Where in SoCal? IPMS-San Diego meets Friday 26 August 1830 in Balboa Park. Thank your for joining and for injecting real-world experience with the purpose of this board. I think photographs consistently show exactly what you describe and predict. USS
Missouri was painted to camouflage measure 22 at Hunters Point Navy Yard, San Francisco, during November-December 1944. In the WW2 Pacific theater, there were no yards west of Pearl Harbor. Instead, anchorages, chiefly Ulithi atoll, and floating drydocks allowed crews to repaint their ships. During December 1944 - March 1945
Missouri stopped at Pearl Harbor and twice at Ulithi.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/04/097/0409706.jpgHere at anchor in Ulithi atoll in March 1945 USS
Flint (CL 97) touches up her camouflage. I'd be surprised if a ship of already marginal stability would embark a mass of sand for pre-painting sandblasting in a combat zone, in particular
Flint after her sister USS
Reno (CL 96) nearly capsized from one torpedo hit in November 1944.
Flint's hull paintwork is worn exactly as you predict. The medium gray along her hull at her bow, on her forward superstructure and on her hull below that, exactly match ColourCoats US31 #17 neutral ocean gray. At the stern in the correct location per her camouflage pattern is a sun-bleached patch of paint that is consistent with an original application there too of #17 neutral ocean gray. That patch might also be consistent with 5-H or 5-O blue-gray; although would you expect a blue content to vanish this completely and evenly?
The points are these: first, as you say ships did indeed get repainted in theater; and second, in March 1945 neutral gray paints had already been in fleet use for long enough (maybe not very long, as your experience shows) for USS
Flint to achieve her appearance in this photo. I'd guess that the destroyers in this video
< US Naval Forces at Iwo Jima in Japan > (at video time 1:30) were painted in their neutral grays before, not during, this assault in February - March 1945. What do you think?
#27 neutral haze gray (ColourCoats US32) was only slightly lighter than #17 neutral ocean gray (ColourCoats US31). This photo (too wide to embed here) shows USS
Missouri in April 1945 with a dark gray superstructure that is visually consistent with #27 neutral haze gray:
< USS Missouri in April 1945 >. 5-H haze gray and postwar FS36720 haze gray were much closer to #37 neutral light gray (ColourCoats US33) than to #27 neutral haze gray. If
Missouri were instead in 5-H haze gray, even if freshly retouched, she would appear very light, like the lighter sections of
Flint above. In your nautical experience, does paintwork lighten or darken from tropical exposure?
Have you Paul Stillwell's book
Battleship Missouri? Page 41 a photo (National Archives 80-G-469991) from around 18 May 1945 that shows
Missouri with worn paint on her hull, again as you describe. Someone (Rick!) with access to the original image and maybe to additional images from a series, maybe can answer whether her original measure 32 camouflage is exposed. The ship was moored in Guam and in June anchored at Leyte, which would afford opportunities for painting. In the next photos, page 43-44, from July 1945, her hull paintwork appears restored.