The Ship Model Forum

Why funnel cap sometimes was silver (Aluminumbronze 16) or black? It depands on camouflage, year or place where ship was in battlefield?

Even in B/W photos, pics of Bismarck at Grimstadtfjord (during Rhineubung) shows the funneltops reflecting light differently than the rest of the ship - with a metallic shine. So it must have been Aluminumbronze at that time. You have to check pics carefully wherever a clear shot of the funneltops are visible for the period you want to model the ship in. That goes for any DKM ship.

for example



two photos Z-1, one with black funnel cap and one with silver funnel cap. Photos from German destroyers of world war Gerhard Koop.

Still I don't understand why funnel cap sometimes was silver and sometimes was black?

This is just conjecture so I know there are many holes,but, different ships of the same class seemed to get different color funnel hoods. Maybe aluminumbronze was new and they didn't want to commit to it for the whole fleet. Or, silver funnel caps might be easier to see, so it was a test, or silver was in short supply, or, they couldn't decide which they liked best. I know this doesn't help at all but at least there is plenty of documentation for which color to use at most periods of the ships careers.

I'm not really familiar with the destroyers, but just guessing from the length of the nameplate and the pipes at the fwd funnel in the first photo, I would say this is Z3 Max Schultz. As far as I know they all had Aluminiumbronze funnel caps at the beginning, changing to black later. I'm not sure if this change had been made to all four of the (initial) type 1934. Maybe from Z5 Paul Jacobi (type 1934A) on everything was different again...


Happy painting ~ Olaf!