Brocky wrote:
One question I have is what was the underside of the exposed flight deck at the bow and stern painted? Deck blue? Or being that it was wood and not observable from the air was it painted at all?...
It is a common misunderstanding that the American carrier flight decks were structurally made of wood. American carrier flight decks were made of steel. The top of the steel flight deck was covered with a layer of wood planking as a wearing surface. In other words, the flight deck was steel with a wood skin. The steel deck below the wood wearing surface appears best in photos of flight decks damaged in action, especially where the wood surface has burned away or has been displaced by blast exposing the steel deck. Here's a photo of
Enterprise taken on 10 September 1942. Notice the overhead is steel, with sunlight passing through holes. Some of the holes are arrayed in a pattern indicating missing bolts or rivets, others are more random and jagged likely caused by blast fragmentation. Also note that the overhead paint not darkened by burns/smoke is a light color, still visible through the damage. This tends to indicate that the overhead was probably not blue. Examples of other ships' steel flight decks appear below.
Attachment:
CV-6 1942 Sep 10 NH 83991 small.jpg [ 389.83 KiB | Viewed 2502 times ]
Perhaps the common wooden deck misunderstanding originates from, or is perpetuated by published comparisons of US carriers and British carriers. In many publications, the author points out that British carriers had armored flight decks while the American carriers' had wooden flight decks. Although wood was certainly present, it is more accurate to say that the American carriers' flight decks were unarmored structural steel with a wooden wearing surface, structurally much lighter than an armored deck.
Yorktown class carriers did have an armored deck, the "4th deck", below the hangar deck.
[edit: corrected armored deck identification]