purpose made “pens”. Within these boxes were fighter aircraft fuselages and in others, the wings for them. Obviously these things couldn’t be transferred to other ships while at sea…we didn’t have the technology then. But they were being carried as replacements, additionals and so on for the Russians.
Don’t worry about the large funny looking boat on the starboard side. We’ll get to that soon enough.
Note that all the tank lids have a counterbalance weight on the hinge side. They’re needed. Those lids are heavy. They should also have “sighting ports on the lids. Looks like I forgot to put them on…slapped wrist here! A sighting port is basically the same (but smaller) as a cabin scuttle complete with deadlight. For such an apparently minor item, they are really of vital importance. For a start, when cargo is being pumped into or out of a cargo tank the displaced air has to go somewhere…or get into the tank when discharging. When loading there’s a real gale of oily air rushing out of this 6” or so “hole”. What does that have to do with being called a “sighting port? Before the advent of loading gauges and so on, the only way to tell where the level of loaded oil had reached was for somebody to shine a torch down into the filthy abyss and count how many rungs of the access ladder were visible. Even in the 1980s when on an “OL” class ship, the gauges were “unreliable”, and so the loading officer had to do it the old fashioned way and be prepared to get a hefty faceful of FFO, Deisel or Avcat. Ah, the delights of life on a tanker!
In all of these deck photos you’ll see “venturi ejectors” scattered around. The sort of trumpet shaped thingys. I hate to admit this, but for the life of me I can’t remember what their prime purpose was! Gas blowoff? Steam smothering venting? Sorry, can’t remember. You’ll also see small bore pipes running between the various hatch coamings. I seem to recall that they were air/gas balancing pipes. That’s OK if you only have tanks carrying the same stuff..in this case it would be all FFO. Otherwise it would be a no-no.
