What ship is the "N3SA1 Small Merchant" ??

[Mav87th]

I have a small project with the merchant ships of SH-5. I'm trying to figure out the correct draft and length values of the ships by finding each ships real contemporary. Its a quite big task, but so far I have only run into one ship that I can not find.

I have been looking in different ship recognitions manuals and I can not find out what kind of ship the N3SA1 Small Merchant is.

I have been through the "Die Handelsflotten der Welt" from 1942 and the "Nachtrag" to it and ONI-208-J

So far i belive its a fake - the hull looks like the Taihosan Maru (SH-4 ship) while the kranes looks like its a ship of the same type as the "Uralmash"

http://www.shipspotting.com/modules/myalbum/photo-1070579-URALMASH

But that ship is 2975 BRT and not 1800 as the N3SA1 is listed as. Length, draft etc. are also fitting to the SH-4 Taihosan Maru data.

[Pablo]

Hi!

The "N3SA1" is supposed to the U.S. Maritime Commission NS-3-A1 coastal merchant design. You can decide for yourself how well the developers matched the actual ship.

You can read more about it here http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/ships-mc.html

If you can read Spanish, you can read more about it here: http://www.histarmar.com.ar/Vapores/BuquesMaritimeComm/08-N3-0.htm

Pablo

[Sailor Steve]

Yes, it does bear a close similarity to NKSCS_Taihosan in SH4. There were a lot of small merchants all over the world that looked like this. For SH3 Commander I have names of ships from almost every country imaginable that fit this model.

The actual N3s were sold to Britain, The Netherlands and even Poland.