dickrd

Sorry, I have no idea. I only use Colourcoats. Even if you only use acrylic paints perhaps you could buy the relevant Colourcoats paints and paint swatches of each of them beside the swatches of each equivalent Hataka paint? You could then see how they compare and what adjustments might be needed to the Hataka paints.

I like your suggested colour palette! I guess that the Profile Morskie port profile was based on the middle image (below). Leaving aside the treatment of the 6" embrasures which you have rectified, as can be seen from the bottom image there are some 'issues'. The most significant was the misinterpretation of the drifters alongside below X turret as being part of the MS1 camouflage paint in that area! There was also a camouflage panel on the lower side of and immediately below the searchlight platform on the funnel plus some other increasingly minor discrepancies which you may or may not wish to try to incorporate:

Your photo is still a bit out of focus but I think what you actually see is the four white edgings (at the top and bottom) of each of the two red bands giving a false impression of how many stripes there were. This (on another destroyer in the 2nd Flotilla) is surely what they actually looked like: Also, given the light pendant number, I suspect your photo is rather later than Matapan and may even be 1942. I think Hotspur had black pendant numbers early in 1941. Sorry, this poor quality photo is the best I have:

(Thank you @Ngantek!) As it happens I do have the notes of a contemporary observer on Hotspur’s colours in this scheme. He noted just two colours: “Light Indies grey” and “black grey”. Although this observer took an interest in RN WW2 camouflage schemes, from his various observations it is clear that he was not privy to the official names of the various colours. He therefore had to describe what he saw. By “Light Indies grey” I think we can safely assume he meant 507C. But “Black grey” sounds to me like an improvised mix of black and, say, Home Fleet grey. For various reasons I feel that it is unlikely to have been MS1 itself. He would have said “Home grey” if he meant Home Fleet grey/507A. I would be wary of the suggested red and black funnel rings (14th Destroyer Flotilla). As far as I can tell Hotspur was not formally allocated to any particular destroyer flotilla at the time of Matapan and may therefore have worn no funnel markings. But she was I think ‘attached’ to the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla during the battle. Their markings were two red bands. (Although "not too strong a contrast" may have been the original instruction, it was widely ignored!)

As a generalisation the Covers tend to contain much detail of the design and build phase (of the sub-class:) but not so much about subsequent refits unless there was a major rebuild. The place where you would normally find a detailed record of changes made during refits was the Ship's Book, but Suffolk's does not survive. The other place to look is on her 'As Fitteds' where external modifications are often inked or pencilled in over the original as built plans.

That I do know!

In haste. Will try to make time to look at this properly over the weekend. Agree, in May 1941 darkest hull colour obviously MS1 (rather than 507A) and lightest hull colour MS4 (rather than 507C). I looked through the County Class Ships' Covers last year. You will find no info in them relevant to the camouflage paint scheme.

Thanks for the heads up @Troy Smith I'd be interested in seeing an image of the cover/title page of this document @Dave65

Glad you found that old MW forum discussion! But where did the suggestion of B5 come from?

I think @Graham Boak and @Ngantek have it. Everything I have suggests that your photo shows her appearance as in 1942. Just to confirm that the aft 'mast' has an HF/DF aerial on top. At the old aft torpedo position, apart from a depth charge thrower each side near the aft deckhouse, there is also what I interpret as a small rectangular HF/DF office. This has a carley raft mounted on it each side. The circular thing aft of the forward funnel would be the MF/DF coil. Hard to see but there is an X shaped antenna on the top of the forward mast which was for her Type 290 radar. Here is a view from a different angle:

Appendix 3 has some ship-fitting tables compiled from official records:

Yes, the outside bottom.

Officially: hull white with B30 pattern, decks and horizontal surfaces G10. The bottom was coated with Bitumastic which was black. Letters/numbers: red. There has recently been a very good restoration of LCT 7074 at Portsmouth in this scheme.

@TallBlondJohn Everything I have says that Norfolk's port side in May 1941 was as seen in the WW2 Cruisers "probably 1941" photo (it is) and on the starboard side as seen in the IWM film of her on return from the Bismarck action that @michaele has provided a link to. In other words the more complictated hull patterning of 1940 to be seen at Michael's second link had been painted out and the whole hull was one dark colour other than a small, lighter, triangular panel at the bow to create a more steeply angled false bow, and with the light & dark splinter pattern on the bridge and funnels that you have noted. I am unaware of any source to tell us for sure what the colours were but the obvious candidates are dark grey (507A) & light grey (507C). It is obviously a 'ships staff' scheme not an early Leamington one that would have used the then new MS&B camouflage colours.

In case it makes any visual difference, the two fitted in April 1941 were Mk VIA mountings with Mk VIII "low velocity" guns.

A&A documentation in ADM 136/18

21-24 April 1941

And the two port side pom poms (if you are doing her as at the time of the Bismarck action)

It will have been dark grey synthetic resin paint Pattern 4942.

@Ngantek Great. We seem to be in a fair amount of agreement. @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies has worked his magic and kindly produced this which shows what I currently think we can be fairly sure of so far. We may want to fine tune the exact shape of the pattern on the island below the funnel when we add the carley rafts later, but can we leave that and the positioning, shape and size of the carley rafts for now? As you have highlighted, in the Japanese aerial photo the rafts have been taken down and are on the flight deck so we get an impression of what is on the island itself. The key point where I diverge from you is that to my mind the Japanese aerial photo clearly shows paint extension G as linking back to pattern below the funnel. This is not incompatible with what is in the Morgan photo as the forwardmost carley raft hides a proper view of the link-up area. But I think that I can just about make out paint demarcations on the raft itself that support this link-up also. On the question of the lower dark down towards the flight deck visible in the Morgan photo and also perhaps in the Japanese photo, I have marked up how I see this linking in at M: I agree with you about uncertainty re the possible branch extension J seen in the Japanese photo versus it being the transverse bridge with its bottom end (your ‘A’) for some reason not being really visible in the Japanese photo due to photographic fuzz due to the quality of the image. All I can say is that a branch like this would be an unusual sort of shape for the designers at Leamington to have used. Hermes was Leamington Job No. 42. You can see their general design style at that time in other schemes they were producing then such as Eagle (Job No. 41) and Roberts (Job No. 46). So I’d be inclined to leave J out pending further photographic evidence? On the question of the possible bit of pattern E/F. I agree with you that it does not work as shadow from fighting top above. The sun/shadow angle is wrong with the ‘dark’ being well forward of the fighting top side protrusions. You could also perhaps argue (indeed I think you are suggesting this) that the small triangle of ‘double’ darkness at X visible in the Morgan photo is a ‘dark’ further darkened by shadow from the bridge wind deflectors. The shadowed 507C just aft of this ‘triangle’ is less dark: E/F has a flat bottom edge and curved forward and lower right edges in the Morgan photo. There is a dark dark in exactly that position in the Japanese photo. One could even speculate that this patch E/F was MS1, in the designer’s eye coming down from the fighting top above. Although it doesn’t feel like a fit to the general Leamington design style of the time, pending further photographic evidence I think I’d be inclined to speculatively include a patch E/F and indeed make it MS1? Up at ‘B’, having had another hard stare at my photos, I now see that the original 1926 small stump extension that the transverse bridge was hinged onto was extended almost as far aft as the cable/services trunking running up to the fighting top. The signal deck surrounds were brought out to its edge so creating an oblong ‘blister’ in that area. It is hard to pin down exactly when this work was carried out. It was not there at the time of the 1937 Coronation Fleet Review but was there by mid 1940. This explains the extra large shadow immediately beneath it in the Morgan photo. I think that neither Aoshima or Flyhawk (properly) model this feature. And in anticipation of Jamie adding the carley rafts, a question. Do we think that the 4th, aftmost and slightly smaller, carley raft was in position on 9th April 1942 and in Morgan’s sinking photo has already been taken down? Perhaps it is what crewmen are gathering around in the obscured bit of the photo beneath where it hung? Are the things dangling down above the strops that secured it? What do we think we see behind Morgan’s right elbow in the earlier flight deck photo?

@Ngantek Andy, I’ve looked at the port side of the island question first. Having gone through all my photos I think I now see that we were misled. Two dark verticals were visible on the island in the 1940 photo of Hermes with Dorsetshire. They are more clearly visible in this 1941 photo: Going back through all my photos the aftmost and faintest of the two (A) seems to have been boxlike trunking up to the fighting top presumably housing some cabling/services. It is there in the very first photos of Hermes back in 1923. I don’t think that this features in the Aoshima kit. This is a 1925 image: The more prominent dark (B) runs from the signal deck’s deck level down to a point just above the flight deck between two bulkhead doorways (C). To my great surprise this is the ‘transverse bridge’. This was deployed when in harbour to enable bridge personnel to see more clearly over the port side of the ship: I have come across this on other RN carriers folding back horizontally, alongside the funnel, but surprisingly on Hermes it hinged vertically at H as shown in this photo of it in its stowed position: I don’t think that it features in the Aoshima kit and in my Flyhawk (1942) kit it is an optional piece to glue on in its deployed position but with no indication/option of it in its stowed position. The As Fitted’s show that it was added at Malta in 1926. Because the transverse bridge is hinged on a protrusion out from the side of the bridge it angles inwards towards its lower end in its stowed position. This has implications for the shadow it casts giving rise to triangular shaped affairs in some photos. The photo of the cover of Morgan’s book that you provided is, despite the writing, a sharper image than the version we were working from as in my earlier posting: Bearing in mind what can be seen in the Japanese version of the sinking photo that I shared, I now believe that the various darks can be interpreted as follows: A - the trunking up to the fighting top. B - the transverse bridge itself in its stowed position. C - shadow of signal deck protrusion that the transverse bridge hinges from. D - shadows from the curved overhanging wind deflecting top edges of the surrounds to the compass platform/signal deck. E & F - unsure. Horizonal bottom edge so not fire damage. Maybe shadow of the port protrusion of the fighting top above? G - forward extension of camouflage paint panel coming down from the funnel/across from behind the carley floats. H - is this somehow the shadow of the transverse bridge? J - or is this an upwards branch offshoot of the camouflage extension G as perhaps suggested in the Japanese photo (or a bit of both!)? I've dropped the idea of bomb/fire/smoke damage. Jamie @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies is kindly working on a revised illustration of what I think we can be sure of as an aid our further discussion. Best wishes, Richard

@Ngantek I don't think I had that Japanese version photo at the time we did the illustration and you make a good spot about the camouflage on the port side of the island there. I'm now beginning to wonder if another explanation for part of what we see at my B at the end of the lower arm of my Y shape is a bomb entry hole and the superstructure above blackened by fire and smoke?! Do we know exactly where all the bomb hits on Hermes were? Also, was the fighting top hit which would account for any off squareness of the roof up there? You make lots of good points and raise a number questions all of which I want to take a bit of time to consider before replying to. I'm going to go through all the photos I have of Hermes again as I have more now than I did then. I can already see a partial answer re the rectangular darks on the flight deck. But one immediate quickie. The IWM date on that photo of Hermes with Dorsetshire is indeed wrong, very wrong. Note no homing beacon on Hermes. True date was June 1940 off West Africa. (She is uncamouflaged but it is interesting to see that vertical 'dark' shadow (?) on the port side of the island forward of the carley raft just where we are debating 'B'!)

@NgantekInteresting coming back at this after an interval of a few years. My thoughts on your comments are: A. If this is the dark band at the top of the funnel that you are referring to then I think that this is shadow of the funnel cap. (I don’t agree fully with the sun angle you mention in the next bullet point. I read the sun as very slightly ahead and to port of the ship, but the ship being down by the bow and listing to port, the funnel is pointing more or less directly at the sun. ) B. As I recall we debated this dark endlessly. Various interpretations are possible. It’s very tricky given no clear photos of this area. We were going from what can be seen in Morgan’s photo from well aft of the island. Clearly there was something forward of what Raven drew in his WP illustration and we tried to make sense of what we saw. It’s much smaller than the bulky fighting top above and the 507C either side of it is clearly in sunlight hence we did not think it was shadow. C. You could be right. It would be helpful if @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies could draw the carley rafts on as I think that the inner elbow is somewhere in the region of the gap between the first and second raft. D. Yes, but with a bit of shadow at the top of it. Re the director on the fighting top: I don’t think that X is a round shape. It seems to have various angles to its edge? I’ve never been able to make sense of the flat Y at the front in this photo. Is it a flaw in the original photo or has something been blown onto the fighting top from below? It even seems to touch up to the homing beacon, but then why do we not see it doing so in the photo taken from the flight deck below? It is interesting how a Japanese version of this photo, which may be closer to the original, shows a big, dark circular something there! Finally a curveball. Looking at some versions of the photo I do sometimes wonder if there might have been a bit of patterning on the flight deck, for example the dark from the starboard hull being brought across diagonally at Z? Or is it just discolouration caused by fires below?! We shall probably never know.

OK, I think I have it sorted. The upper edge of the boot topping was halfway between the XXX & XXXI marks from launching up to and including the photos taken from Kelvin in November 1940. By the time of the photos taken from Sheffield April & May 1941 the upper edge of the boot topping cut through the midpoint of the XXXIII mark. So the boot topping was 2' 6" wider then. The top of the boot topping remained at this level at the time of her sinking that November. One hazard encountered is that the full range of the draught marks was not always painted white, the uppermost ones sometimes being left HFG. Furthermore, how many were left HFG varied at different times! And finally an apology. It was the bottom edge of a draught mark numeral that indicated the vertical distance from the keel, not the midpoint, so a measurement in my earlier post above was 3" out! (Edit: As this thread has become something of a go-to Ark Royal reference I have now deleted the erroneous measurement.)

EJ, I read the lowest draught mark on the ship in your photo (PoW) as XV The lowest draught mark on HMS Ark Royal at launch was XII. I have no image later than that from which to judge if this was ever altered but I suggest that this would have been unlikely.