Sutho wrote:
When I look at good quality images that were taken with better camera settings and lighting then the shade to me still looks a light colour and not a dark one.
I am not suggesting a dark tone but a tone darker than 507C/a medium tone.
Sutho wrote:
HMS Ripley ex USS Shubrick transferred to the RN in November 1940. If it still had USN paints on it then there is a good chance that the paint could be 5-L light grey in line with US camouflage schemes at the time.
I think that is somewhat unlikely. Three reasons:
1) If you check her RN service history you will see that she arrives in the UK in December 1940 and undergoes a month-plus refit, then collided with another ship and goes back into dock for couple of weeks of repairs. During the course of the refit she would have been repainted using RN paints, and probably needed further repainting during the repair.
2) Others on this board can advise on USN practice but I believe that ships normally carried small stocks of paint for touch-up purposes, not enough for whole repaints. The RN would have had to have had stocks of 5-L at Devonport with which to paint out the USN hull number and repaint the entire hull and I really don’t think they did have USN paint there then. Why would they?
3) There is this slightly washed-out photo of Ripley in the scheme we see her in beside PoW:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/05/pix1/0526802.jpgApart from the white bow and light false bow wave, there is then a light tone on the angled face of the bridge and on the side of the aft deckhouse (both visible more clearly also in the better quality photo alongside PoW), then the medium tone we are interested to compare with PoW that covers most of her hull, then a darker tone on the aft two funnels and a darker tone still on the bridge. To me that she is wearing a four-tone affair shows she has been repainted since her USN days. For what it is worth, based on the four colours worn on another of the 5th Escort Group in 1941, I suggest that the medium tone on Ripley might be MBP and the light tone light MBP.
Sutho wrote:
There is a good chance Tartar was painted in 507C on the bridge. Going through all four Raven books the closest I could find to the pattern Tartar wore has it listed as G45 on another Tribal class late war which is what we know 507C became, furthermore the vast majority of destroyers in the Raven series of books had 507C bridge and upper works if not the Western Approaches colours.
The (lack of) frequency of overall Home Fleet Grey (HFG) schemes being featured in Raven’s booklets is no guide to their frequency of use In service. In a book designed to illustrate the range of camouflage schemes worn by RN ships, page after page of ships in overall HFG would not be a best-seller. (In fact he does not feature a single drawing of a ship in plain overall HFG as worn by most of the Home Fleet most of the time in the period covered by his 1939-41 booklet which is the period we are interested in.)
When you see a dark hull/light upperworks scheme in Raven’s booklet for the 1939-1941 period, check the ship’s service history to see where the ship was serving. In all the cases he features you will find they were on ships serving with an overseas fleet/force/squadron, not the Home Fleet.
In August 1941 Tartar was serving with the Home Fleet as she had been since the outbreak of war. Here she is in September 1940:
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item ... /205135590 and here she is in November 1941:
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item ... /205140574However in case you might suggest that she might have slipped in a cheeky repaint into dark hull/light upperworks in between the dates of those IWM photos here she is on 23rd August 1941 in UK waters just days after the Iceland photo alongside PoW. As you can see she was not in a dark hull/light upperworks scheme then either.
Attachment:
Tartar h 23 Aug 41 - Copy.jpg
Here is another (low quality, yes) image of PoW arriving at Singapore again showing what appears to me to have been a darker than 507C front of the bridge:
Attachment:
Prince of Wales sb 2 Dec 41.jpg
The various photos taken of PoW arriving at Cape Town are of better quality and are good at showing what I see as a darker than 507C (ie more medium) tone of the front of PoW’s bridge. There is a good one in Nicholson’s book but here is another….
Attachment:
Prince of Wales m CapeTown stbd - Copy.jpg
Best wishes