The Ship Model Forum

And we're still waiting for these publications...

Don't get me wrong, I'll be among the first in line to buy a copy if they (the quote seemed to imply there were multiple irons in that fire) ever materialize. But 14+ years is an awfully long pregnant pause; and if these books really have been cancelled then they should quit hoarding the information and make it available to someone else who will publish it. I know there are more technicalities than that; just venting a little over "Trust me, I've seen the evidence, but I can't share it with you yet." In a whole lot of different contexts...

- Sean F.

In all fairness, Ron Smith did post an article on this site entitled “The colors of Pearl Harbor 5-D vs 5-S and Other Fun stuff”. It was quickly pulled down shortly after he posted it. There was no earth shattering evidence presented in this article. He used a lot of what the Atlantic Fleet was doing at the time as further evidence for the color of Arizona. He also relied heavily on the same screen captures we have all seen by now, and his smoking gun piece of evidence was a broken piece of USS Enterprise mainmast that he found at the archives that he claims is painted 5-D and compared it to both color footage and black and white pics of the fleet. He also claimed that USS West Virginia and USS California was painted in Modified MS-2 based off of what he was seeing from these screen captures compared to his Enterprise sample.
He has since back tracked on USS California and now says she was one of the few still in MS-1.
I challenged both Ron and Don on the validity of this Enterprise piece because the directive that accompanied the piece was dated March 18, 1941 but they claim the piece is dated May 24, 1941.The March date of the directive Don presented is clearly months before Enterprise was painted into MS-1 camouflage. Did Ron actually find a black piece of the mainmast, not 5-D as he claims?


Don Preul also published their findings in the earlier mentioned Nautical Research Journal article. Most of Ron’s research was reiterated in this article including that USS Enterprise piece they claim is 5-D.

I suspect that everything they presented in these two articles is all they have to present to us. You will be waiting a long time if you want them to present more evidence.

Ron Smith was working as an independent researcher at NARA, "for hire" back when he wrote those articles. He couldn't afford to spend his time at NARA researching things for his "pleasure" when he could be getting paid by someone looking for something else. He quit that endeavor and returned to a job at NASA in the Maryland area. His work there was going away and his wife died, so he retired and moved out of the DC area several years ago. He turned over his research material he had gathered to others. He mailed Tracy two boxes of "camo stuff", but one box was lost and never got to him. Ron has not been back at NARA for at least ten years.

And from a couple of his postings over the last few years on WCRG he won't be publishing much for the foreseeable future... He really took the forum trashings hard.... I don't blame him one bit...

I gots a question, did you actually read what is written in the report? It's a recommendation of how to fix the problem not a directive to fix it.... (read paragraphs/sections 7, 8 & 9) So the earlier date is explained, easily and within the document itself.... Since they are requesting a directive to proceed as recommended, the date is a non-issue... Given how fast things moved within the Navy, the later April date of archive acquisition and imagery of the actual piece is probably very accurate.... As is Ron's statements to that effect...

As a researcher, so often the information we question is right in front of us without realizing... this seems to be the case with this claim...

EG

I'm going to repost these images from an earlier discussion. I have frankly not been researching USS ARIZONA in records at NARA. My interest is in USN destroyers and I got curious about the destroyers used in camo experiments in the late 1930's and during the summer-fall of 1941. Finding photos or transparencies is not easy. But, I would come across "unusual" images that either didn't fit in the referenced stories found in publications. Also, some photos you come across are either not dated or poorly dated.

Anyway, one of the more famous color photos from the 1941 period of the FIRST group of destroyers involved in camo evaluations was this one. Destroyers of DesDiv 6, USS CUMMINGS (DD-365), USS CASE (DD370), USS SHAW (DD-373), and USS TUCKER (DD-374), plus USS CLARK (DD-361). The color on this transparency has shifted to bluer over time, so isn't an "exact" true color, but you get an idea. I spent a fair amount of time researching this photo because of several "mysteries". Why in the photo dated in October 1941, do these destroyers still show the experimental schemes they had evaluated several months earlier and the USN had moved on to another set of schemes to study? Did these destroyers get repainted before the Pearl Harbor Attack? Why are they tied up to a pier normally used for Aircraft Carriers and not at the San Diego Destroyer Base? From Deck Logs I found the answers to many of these questions. There were a large number of ships at San Diego at the time, plus they were scheduled for "short yard periods" (as such they cycled from this mooring to go into the yard and then return for the next unit to go in) and to escort USS LEXINGTON back to Pearl. USS CLARK was there waiting for her overhaul.

The destroyers in this photo are, in order closest to furthest away.

USS CLARK (DD-361) ... Ms 1 (dark gray)
USS CASE (DD-370) ... Ms 3 (light gray) with Ms 5 (painted bow wave)
USS CUMMINGS (DD-365) ... Ms 1 (dark gray)
USS SHAW (DD-373) ... Ms 2 modified (graded system, where the 5-O was applied was different that Ships-1 directions)
USS TUCKER (DD-374) ... Ms 1 modified with a lighter dark gray

One of the things I want to point out, is we read that 5-D faded and "chalked". Looking at the hull of USS CLARK, you can see that happening and that she has been "touched up in several places.

One thing I found interesting was that the DesDiv 6 units DID NOT GET REPAINTED prior to the Attack at Pearl Harbor. However, several of them were in the process or scheduled of having restricted interim overhauls at Pearl and having some of their hull shell plating "renewed". So they were being or about to be repainted then. As we know, USS SHAW was in the Floating Drydock during the attack. The other three were in the schedule to get the same work done on 1 December 1941.



Also, here is the color image of USS DRAYTON (DD-366) painted in the experimental "Sapphire Blue" during the second destroyer October 1941 evaluations. This color was well rated in the evaluation, but had poor adhesion issues. The point of this photo is that there was confusion or disagreement in the Pacific Fleet about Ms 11 as to whether they were or should repaint the "WHOLE" ship or to continue with Ms 1 directives and paint the upper mast a lighter color.

Below the color image, are two B&W images of the same ship in sun and shade.

The final image is a B&W image of USS FLUSSER (DD-368) painted overall with 5-S. USS FLUSSER was repainted with 5-N in late November 1941 to evaluate the "new paint" adopted by the Atlantic Fleet.

I found the B&W images by pure chance in the 19-LCM folder for one of the destroyers, obviously taken as part of the evaluation. Photos of the other destroyers in the second test painted in graded schemes were NOT included and I have not seen images of any of them, except at a distance.

Directive or Recommendation. Whatever it is this document was included in Don’s presentation to support the validity of the piece. The document dated March 18, 1941 says that enclosure (F) was broken out piece of mainmast. I questioned both of them if the piece they found is the same piece referenced in the document. If it wasn’t, then what evidence did they have to support their claim the piece was indeed dated May 24, 1941. They have yet to present any evidence to support the date claimed.

OK! You win, I give up....

Laters..

I apologize if this my post looks off-topic. I tried to post it several days ago in the Arizona thread, but t was not posted. Probably wrong thread, or wording. So I try again here.

I have found interesting photos from collision between USS Arizona and USS Oklahoma at Tracy’s page http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/BB39/1941Collision/:
This is an example from there – photo dated to October 23, 1941 morning:
http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/BB39/1941Collision/1941-11-1CollisionPhotosPH541-41.jpg
It is confusing how bright is the color above the black belt, supposed to be 5-D. How big the contrast is between black belt and color that is „darker than black“ when new.
I know, photo can be overexposed to better show details of the damage hidden in the shadow. But against it is black, which is pretty black and not medium/dark grey. Even the hull red is the darker shade of grey than „5-D“ here.
Plus, what are those dark/ black blotches on the hull? Dark grey 5-D from USS Oklahoma, or original underlying 5-D at USS Arizona? Or something else?

Seems that 5-D had to get chalked pretty serious and fast. Or was (at least) the hull already painted in some different, lighter color?

A couple of notes about film photography. One, if you have no experience with film photography, understand that the whole process of producing a print is world's different than digital cameras and inkjet/laser printers. The film is exposed and processed to produce a negative of a subject. There were at least two major different B&W film in use in 1940's, and they had different spectral responses. Which one is used here isn't known.

In either case, the next step after having a negative, is to put it in an enlarger (or lay direct on the photo paper for a "contact" print) and turn on a timed light through the negative to expose the light sensitive print paper and then process the print through chemical baths. How then, if the person processing the negative is interested in showing a subject, they will adjust the exposure time and bath processing time to get the result required. It was fairly easy to make a "dark" subject much lighter so details could be seen.

Plus, in this photo we don't know if they have already done some sandblasting to reveal the damaged area to see just how much damage was done prior to repairing. There could be several layers of old paint and they would want to clear away that paint so they can see the damage to the various seams, etc, of the shell plating.

As for fading and chalking of 5-D paint, just look at the hull of USS CLARK (DD-361) just a couple of posting above this one.

Here is a chart with paint samples in the Ships-1 camo document dated in early 1941. You can see the relative colors of the paints in use at the time when freshly applied.

There is no 5-D in this pic. Everything in this shot is well below the water line and down by the bilge keel which can be seen in the pic.

Regarding the difference between 5-D and black: Note the funnels & caps on DD-361 in Rick E. Davis's first photo. It won' apply to all viewing conditions and certainly will apply differently in B&W pics, but at least in this very nice color photo there is definitely a difference when they're actually applied right next to each other and not in adjacent, but slightly separated color chips.
- Sean F.

Thanx for answers. I went through Tracy's page about collision again. I have to admit I missed one detal - the top of the damage is about four feet (1.25 meters) below the waterline... http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/BB39/1941Collision/1941-11-1CollisionPhotosPH541-41.jpg So is all that area in hull red color? I was confused with that black belt ("W.T. BHD#75" is written there) and very light area above it.
This photo http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/BB39/1941Collision/1941-11-1CollisionPhotosPH542-41.jpg with the shipyard worker standing at the bottom put the size of the damage to the better perspective. If the top of the damage is only four feet below the waterline, where is black belt separating hull red from dark grey?

An interesting thing about this photo is that I cant really see any tonal difference of USS Tucker's "lighter dark gray" compared to Clark and Cummings. Also, Shaw has two different colored stacks and her forward guns are 5-D. She has some very interesting things going on.

I think the boot might be that grungy patch in the upper right corner of photo 541, which is out-of-frame in photo 542. I expect that after some time at sea the demarcation between the red and black can get a bit less sharp, and the black... well, not so black, with a bit of sea growth and water surface scum build-up.

- Sean F.

Going back to the Enterprise piece that Don and Ron claimed was 5-D and used extensively as a reference for 5-D paint. I went back and re-read Don’s Nautical Research Journal article. To my amazement he answers my question right in the article of whether or not that broken off piece is the one referenced in the document dated March 18, 1941.
Here is a pic of his published words.


It appears now that Ron and Don probably used a black piece of USS Enterprise’s mainmast and called it 5-D to support their argument that Arizona was painted 5-S not 5-D.

Two things;

1. The paint used on the underwater hull wasn't just ONE PAINT, the USN used if I remember right a series of three different paints. After cleaning off an underwater hull for repainting, they applied basically a primer. Then another coat that I can't remember what its purpose or makeup was. The final coat was an epoxy paint that was suppose to be anti-barnacles growth. Also, at least one of the coats of paint went up well past the boot stripe. All of these paints were special paints for use underwater and to aid in fighting sea "critters" growth. The "Top Coat", camo paint, was applied over this overlap strip and the rest of the upper hull. I ran into one destroyer in BuShips Files that the USN applied like a dozen different underwater paints on her hull, from something like a half dozen manufacturers for an evaluation. They had a map of where each paint was used, and the next drydocking they were going to assess how well each paint worked.

2. The "tonal" nature of USS CUMMINGS camo scheme. I really wish the aircraft/photographer that took the color image of these five destroyers flew around the nest and took additional photos. They may very well did, but this is the only photo still available. Anyway, the differences you note "MAY" have been originally applied back in the Spring of 1941, or because the phase of camo evaluation was over, the ships were left in limbo and some repainting had occurred. Actually, I had always questioned the date on this photo given that they part of the evaluation was done and by August the Pacific Fleet was looking at newer paints and schemes. I would have expected that the four destroyers in DesDiv 6 would have been repainted to Ms 1. That is why I dug into Deck Logs to date this photo and found that it really was taken in mid-October 1941. Maybe USS CUMMINGS was painted to Ms 1 by this time. However, I have never seen anything that spelled out what the "Slightly Lighter" Dark Gray paint looked like. It could be that after awhile 5-D and this experimental paint both faded to a point where they looked about the same? I have no idea. After the first phase camo evaluation report was done and submitted, there was no additional correspondence about these four destroyers.

Another interesting aspect of the Pacific Fleet Camo evaluation, in the initial evaluation for the destroyers, units of DesDiv 17 were also involved. These were SIMS class units that were reassigned to the Atlantic Fleet in June 1941 (they had been assigned to the Pacific Fleet from February to June), before the evaluation was done. These paint schemes would have been applied before the SIMS class got King Board Mods were accomplished. I have NOT FOUND a single photo of any of these units during the period with these camo schemes. There have been some distant images of USN destroyers painted in dark colors taken by news photographers at San Diego, and as indicated below, USS ROE was paint BLACK. Hmmmm ...

USS MORRIS (DD-417) ... MS 2 Graded
USS ROE (DD-418) ... Ms 4 BLACK
USS WAINWRIGHT (DD-419) ... Ms 3 Light Gray with Ms 5 False Bow Wave
USS BUCK (DD-420) ... Ms 1 Dark Gray

Interesting... I never expected we'd circle back to the Enterprise mast sample! Or that the earlier assessment of it being a pure sample of 5-D was in doubt. But even so, even back then I noticed that in too many photos, of different provenances, that you can tell the difference between 5-D and black funnel caps or boot toppings, enough to doubt the assessment that 5-D was literally "darker than black" like an official paint chip might imply. Once it's on the real thing, they really do look different. (But undoubtedly, still very dark)

- Sean F.

Ok, gots one more question...

I would like to see your evidence that the part, and overall the mast, was painted black and not 5-D....

The March 18th document is a provenance document, it proves the piece Ron discovered that was placed in the BoS archives in May is the actual piece that came from the Enterprise's mast....

Now it is what he claimed, and it did come from a part of the ship that would have been painted 5-D in Measure 1...

So now, the question becomes show us your proof that it was painted Black instead of 5-D dark grey...

Your statement... "It appears now that Ron and Don probably used a black piece of USS Enterprise’s mainmast...."

It's now on your researchers shoulders to prove it was painted black.... because your the one claiming it wasn't 5-D, prove it...

When 5-D ws fresh painted, it was darker than black, problem is it didn't stay that way very long in an operational environment.... and there is a lot of evidence in the records to the complaints of exactly that... the inordinate amounts of painting needed to keep it dark. Ship Captains, Division commanders, force commanders all have reports of 5-D failing to live up to what it was supposed to be, very dark with low reflectance... In fact when it started chalking up it's reflectance went through the roof causing the ships under their command to stick out like a beacon at night...

That's the main reason that it's life in the navy was so short and they decided to get rid of it before the premixed manufactured stocks of it were even in the supply pipeline.....
All I can figure is it has to do with the blue/black tinting paste they supplied to be mixed with #5 Standard Navy Grey (creating "composite" 5-D) reacted with the base paint to cause it's rapid deterioration....

It's also why they decided to go to the purple/blue 5-TM tinting paste for their blue based formulations.... and get away from the blue/black lampblack based tinting cause it just didn't last....

Was it a pure fresh sample of 5-D, highly unlikely since it came off a part of the ship that was in service, to determine how fresh it was we would need to know the date it was last painted before the damage necessitating the repair was discovered.......

Personally I would need proof it was actually painted black rather than 5-D before claiming it wasn't, especially with the evidence in hand.....

Apply the same level of scrutiny to the claim of black paint as applied to the claim of 5-D....