Par429 wrote:Kelley-
Thanks for the photos. I'll paint them gray inside. In the absence of direct proof I'll go with what is most likely and makes sense to me. Really appreciate the help from you and everyone here! This thread has been such a great help in my project, I'm continually amazed at your knowledge of what photos exist and that that you can find just the right one.
I'm glad you like my project. I'm thinking of starting a thread in the Works-in-Progress forum here for it, I have some general questions and may find a little more depth of knowledge here.
Thanks again.
Phil
I would highly suggest you start a thread here in the WIP section! I'm sure a lot of folks here would love to see how you are approaching your build of this challenging kit and especially how you are doing it in the "ships in trouble" genre. Really genius idea - wish I had thought about it!!!!
Yes, there are a lot of people here who have helped me immensely with my specific questions and who go the extra mile to do so. Haven't found a better bunch yet.
Got a book on Saratoga by Author John Fry stating when the ship was on its way to GuadalCanal the crew spent time chipping all the paint inside the ship that was painted in Bremerton so it would not be a fire hazzard.
I also found a picture on the internet of a piece of the cruiser Minneapolis found in a warehouse at Mare Island Naval Shipyard that had not been scrapped. It as from the time the ship was damaged in the Solomons and it as found in the 70's I believe it was. "COLOR PHOTO" The front face or outboard section of the piece was painted in ocean grey like Yorktown's upper structure above the hangar deck. The inboard part was just light green primer I remember using on my ship in the 80's. The piece was from the bridge wing and had a 8" shell hole through it.
I guess the question would be if this policy started in August of 42.
When I went aboard Hornet CV-12 before they towed her from Bremerton every deck bellow the hangar deck was not paint just primer of a light green color.
Hangar deck on my ship in the 80's was white with a dark grey border/base board. I would think in WW2 the color was white as well because of poor lighting if the shudders where not open. Also at night. Can shut the shudders and do aircraft repair for the following day.
Yorktown and Enterprise most likely had silver paint on bulkheads and overheads in their hangar bays up until 1942. Photos don't look right for white. Yorktown was probably lost this way. I haven't found any textual reports to back this up at this point though, so take it with a grain of salt.
Whats the thought behind using silver paint, IE of all colors why silver? Was it a special type of paint? I always thought I was looking at natural metal (highly polished at times) in those old photos.
Drawing Board:
1/700 Whiff USS Leyte and escorts 1984
1/700 Whiff USN Modernized CAs 1984
1/700 Whiff ASW Showdown - FFs vs SSGN 1984
Slipway:
1/700 Whiff USN ASW Hunter Killer Group Dio 1984
It only seems to be in hangar bays, so I can only guess they were trying to improve lighting in some way, but like I said, I haven't found any documents at NARA yet. I've been dabbling in certain sections (already hit CV camouflage in general) but the actual "paints" section in bureau of Ships is something like 40 boxes long so it's going to take "a couple" of trips to go through it all.
I've got a photo of part of CA-30 Houston's hangar from 1939 or so that looks the same, so my take was that it was in hangar bays for some reason. Whether it was for reflectivity or exhaust resistance I have no idea.
Exhaust is much more likely than fuel vapor - if you have so much vapor that you're worried about it affecting paint, you have a fuel-air explosion waiting to happen. I've seen the same appearance to paint in Cruisers (Specifically CA-30 Houston) and those work spaces are so small that I don't know that they would ever do engine run-ups inside, so I'm not as confident that it's an exhaust thing as much as it is a reflective for better lighting thing, but as I said, I have no textual proof either. Just a suspicion that John Snyder agreed with. I'll try and post some photos over the weekend to make the case for others to look at and decide for themselves.
Wonder what the connection is between the silver hangar paint and the pre-war aircraft silver interiors. It's been shown that most, maybe all TBD's up to and during Midway still had silver paint in the cockpit, rather than the green zinc most people assume.
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley
Devin wrote:Wonder what the connection is between the silver hangar paint and the pre-war aircraft silver interiors. It's been shown that most, maybe all TBD's up to and during Midway still had silver paint in the cockpit, rather than the green zinc most people assume.
Hi Devin,
Are you sure about that? I did some research on TBD's and had kind of concluded the opposite. I'll try to find a picture I remember from one of my reference books showing "silver" TBD's being assembled at Douglas and they had green interiors.
This is a crop from a picture of TBD's on Enterprise in the late 30's.
I'll have to dig up the information. I haven't looked at it in a couple of years. One of the guys over on Hyperscale is a real TBD nut, has a list of every serial number issued to the planes, and from his research he said that most, if not all of them, should have been silver on the inside.
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley
I presented a related question to Dana Bell several years back about P-35A Pursuit planes in the Philippines when he was at the 1997 IPMS Nats. It looked like in damaged aircraft photos and interior views of the "luggage" bay (many pilots and VIPs rode in that space out of Bataan in early 1942 to points south) in the fuselage they had silver paint. But other military aircraft built at the same time frame seemed to have the green zinc coating. It has been a long time since I heard his answer, but it went something like; the Military switched over from silver to green zinc and a "camo" paint (I believe OD and Gray were mentioned) for cockpits interiors somewhere in the 1939-41 time period. The P-35A aircraft were an exception because they were originally built for the Swedes and likely followed "commercial" standards. So, it may depend on which batch of TBD you are looking at as to what the interior paint was since production was from 1937 to 1939. Plus I could see aircraft that went through overhaul and/or as part of war-time camo, could well have been repainted in the interior in part or entirely.
Anyone know what this object is on the Yorktown's Bridge? This is from the photo taken from the bow while crewman are repairing damage after the dive bombing hits taken in the first attack at Midway. It is also present in the dry dock after Coral Sea photograph. Is this just a rectangular projection from the armored wheelhouse, or something installed on the open bridge? It never really captured my attention before now.
I noticed that some time ago. It is also visible in high-rez versions of the June 4 1942 shots of Yorktown listing, as seen from her port side. It appears to have a solid "roof" which extended forward to the front bulwark of the open bridge. I have always thought that it was a place the bridge crew could shelter under quickly when running through a squall. But since that is just an assumption on my part I haven't said much about it before.
Dick J wrote:I noticed that some time ago. It is also visible in high-rez versions of the June 4 1942 shots of Yorktown listing, as seen from her port side. It appears to have a solid "roof" which extended forward to the front bulwark of the open bridge. I have always thought that it was a place the bridge crew could shelter under quickly when running through a squall. But since that is just an assumption on my part I haven't said much about it before.
Thanks for your thoughts Dick. Let's hope someone knows. This is big enough that some of us anal retentives would like to add it even to a 1/700 scale model.
There's six boxes of CV-5 documentation in BUShips General Correspondence at NARA - I don't have time to go through all of them, but I think I can pull two of them that are most likely to have her departure reports and see if there are any and what they mention on my next trip. Depending on when and where the work was done, it might not be mentioned in any of the official documentation that remains.
Good question jabarry. I have always wondered what this was myself until I asked the same question years ago and was told that it was probably some type of structure to place armored glass over one of the view ports of the armored lookout section and sat flush against it. That still didn't make much sense as to why one quy out of six would need that just to use binoculars.
After I read DickJ's post I went back and looked at the pic he referenced and several others and I'm inclined to agree with him in that it was some type of covered area over the bridge platform. It is also there in the pics of CV5 during Coral Sea ops but I don't see it in the pic of CV5 returning to Pearl from the Gilbert raids.
Would love to know something definitive.
TOMLABEL
Last edited by TOMLABEL on Wed Feb 10, 2016 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
I've been studying the hi-rez shot of CV-5 in dry dock. There are definitely two windows on the front panel and what looks like it might be a doorway on the starboard side of the structure. Not a pyro locker. Too tall, and why would that need windows? I think Dick J called it. It looks like a weather shelter for the bridge crew. Given the big wind deflector on the front face of the big bridge walk around, the bridge crew may have liked having a wind or spray refuge available. She was a fast ship, and 30 knot wind in your face for hours is no fun!
Michael Vorrasi wrote:I've been studying the hi-rez shot of CV-5 in dry dock. There are definitely two windows on the front panel and what looks like it might be a doorway on the starboard side of the structure. Not a pyro locker. Too tall, and why would that need windows? I think Dick J called it. It looks like a weather shelter for the bridge crew. Given the big wind deflector on the front face of the big bridge walk around, the bridge crew may have liked having a wind or spray refuge available. She was a fast ship, and 30 knot wind in your face for hours is no fun
Thanks for that nice high res shot Michael. It is getting interesting as to what the sides are like. Completely partitioned to the rest of the bridge with actual doors or just openings? Doesn't look like a window on the side. I'm guessing the top is opaque. I think Dick is probably right on too - Weather shelter. Was there any instrumentation installed on that Bridge other than probably comm? I have read of no record of it. I wonder why slightly to starboard. And what is that round conduit that looks to run under the two armored slits on the armored wheelhouse - also to starboard. Also note railing/frame on port forward of armored wheelhouse. No end to curiosity!
