Model Forum / General / Models / August 2007

has anyone found a pic of the ship using a sail?  I've had no luck.
Its mentioned in the Revell instructions and google found this.

thx - Craig

 That night torpedo planes attacked the task force, one of them
scoring on USS INTREPID; a "tin fish" exploded portside at the
waterline, tearing a huge gash in her hull and killing five enlisted
men (six others were missing). INTREPID retired from her second combat
operation a cripple, it being necessary for the ship to steer by her
engines since the rudder was jammed hard to port.

   By speeding up the port and idling the starboard screws, Captain
Sprague kept his ship trimmed and on a comparatively controlled course
for a couple of days. Then the winds came up. As her skipper described
it: "She (the ship) was like a giant pendulum, swinging back and
forth. She had a tendency to weather-cock into the wind ... turned her
bow toward Tokyo. But right then I wasn't interested in going that
direction."

   It was at this point, INTREPID traveling in circles with a rudder
resembling a "huge potato chip," that Commander Philip Reynolds, USN,
damage control officer, collaborated with Chief Bo'sun Frank E.
Johnson; together they improvised a makeshift sail of hatch covers,
scrap canvas and anything available outside of a burlap sack. Attached
to the forecastle, open forward of the hangar deck and on the same
level, the sail served to ease the strain on the screws and, with all
planes moved forward and all possible cargo weight aft to put the
stern low in the water, wind resistance was created.. INTREPID swung
about, swayed momentarily, and grudgingly held her course.

   Orders which had originally routed INTREPID to Eniwetok had been
countermanded, setting Pearl Harbor as her destination.. No speed
records were set on that run, and the carrier's course on the chart
looked like a seismograph reading gone wild. Her escorts, destroyers
STEMBEL and STEPHEN POTTER, were hard pressed to figure what she would
do next.

   Said Captain Sprague of the trip to Pearl: "No enemy sub could
have ever figured out her zigzag plan. As a matter of fact there was
no plan; the pattern was created as we went along, and no one knew for
sure how long she'd keep on anything like a straight course." But
INTREPID made the long haul to Oahu, standing into the navy yard there
on 24 February 1944.

   "That sail," said Commander Reynolds, "looked pretty rough. I
can't say I was proud of its looks. I wanted to take it off before we
came into Pearl Harbor but the captain laughed and said 'Nothing
doing."' That sail was soon famous.