USN Turret tops for Battleships & Cruisers

[Tracy White]

I just opened a new section on my site pertaining to the painting of turret tops on US Battleships and Cruisers prior to the US entry into the second world war. There is one document I'm working on yet to be posted that will be of additional help, but for now this should provide some helpful information for those interested in colors and markings:

US Navy Turret Tops, 1930s through 1941

[Sr. Gopher]

Were the Japanese already informed about this during Pearl Harbor? Did it provoke specific targeting by the pilots during the attack?

[David_Aiken]

Were the Japanese already informed about this during Pearl Harbor? Did it provoke specific targeting by the pilots during the attack?

1) No
2) Knowing that 1) is "no", the targeting did not have TIME to take such colors into coinsideration. The aircrews made attempts to ID their targets AFTER the attack as "Colorado Class", etc...and the intel officer named the battleship locations as "A, B, C, D, etc" and added the aircrew results...which was used to brief Hirohito.

HTH,
David Aiken

[MartinJQuinn]

Nice!