Martin,
What is interesting about this pair of photos, is that the first one is one of several photos of USS ATLANTA taking during the Battle of Midway with USS HORNET and the other one was taken a few months later. But, both of these photos were dated the same month on the 80-G mounting card caption and were obviously in different camo schemes. So what were the dates for these photos?
When I came across these two photos and scanned them, I knew there was no way they both were taken in August 1942. I recognized that the first one was similar to two other images I had scanned of ATLANTA alongside USS HORNET (and taken by USS ENTERPRISE) at the Battle of Midway. I had figured out that USS ATLANTA had repainted her hull with 5N in June-July 1942 at Pearl Harbor, so the photo dated to after July 1942. But, when was the second photo taken?
It took some research to track down when USS SARATOGA and USS ATLANTA and USS ENTERPRISE were all at the same place at the same time. It was tricky because SARATOGA was in a different Task Force than ENTERPRISE and ATLANTA around the time of the Guadalcanal Landings. Eventually from War Diaries and other accounts, I narrowed down the date to more or less 21 August 1942 just before ENTERPRISE was torpedoed and when SARATOGA was torpedoed a few days afterwards and while the two Task Forces joined for a short period.
I posted these same images back in August of last year. Here is the post and some additional info.
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