The Ship Model Forum

I originally posted this in the CASF thread for the big 5, but have had no answers. I thought maybe it'd get more exposure here.

There are several videos on YouTube of salvage operations at Pearl Harbor. I was curious what those more knowledgeable about film and color could tell me about this snippet of USS California preparing to leave for the mainland US.

To me it looks like she has mostly been repainted, but maybe the funnels and upper superstructure/bridge decks weren't. The freshly painted parts of the ship look VERY blue (5S?). To my untrained eye the colors look close to actual based on the skin tones and uniform colors, but I have no film experience to base this off of. I've read of things like color shifting and such, but don't fully understand them.

My question is how possible is it they used 5S to paint the hull/turrets/gun deck and left the funnels and bridge/upper super structure decks the color they were? (To me the non-freshly painted parts look too blue to be 5D, but the film could be 'blue shifted' as I heard people call it) As it looks like she still is in a semi-Ms1 scheme here.

Does 5D fade into a more blue looking like 5N, or is it possible she was in 5N? Or am I just seeing things because I want to paint something different than 5D?

https://youtu.be/tyEH_IfQgkg

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-Abram
ModelWarships Gallery Page
Joslin Models Facebook Page

5-D Dark gray was made in two versions - the primary "new" version was neutral - it was essentially lamp black for coloring (bottom of page 2). Since there was a lot of stock of the pre-war #5 Standard Navy Gray at this time, they also made a conversion paste (paragraph 2) to convert that paint to a close approximation of 5-D. Since there was a slight blue tone to the #5 Standard Navy Gray, there would be a very slight blueness to the converted 5-D, but not one that I would expect the human eye could detect. The converted paint also had adhesion problems and I doubt there was noticeable fading over the old paint showing through in areas.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

That would be consistent with paints which end up with an excessive pigment to binder ratio, as might happen if pigment oil paste was added to an existing paint.

Such excessively pigmented paints struggle with adhesion and are often particularly prone to chalking.

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James Duff
Sovereign Hobbies Ltd
http://www.sovereignhobbies.co.uk

Current build:
HMS Imperial D09 1/350
http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=167151

Documents found over 20 years ago were orders from the spring of 42 for WV and CA to repaint into Ms-11 using 5-N not 5-S before returning to CONUS. They were in TN's correspondence files as she was the class leader for CA.