I just came into possession of four Soviet World War II submarine models-- by which I mean that not only are the subs depicted of Soviet origin, but the kits themselves are, too! Unsurprisingly, they're dirt-simple things, carelessly made and without a lot of detail, and the packaging is fascinatingly shoddy. A neat thing, though, is that the instructions for all four suggest three different color schemes, one for each of three different fleets:
1. Northern Fleet-- dark green overall, except for the deck, which is black. 2. Baltic Fleet-- medium gray overall above the waterline, and dark green or red-brown below. 3. Black Sea Fleet-- light gray vertical surfaces above the waterline, with medium gray deck and dark green or red-brown underhull.
Schemes 2 and 3 seem to match photos I've seen of WW2-vintage subs preserved as museum ships here and there in Russia, and Scheme 1 at least sounds plausible as a successor to some turn-of-the-century thinking on how to paint torpedo boats for coast defense. I'm curious, though, if anybody here knows anything that would complicate the picture.
Meanwhile, since I've got four models to work with, I thought I'd try to complete the set by painting one of them for the Pacific Fleet, but of course there were no instructions for that. Does anyone know how the Soviets painted their Pacific subs between, say, 1930 and 1945?
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