G-Opt wrote:
Right, she was painted...prior to the war. During the war? Not too much evidence of that at all.
Wavy lines of paint on her gun barrels? Not quite convinced yet.
But, I never say never; it's not entirely impossible, and an energetic researcher might still turn up something solid.
There were a number of early scratch-built models of CA-30 (long before kits; the original builder's model had an especially remarkable history in its own right), and many survivors saw them over the years. I was lucky enough to be with some of them on a few of those occasions, and never heard anybody say, "You know that's a beautiful model, but doggonit they forgot the wavy lines on the 8"gun barrels!"
This morning, I did locate one CA-30 survivor's interview in which he recalled painting the ship, "...including the deck, just before the war--darker gray..."
In fact, he provided the original photo below to the Navy many years ago.
First, sorry about the delay in responding, I've been a bit busy as of late. From everything I have heard, I do not believe that Houston was painted once the war started (aside from her decks being possibly painted blue, I don't have the source for that on me though). I'm pretty sure her quasi Measure 1 camouflage was added in November 1941 during her overhaul from everything that I have read, and she just carried that until her loss.
Also, with all due respect (and they deserve a lot of it!) to the survivors of Houston, I don't find their lack of recollection of the wavy camouflage on the guns very compelling evidence of the guns not having those wavy lines. Memory is unfortunately a more fluid thing than we like to admit at times, and its very easy to forget minor things like that, especially if you had been on the ship for a year or two and those wavy lines would have been added only 2-3 months before her loss. A great example of this is the shields on the 40mm Bofors on the De Ruyter. The the shields were added in December 1941, and when asked about them, the officer in charge of the 40mms denied the shields existed, until he was shown a photo of them which jogged his memory into remembering them. Thus, I would not be very surprised if a crewmember of the Houston, after three and a half years of horrific treatment as a POW and then several decades as a civilian, forgot a minor detail about the paint on the 8 inch gun barrels which they only had for a very short time. Obviously if there was no other information regarding this, I would certainly just go with whatever a crewmember said was the case, however, we have a photo in this case, and those don't change.
I suppose it could be water from the earlier rain you mentioned evaporating from the barrels causing that effect possibly. But I am unfamiliar with water ever evaporating off of a cylinder in such a consistent wavy pattern, and especially not to produce such a clear color change. Given it happens on both the 5 inch and 8 inch barrels, I'm still more inclined to think that is a purposeful thing, to the point I'm pretty convinced it is, though certainly I'm not going to say this is definitely 100% the case.
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And I'm tossing in an image of LANGLEY survivors on WHIPPLE (Feb 27, '42) which shows that the AF four-pipers didn't have wavy lines on their tubes...but, what is more intriguing is that it appears the funnel is deliberately half-painted (?)
Had not been aware of that before, and I do not know what to make of it...
HTH
I'd rather not get side tracked on the 4 pipers as it is off topic on this thread, but I would be interested in continuing talking about this on the thread in calling all destroyer fans. The Asiatic fleet destroyers seem to have some interesting things going on in the photos (USS Stewart's camouflage pattern for an example) I have seen of them from the time, and I think that would be a good discussion to continue there. Great spot on that funnel by the way, I had never noticed that before, that's really interesting!