The Ship Model Forum

No problem Eric, a forum is their to get questions answered.

Yes I glued the torpedonet first on the hull and then the bars.
The bars lays slightly on the torpedonet. You see it clear on my pics.

Greetings Christian

Chris,
Hope this will be the last nag.

You have appeared to have attached the torpedo net. The instructions are good enough, but it would be nice if they were a little bigger. Anyway, did you attach the net to the hull and then put the brackets on top of them - or did you put on the brackets (braces - I don't know) and slide the rolled up net underneath them? Instructions seem to imply the second course, but I was thinking that attaching the net first might work better. Those pieces are really small.

Eric

Yes Eric, they are a little difficult to apply.
I used the decals o my L�tzow. I put them on the turret and used decal softer on them.
The difficult part is the range finder on front of the turret.
There I made some cuts into the decal and the it worked.
Where needed I painted some parts white afterwards.

Greetings Christian

Chris,

The circle decals look like they might be very hard to set on top of the vents (or whatever) on top of the turrets. Did you try to set them on and cut small holes with a hobby knife? Mask them and paint?

Eric

Here is my Derfflinger Eric.

These pics show the parts I added prior painting except the funnels.





And here it is with some added details.



Only the platform for the searchlights are a little difficult to work with.

Greetings Christian

Chris,

I'm not sure if this question has an answer, but at what point would a German warship in that era have gone into a status of extra alert and begin removing boats and so forth? In the PTO USN warships went into something close to full battle stations when they came within air range of a Japanese base. The fear was of air attack led to flak batteries manned until nightfall. Fear of powerful Japanese submarines torpedoes meant most hatches were sealed in a war zone (some were left open until full alert because a buttoned-up ship greatly impeded movement of crewmen to battle stations.). These measures caused serious fatigue. In the German case we know the funnels were painted soon after leaving port - think this is when warships would readied for battle. Or could they have waited until there was some kind of contact with the enemy? Or would they have removed items just before leaving port? Considering the heat inside one of those big ships at full battle stations, I'd think that sealing all of the hatches would have been done late in the day - an "out of the blue" airstrike in 1916 would have been a real long-shot, but submarines and mines were serious dangers. (Germans never lost a BB or BC to either, but I think there were some tense moments when periodically hit.) So I'm not sure about hatches. I would have I'd like to model Derfflinger as it would have looked soon before Jutland. May end up guessing.

I've just started the kit. It appears very nicely done. The only thing that's going to be something of a headache is coordinating the extra PE etc (and there's a lot) with the build sequence. I primed the PE with Rustoleum 2X primer and it worked very well. (It's very thin and it gives a complete coverage without any residue although some might have to be filed off to get a better CA surface.) I guess we'll have to install PE on major parts before priming the plastic - parts on deck excluded. There's not PE on the hull so that can be painted completely. That's means serious attention to detail, not always my strong suit.

Eric

Thank you Christian and Eric for your answers an Christian for sharing the photos.

Eric Bergerud wrote: I'm looking in Staff's book at the photo you listed. I don't see circles - you certainly should be able to see them on D turret.
Eric

Here is the pic I mentioned, on the bigger one you see the white top of the range finder of turret C.
And I made a pic of turret C alone, there you see the circle .

And thanks for the e-mail with Mr. Tanner. In Staffs book, not Osprey, there is a pic of the crane for the plane.
If you need it to send it him, let me know.

Greetings Christian

Mr. Tanner had an email connect built into his article. A few days back I used it to write Tanner and ask about the circle dates considering the photo evidence. Here's a portion of his reply that just arrived that does close the matter:

"Eric

I'm glad you've found my site useful and wish I'd had the time to add more content I've collected over the years.

It's interesting you bring this image up. My friend Peter Lienau and I had this very discussion in the early 2000's when we found the version of the overhead photo I've attached. After looking closely at other photos of the damage Derfflinger sustained we agreed this is Derfflinger after Jutland and that Groner and Nagel were wrong about the dates when the circles started to be applied. I also have a slightly clearer version of the other photo you sent showing the damage aft (attached) and if you look closely you can see the side arcs of the circle on D turret along the right edge and behind the leftmost spotting scope.

So yes, I'd say you'd be safe putting all four circles on (note the difference in circle thickness depending on turret) and a red funnel.

I've attached some photos taken later in the war of Derff, sistership SMS Hindenburg and battleship SMS Konig-Albert with their various circle configurations. I suspect the variations are to allow the spotters to ID individual ships in the same class that may look similar otherwise.

Regarding the why of the circles. Not so much for onboard A/C launched at sea (no catapult so only way to launch/recover was to be DIW or dead slow - not a good practice in a war zone) but for the observers in the many dirigibles the HSF used for maritime patrol and the probable source of our overhead imagery.

I have an Osprey series book by Mr. Staff that shows the photo you mention of the A/C being hoisted on/off Derfflinger. I also have a set of 1917 drawings of her sistership SMS Hindenburg that show the basic idea of how the boom was rigged (attached). I am also attaching a photo taken onboard Hindenburg where you can see the king post base for the boom behind the two kneeling sailors and the eye bracket mounted on the bulkhead above them where I suspect the boom tackle would have been attached. I suspect Derfflinger had a similar arrangement in a similar location. Probably too small to model in 1:700 but there if you need it.

I hope you find some of this information helpful. And send photos of the model when you are done!!


V/r,
Tom
Tom Tanner
constellation@juno.com "


So circles it is. Personally I intend to take serious liberties with "red" - nothing like a Ferrari. We'll just say that the heat of the funnel would have turned into some kind of brownish red. I can't imagine it having been thickly applied - it would have been a time consuming job in any situation. And if the High Seas Fleet really painted their ships in unteutonic gaudy colors, I will correct the error. I'll let the famous German marine painter Claus Bergen (official naval painter to the Kaiser and was influential enough to get Scheer to stage a simulated Skagerrak to aid his paintings on the battle and late in life he gave one work to JFK and now hangs in the Kennedy Library) Below is "March to the Skagerrak" and depicts Konig entering the fray. Nagel thought the color might have been artistic license because annealed red should be a yellowish brown - but you can't trust the guy.

See, history is humbling.

Eric

Chris,

Photo interpretation can be a very tricky job - I've talked to people who used to do it for a living in both the Pacific Theater in WWII and later in Vietnam. I'm looking in Staff's book at the photo you listed. I don't see circles - you certainly should be able to see them on D turret. It would be nice to know what was done at Whilhelmshaven - were the turrets repaired there and repainted? Perhaps so. Because if they weren't it's hard figure why the circle on D turret is so easily visible in the photo showing the movement of the vessel to Kiel. Obviously some major repairs were done at Kiel because the aerial view photo - no model of clarity - shows, according to Staff, damage to the quarterdeck. I can certainly see desire to properly patch the areas on the ship that had allowed extensive flooding. But were they worried about clear aircraft IDs in the Kiel Canal?

As noted, I'll take the last photo to be enough to base my model on (although let's hope the decals are good - that kind of thing is no picnic to mask). However, I find it difficult to imagine that Staff had not seen the Tanner and Nagel articles (Tanner's page was updated in 2008). They use sources very similar to his. And they make claims exactly opposite to his. Perhaps Staff believed that online articles were trifles that didn't need answering - a dubious conclusion if made. (I found aviation written by non-academic aviation "buffs" invaluable when writing my last two books.) Had I been in Staff's place I would have made mention of two separate articles that contradict his, and give a quote from his sources that would seal his case - something like a sentence from Derfflinger's Final Report. He chose not to. Nothing in his book is directly documented - nothing - so there's no way for someone really interested to cross check his claims. (That's what citations are for.) So we are taking one undocumented claim over two undocumented claims - and it certainly sounds like Nagel was a serious student of the High Seas Fleet.

As earlier noted, I don't think it necessary to have properly done academic history to guide us in matters like this. It's not important enough. But I've got four books in print and wish I had been paid for every error I spotted in others' works, and the errors I made that almost made it past my editors (I was lucky enough to have WWII and Vietnam veterans proof my manuscripts - and each found something stupid - little, but the sort of thing that reviewers and other vets - who made up much of my audience - would have spotted and thought I didn't really know what I was doing) those errors I made that did make it through. Writing history is humbling.

Eric

Hello Eric,

this with the spotter plane makes sense. All BCs had two rings and Derfflinger with the crane had four to help the pilot.
So I should also go for rings on my Derfflinger.

Regarding this pic:

http://www.sms-navy.com/bc/SMS_Derfflin ... un1916.jpg

In Staffs bigger book there is a greater version of this pic.
There you can see a white top of the rangefinder of the C turret.
On the pic you can't see a ring because you only see the sloping part of the turret roof.
The ring was only on the flat part of the turret, as the range finders where and thats why the had a white top on the pic.

Greetings Christian

Peter,

On the photo you have of the A and B turrets after Jutland, Shaft claims that the paint had been "burned away" because of battle damage. If this is not so, there are no circles there - period. Can't say that I understand why the dark paint wasn't burned away too.

Here's the problem with the Shaft book. Except for some some logs and final reports etc from various ships, all of his sources are secondary. (I've seen similar in-house documents for WWII USN vessels and they are not extensive.) And he employs no footnotes so you can't cross-check his claims. That's normal for a nonacademic book. I have a terrific book on USAAF colors in WWII written by a gent named Archer and his son. They are able to cite chapter and verse, give exact dates and tell why a particular change in colors or camo is listed, but it's an exception (And highly recommended - the authors also claim that model paint companies misinterpreted USN aircraft colors and that the various multi-shade patterns are off in hue: gotta try to track that one down). Shaft's book doesn't deal with a single narrow subject and is geared more toward design and operations ship by ship, that limits micro-detail. As near as I can see Shaft says nothing about colors - although I haven't read it all. In the text he claims that in late 1915 Derfflinger was one of the warships that were fitted with a crane (Derfflinger's never removed) for a spotter plane, and that's why the circles were painted. The Nagel article I quoted earlier claims that in late 1915 the High Seas Fleet painted the tops of their turrets black for aircraft ID and the circles came after Baltic festivities in 1917. (Black turret tops wouldn't have any real purpose during a surface battle - I'd think it would have made the turrets a little hotter.) They could both be right. If you had a column of ships in operations and a spotter plane in the air it would might have been of great value to the pilot to pick out the ship that carried the crane. (In the 1942 carrier battles in the Pacific both sides had aircraft approach for landing on an enemy deck: a Japanese plane was within an inch of touching down and the US crew didn't fire on it. So even big ships look little from a few thousand feet.)

If the photo that Shaft claims is of Derfflinger going from Wilhelmshaven to Kiel is accurate, the case is made. Which means that A and B turret must have been repainted at Wilhelmshaven because our better picture clearly shows only dark on top. I will accept the evidence but can testify that ideally you'd want more than one photo and you'd certainly want reference to materials that directly contradict your information. But we're not dealing with the causes of WWI here, and there's no reason to expect a full display of historical method.

The only English translation cited by Tanner (and Shaft) is Erich Groener's German Warships 1815-1945- Vol I Surface Warships: Naval Institute 1990. (On Amazon for $16.) For detail freaks it sounds like a very good book - "just the facts" and tons of them. Reviews give a good idea of what it's like. What might be neat is a book widely available in Europe "Vom Original zum Modell: Die Gro�en Kreuzer Von der Tann, Moltke-Klasse, Seydlitz, Derfflinger-Klasse" (author Gerhard Koop). So would another modeler oriented book Die Anstriche und Tarnanstriche der deutschen Kriegsmarine (Dieter Jung: 1998): deals mostly with WWII but if early war ships carried WWI paints I could see the value (even a chapter on aircraft ID markings).

Just shows that anyone that claims history is a science has never tried to write it. So we must be content with what we have. I'd say it's enough for most modelers.
Eric

Hello Guys,

Thank you for the photos. Seeing them (taking a very close look) I must say that they both prove that the rings were there. The aerial photo is the best, but even the other one shows the ring. Please take a close look to the left side of the turret top. You will see a small half moon above the hole. It fades out and "comes back" on the right side of the top. It's hard to notice because it can easily be mistaken with some kind of spilled out material. But it is not.

Hello Peter,

the evidence is in the pic from me shown above.
The Derfflinger had definitly 4 rings at Jutland. The big question for me is when they where applied?

I think on my 1915 Derfflinger I will leave them away.



Greetings Christian

Gabor, I don't think, the Defflinger's lower turrets are not painted with white recognition rings. Look at this photo of Derfflinger' arrival just after the skagerak battle: http://www.sms-navy.com/bc/SMS_Derfflin ... un1916.jpg

But I suppose, that the upper turrets already have recognition rings, as on turret A of SMS Seydlitz http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineL ... h59637.jpg.

But I have no photocraphic evidence!

Thanks a lot. Until now I thought the recognition rings were used from 1917. But now I can see I must use them on my Derfflinger. Fortunately the turrets have not been placed yet

Gabor wrote:Hello Christian,

Could you resend this picture with the text please?

Hello Gabor,

here is the complete pic.

@ Eric,
I just saw it recently, your pic with the damaged turret roof is from the HMS Lion and not the Derfflinger.
So now it's clear why there are no rings on the top .

Greetings Christian

Hello Christian,

Could you resend this picture with the text please?

Here is the pic Eric.
You clearly see 4 rings. The big question is, why Derfflinger had 4 and all other known only 2?
Perhaps it was the first one in 1915 where test where made?

Greetings Christian

Chris,

I'll accept your data. Were the ID markings on all four or B and C alone as on your Lutzow?

Thanks
Eric