Hey Woozer, sorry this took me a while to get to. I'm no expert on Helena, but I'll do what I can.
First off, there's some confusion around Measure 11 due to how the Navy operated in WWII. Helena was in Measure 11 at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor; I can tell by pictures of her that confirms
this memo I found in the Mare Island Navy Yard files at the regional National Archives facility at San Bruno was followed. Note that Measure 11 was "
defined" in the "
SHIPS 2 - First Revision that was dated September (the month after this memo was issued) and distributed to the fleet in
October. Where the confusion comes in is that the Navy decided to discontinue 5-S Sea Blue in favor of 5-N Navy Blue but still had Measure 11 "on the books" and the revision that officially defines Measure 21 was not issued until June of 1942. The Atlantic Fleet ordered 5-S's substitution with 5-N in
November and the Pacific Fleet in
December. A lot of history books and web sites didn't know about this when written, so there is a lot out there that simply says "Measure 11" without taking into consideration this change.
She would have most certainly come out of repairs in July in 5-N and not 5-S. I'm reasonably sure the stripes were painted out by the time of her loss - there's no evidence of them in
this photo from March 1943 on
her Navsource page. I can't tell from that photo or the other 1943 photo of her, but it looks like a few of her 20mms were painted in either 5-S Sea Blue or 5-O Ocean Gray when she left from repairs at Mare Island in July 1943:
Attachment:
3668-42.jpg
_________________
Tracy White -
Researcher@Large"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
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Barbara Tuchman