Google. Bing. Barnes & Noble book store. Public Library. (Right. They still have them.) Nobody has a picture of Japanese deck crews at work during recovery or launch (aside from those guys waving and yelling Banzai).

Certainly standing around doing nothing was not likely. Does anyone have a picture? Launch and Recovery. We probably have seen the other ones. Did they pile the recovered aircraft up on the bow when there were a lot of planes landing? Or were they able to run them down the elevator fast enough to prevent that?



(narrower decking planks on all IJN ships)







(up and down sloping deck doesn't agree with SF's FlightDeck program very well)



There's one place to land and it's abeam the bridge.



(notice shock animation is backwards? Captain is dressed like a deck hand.)



We need to start selling this game. We are the owners of one hell of a fun experience and it's time to let it out.

I keep telling Hinch this is a tough audience because you are all fairly expert on this venue. I hope someone has a shot of those two time slots in the work day of an IJN carrier.

Thanks...or Domo arigato

Sadly haven't been able to find any photographs of Japanese carrier deck drill involving crew. Usually the only photo's are those of crew standing by to wave off aircraft - a peculiarity of the Japanese. The only equilavent for the American's is the 'Doolittle' raid. However I do have an article from the "The Hook" magazine that answers your question. It's be Carl Snow. Here it is:

"The question, "How did they do it, and what were Japanese carrier operations like?" is asked frequently when discussing World War II in the Pacific. Part of the answer is, much like ours but at the same time very different.

The Japanese began as the Americans did, picking up ideas from the British and adapting existing ships and incomplete hulls into aircraft carriers. Their landing pattern was similar to ours and, in the early days,
had used fore-and-aft wires patterned on the British model. By 1931, however, they had converted to cross-deck arrestor gear in the American fashion. The arrangement aft eventually consisted of six cross-deck pendants and a single, three-wire barrier about six feet high to protect any aircraft on the bow should a "hook skip" occur.
One of the most curious things about Japanese carrier ops is the matter of Landing Signal Officers. For the most part, they had none.

There was, though, a flagman called hikochô on the bridge who waved a red flag indicating a fouled deck to the approaching aircraft to signal a wave-off. The pilot established his own lineup and glide slope by means of an arrangement of red and green (some reports say blue instead of green) lights arranged in groups of two on either side of the flight deck. The apparatus, called chakkan shidoto (literally, landing guidance
light), was invented at the Kasumigaura Naval Station in 1932 as a night landing aid. It was fitted on Japan's first carrier, Hosho, in 1933 and. after being proved on Hosho, adapted to the other carriers. It was
used both day and night from about 1934 onward. The red and green lights were one kilowatt, variable in intensity, and each had a refractory mirror to produce a relatively narrow cone of light. The red light was mounted 10 to 15 meters (approximately 30 to 45 feet) aft of the green light. It could be raised or lowered to adjust the
separation between the two to vary the glide slope between four and six degrees, depending on the type of aircraft in the landing pattern. The angle was usually 5.5 degrees for fighters and 5 degrees for attack
aircraft.

As the pilot rolled in astern of the carrier with wheels, flaps and hook down while maintaining his own interval, he adjusted his flight path until he had both pairs of lights in sight. Losing sight of one or the other pair of lights indicated that the pilot was right or left of the ideal lineup, and called for a correction to regain the errant pair of lights and land on centerline. The pilot adjusted his approach path so that the green light was superimposed immediately over the red. If he could see only the red light, the aircraft was below the desired glide slope. If the red light was on top of the green, he was dangerously below glide slope. Conversely, if the green light was far above the red, he was too high on glide slope. Due to the offset from the centerline and the narrowness of the cone of light, the pilot would lose sight of the landing aids somewhere prior to touchdown. Presumably, if he had kept the lights lined up properly just before he lost sight of the lights while close to the deck, he would be in the ideal “cut” position. From here, as with his U.S. counterpart, he would then make final lineup corrections and land. Once clear of the arrestor gear, the aircraft was pushed forward to the bow beyond the barrier to make room for the next plane to land. Most Japanese pilots agree that carrier landings were scary, especially in heavy weather when the ship was pitching and rolling.

Upon completion of the recovery cycle, aircraft remaining on the flight deck were pushed back to the after end of the flight deck in preparations for the next launch. As with British carriers, some of the Japanese carriers had two hangar decks, one above the other and, until early during World War II, they struck aircraft below as the landing cycle was complete. When refueled and rearmed for the next mission, they were brought again to the flight deck from below and spotted for the next mission. "Flex deck" flight operations (a ready deck for both landings and
takeoffs) were unknown in the days of axial deck carriers. All flight operations were "cyclic." When the re-spot was completed and the planes manned, the ship swung into the wind for launch. A smoke generator built into the flight deck forward released a thin stream of smoke to allow the OOD on the bridge to "sweeten the wind" down the
deck.

All takeoffs were deck launches, as Japanese carriers had no catapults. A group of former Japanese World War 11 carrier pilots visiting USS Midway (CV-41) off the coast of Japan in the mid-1980s expressed surprise that all launches were by catapult ---they assumed that carrier planes were still deck launched. Japanese planners considered that catapult launches would be too time consuming and had not used them on their carriers. Battleships and cruisers operated easily with catapulted scout and spotting aircraft, and were decisive in locating and reporting Allied ship movements. By contrast- aircraft launches on American CVE’s and CVL’s were by
catapult, and all models of carrier aircraft then in use operated effectively from them. Japanese flight deck crews, hardworking though they were, never were able to achieve the rapid turnaround and lightning re-spot for
which the U.S. Navy is renowned. This shortcoming proved costly, and especially at the Battle of Midway, was a fatal flaw."

The revelent part is highlighted in bold. So if you show Japanes crewmen doing the same as American or British deck crew, your on the right track. But Do keep the Banzai waving as part of the ritual.

Oops, almost forgot this. This is a link to some pictures regarding American carrier deck drill.

http://www.ship-n-planes.com/

And here is a picture of their fatigues-working uniforms:


BTW Could I participate in your project by skinning the human figures?
My work on historically correct pilot skins is well known among the members of the IL-2 community and recently to the SF one too.

Maybe this will help you

I KNEW someone on SimHQ would have the answer.

I have seen those pictures. Nice job of colorizing them.

Elephant: Sending you a PM.

This may help a little. The film used is operational, but I believe the entire thing is a Japanese movie made about the Pearl Harbor attack produced during the war (and used in a post-war American television show).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwMwda8D1T8

There are several other Youtube videos about the Japanese fleet, but have not viewed them all yet.

I do note that most of the operations crew are crouched along the side of flight deck during take-offs and landings.

PS> And this one is unusual in that it has a very short clip of a float-plane launch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YViq5W90qds&feature=related

That's golden. Our steam generator is in the wrong place. Some of those planes have post-strike markings...or we are way off. But that's a great find. Thanks.

How's this for first try?







Need to put their hats on an dress the captain but doing it this way, we can provide one version of the ship and a variety of versions of what's happening on deck.

I guess they need to be touching the deck.

There's no telling when those movies were taken. They may be post strike footage, or
pre-war footage. Although the movie is supposedly about the Akagi and the strike on Pearl Harbor, the operational footage may have been shot at any time during the war. So don't place your steam generator per this. It's not even certain the footage was actually shot on the Akagi!

PS> I assume the guys crouching by the wheels are there to place or remove the chocks.

PPS> Oh, and it's looking really good! I do question the Rising Sun emblem on the flight deck during Pearl Harbor, however. I thought that was added later?

That's the Soryu in the screenshot. If it was painted later, it was done between December and June because it's clear in this photo:

http://www.swinoujscie.uznam.net.pl/bitwy/images/soryu.jpg

And if it was painted after Pearl Harbor that 12 megabyte dot will probably going into the game that way because after Wake Island, it has to appear at Midway where it plays a prominent place in story.

The decks have people. Need to make a flagger. Detailing the ships now. Teak deck is from an ad for teak decks. The old knothole thing looked like wood but not teak. Each recovery or launch configuration comes with its own crew.

One launch configuration on the Soryu.



Again on the Akagi.



A recovery configuration...not appearing soon enough.





Various shots during positioning and painting.









Hmmm. Nobody is waving...or shouting Banzai.

Let's see what we can whip up for the Friday update now.

Zerocino,

What can I say but that's the best looking Japanese aircraft carrier I've seen in a game!

You have a confirmed customer.

Hinchinbrooke Iron Works. Kyokujitsu Paint Shop.

They need detailing now that the decks look better than the rest of the ship.

I especially like the Akagi. It is like no other ship...not the best of their fleet but unique and really beautiful in some ways.

Another place to go ask Zero is on the Matrix Games Forums under the War in the Pacific forum. There are guys there that are experts on just about everything related to the naval war in the Pacific.

How about bomb colors? I know what they are supposed to be but "green" can be a lot of colors.

zerocinco

check here:

http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/japanesebombsdw_1.htm

Thanks. I found that. Now I was hoping to find the shades of those colors.

I almost forgot, I have these charts with references to Japanese weapons that I made a
time ago using jpgs from CFS2 by Carlos Magalhaes, Alex Brenzinger and Eric Cretaz.
It may be a start for your work.

Now THAT'S research!