The Ship Model Forum

For anyone planning a model of the ship, I recently got photos from the 19G vs 80 G collection, some not seen before on the net as far as I know. I put all model worthy photos I have onto one word document starting with the bow at top and the stern at the bottom. I then put the navsource camo photos that are usable onto the bottom of the page. I already emailed it successfully to a model friend. If anyone wants it let me know.

By the way I am going back to NARA in the next few months to continue the search for photos of the ship after the superstructure was apparently re painted into off white/haze grey in mid June of 42, after the NYC photos were taken. If I have any luck I will put them on this site.

I also have construction photos and closeups of the bow looking forward if anyone needs them.

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FRED BRANYAN

Does this help?

As an update to the photos I posted on page 11, I went to NARA again a few weeks ago to search documents, memos, correspondence etc in several Navy files hoping to find photos related to a report done by another cruiser on the camo applied to Juneau on 6/15-16/42 at Argentia Newfoundland. I had no luck. However a fellow researcher told me that a worker at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during WWII took a lot of photos now in the hands of the Brooklyn Public Library. I have contacted the Brooklyn PL, the Boston National Archives, and the Navy War College at Newport searching for camo photos. I am awaiting final news from those 3. After the re paint job above the only US ports the ship went to were Boston and Newport. By the way the archive at the Boston Navy Yard also advises they have no photos.If by some miracle any photos turn up I will post them here.

In the meantime I adjusted the contrast/brightness on one of the Laffey photos on page 11 and may have discovered by accident portions of the new pattern on the port superstructure. Not positive whether what I am looking at is the new pattern or photo/computer issues. If anyone wants the photo involved let me know.

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FRED BRANYAN

Fred I'm trying the same thing. Can you post a picture of what you found?

The NHHC has posted Quincy photos in dock at Brooklyn with Juneau in the background at the sites below.

http://www.history.navy.mil/our-collect ... a-39-.html

http://www.history.navy.mil/our-collect ... a-39-.html

The top one shows the PORT side with the white camo on the hull from about the aft stack back to the stern. You will note the blue pattern is different from the other side and also appears to be a lighter blue unless it is the sun. Both the visible pattern in the Laffey photos and the lighter color blue match the Laffey photos. The bottom photo was taken with the old hull camo but has some of the port forward superstructure camo in it. That photo also clearly shows the boot stripe location.

I tried to upload a crop of the ship in the top photo no luck. If anyone wants it let me know.

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FRED BRANYAN

Yes, when I get Mathimatica reinstalled on my Laptop, I can run it through an image processing filter that has algorithms for all kinds of pattern detection, which will then give me the Photoshop settings I need to produce the best image for the given pattern.

Often if you get a collection of pattern filters for a given image, and then overlay each of the filters to create a new image, you can get a vastly better image than by individual processing in Photoshop.

I will be moving to my Atlanta and Juneau (along with the Kinugasa and Aoba) when I get finished with the Nagara, Sendai, and San Francisco. So having some better images of her cammo would be good.

MB

Edit: I would still like a better copy of the Juneau photo that shows it "looking" as if it is a single lighter-grey color.

BUT.....

A simple contrast adjustment on my iPad of the image shows that it is wearing the exact same pattern as we see in the last post before this one (the "history.naval.mil" images with the Juneau to the Starboard side of the Quincy).

The photo showing the Juneau in the Pacific (the one in front of the Laffey, I think) is just a photo where the depth of field on the camera was not sufficient to allow for both the Foreground destroyer to be exposed correctly, and the Juneau to be exposed correctly as well.

The photographer probably did not have time to estimate light readings from the Juneau (which, given the tools available in that era would have been impossible to take a direct reading from the Juneau anyway) in order to set his iris correctly to expose both the DD he the Juneau so that one or the other would not be blown-out. The photographer obviously chose to open the Iris more to get the darker painted Destroyer to be clear in the photo, which would have allowed a LOT of light from the distant, and lighter colored Juneau to overexpose that area of the film.

If we had the negative, we could probably recover the Juneau from the overexposure by developing it separately from the foreground image (a technique I learned from one of my best friends who got a MFA in photography from Georgia State in Atlanta). But I am going to guess that this negative is long-gone... Pity.

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OMG LOOK! A signature

Working on:


1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

BTW, what you see in that photo of the Juneau that looks like it is all one color is an example of why the Navy decided that the Camouflage scheme of that type did not work.

An overexposure is very similar to what happens to images, or objects at a great distance:

Their color is all washed out, and colors can often bleed or run together, making things like a blue next to a yellow appear as a green (rather than two distinct, discrete colors), or a black area next to a white area simply appear as a grey area. A phenomenon known as "Mach Bands" is further amplified in this case, where the opposing colors, in creating a contrasting area next to each other inverts the two colors, creating an in-between color (or an absorption-spectrum blend, if it is actual "colors" like Red, Yellow, Blue, instead of a "tone/shade/tint" like black/white/grey).

MB


OOPS.... I forgot to ask:

Earlier, it was mentioned that the 1/700 Dragon kits of the Juneau/Atlanta had the armor belt runner no too far back (since it runs all the way to the stern).

If I were to re-build the stern and armor belt with sheet styrene (since it isn't exactly rocket-science back there on the ship), I would just need to close off the bottom sides and stern of the hull, flush with the main hull part down to the waterline, and then add a 1/16" thick piece of styrene following the deck-line (at the same height as the original belt) starting from just under the wing-turrets up to where the belt originally begins on the kit... Is that about all that needs to be done to correct the belt?

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OMG LOOK! A signature

Working on:


1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

Matthew,

For SOME of the 80-G photos at NARA, the negatives do exist. I don't know about this photo however. Without the 80-G number, I can't check on it. The two images of QUINCY at the NYNY appear to be yard photos and may be in the 19-LCM collection, where there is a higher probability of the negatives existing. But, NARA doesn't allow researchers to scan negatives themselves, you have to hire a vendor to do that ... at a cost.

Many of the NHHC photos also are at NARA, actually Chuck Haberlein the former Head of Photo Collections at NHHC, researched in NARA for photos for their collection years ago.

If the negatives do exist, then getting very high resolution (at least as high as the grain in the film) scans of the negatives would be the most valuable thing.

The negatives, if not too terribly overexposed can carry information that is not (or was not) possible to extract using traditional developing techniques.

While partial, segmented, or sequential developing did exist at the time, they did not have access to the digital tools that can extract or recover image data that would be difficult for even very advanced developing tools to recover.

Such as a better look at the armor belt on this class.

To say nothing of being able to create stencils for the camo patterns.

MB

_________________
OMG LOOK! A signature

Working on:


1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

Rick, I believe those photos are in the range of 80-G-13605 thru 13612.

After I looked in my image files, I realized I have been through this series of 80-G photos (80-G-13605-13612) just this summer back in July. I was interested in the images of LAFFEY and honestly paid little attention to the "poor" quality image of JUNEAU in the background, I didn't even realize it was her. But, I don't recall if the mounting card noted if there is or isn't a negative. I will need to go back and pull that box and take a look to see. I have a different (better?) scanner and maybe I'll try a close crop hi-res scan of JUNEAU to see if what I get is better (I can see scan lines in this image, which was one of the reasons I got a newer scanner). The photo I did scan that has JUNEAU in the background was one of the better images of her to begin with from the images shown on page 11.

I scan photos at NARA cropped to the useful part of the image and "as is" without playing with the image quality, unless I have a rare need to. Even then I do both as is and adjusted. I'm no expert in adjusting or playing with images. Normally the only time I do is to pick out a washed out image to look for what little detail I can and even then only bother for ships that have little photographic coverage.

Here is what I had as is;



Here is the total image I scanned with as best I can adjust the contrast, etc to pull out the cruiser which makes LAFFEY go DARK. Note that the image size of the cruiser is actually quite small in the total photo;



Then I cropped that image down to just JUNEAU and you can see it isn't much of an improvement and we are getting to the limit of the photo. Note that you can see faint "fingerprints" on the original photo;

Photo of a "mystery" CLAA of the Atlanta class at Santa Cruz. Photo courtesy of Fred Branyan via Roger Torgeson from the US Archives NARA II. Note Hornet under tow by Northampton in the background:



I thinks this is one of the few (if only) photo I've seen with the waist guns trained in a position other than straight aft. I'll let Fred comment further, but if I recall correctly, he believes that the CLAA is the Juneau, with her camouflage pattern painted out.

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Are you sure that is the Hornet under tow by the Northampton?

I can swear I can see light between the stack and the bridge.

Could be my imagination.... Others would know far better than I.


MB

_________________
OMG LOOK! A signature

Working on:


1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

I have tried to get a contrast corrected image of the Juneau (of the above, blown-out, low-contrast image), but to get the detail of the image, it needs to be of too high a quality for the site to allow it to be posted (too large).

And, without the false-color, it is hard to tell that the camouflage on the Juneau is indeed still there.

Technically you can make it out if you look carefully. You can see, on the stern of the ship's port side, the wavy pattern of the darker grey just above the waterline.

I cannot get a large enough file to show the cammo pattern that will post.

If I blow-up the image in PS, and then use a Smith Micro image sharpening application on it, I cannot get the image at a size small enough to post and still show the cammo pattern.

I do have the images (B/W, not false-color..... yet), so if anyone wants to see the contrast increased images, let me know, and I can email them to you (they are about 9MB).

MB

_________________
OMG LOOK! A signature

Working on:


1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

Martin

Thanks for posting the photos.

This photo has appeared before over the years in a much worse format and ID’d the mystery ship as San Diego.

I have a photo of the real San Diego taken at a much longer range that is lousy quality and you can still see some of the camo. Why is it that zero camo appears on this ship? THERE WERE NO SOLID COLOR CL 51 SHIPS IN THE PACIFIC IN OCTOBER OF 42. Note also the weird paint job on the hull on the photo. Looks to me like maybe someone painted on the photo?

Meanwhile check the bottom photo Martin posted yesterday. Note the 3 tube type gizmos below mount 3. Then check the bottom of my photos on page 11. Note an identical gizmo in the same location below mount 3. If the other 2 are there they appear to be blocked by crew or objects. THESE GIZMOS APPEAR ON NO OTHER CL 51 CLASS PHOTO IN 1942 THAT I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FIND.

Next take a look at the Noumea photo at https://crashmacduff.wordpress.com/tag/military-monday/. Supposedly the CLAA is San Juan but looks awful close to white to my eyes. Only Juneau had white on it. Then check the confirmed Juneau photo at http://www.cl54.com/album/details.php?i ... 6793fe358d. Why is it that both CLAA ships in the photo posted yesterday are in a dark color when one of them has to be Juneau?

So, yes I think this very dark ship is Juneau. And yes I think the original photo or the negative was tampered with.

If anyone is interested I have a document here that explains my deep suspicions about the LAFFEY-JUNEAU series of photos. One example every other CLAA 51 class photo on navsource shows shadows below the searchlight platforms on the stacks. See any shadows in the photos on page 11? Maybe the camera or the lighting was really the cause. Maybe not. In any event if any of you want the document let me know I will email it to you.

I will be building a 1/350 model of the ship sometime in the next year or so. Rest assured it will be in light colors.

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FRED BRANYAN

To clear any possible confusion, the post above thanks Martin but is addressed to all of us. As he suggested the purpose was to put my theory on the recent photo out there for anyone who is interested.

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FRED BRANYAN

Apparently, my post did not go through here regarding the earlier photos of the Juneau that look to be all one color.

Either that or I posted it elsewhere, in the wrong thread, or in a right thread, but on a different topic.

I managed to get a contrast enhanced image processed that shows that the exposure of the Juneau is simply "blown-out" (overexposed) in order to get the Destroyer in front of it (which was a very dark color) to stand out.

I have managed to get the camouflage pattern to show up.

BUT....

The image is too large to post here.

And, when I reduce the image, it does not look right (I am going to try it again with a different source image, to see if it has enough data to lift the cammo pattern from).

So, given that I cannot post it, I can email it to anyone who is interested.

It does not have the entire Cammo pattern, as that would be beyond the computational power of this computer to resolve within the time-frame of the heat-death of the universe (given the lack of pixel-data in the image for most of the image). I just raised the cammo pattern on the rear port side of the hull.

But if you compare it to other images of the Juneau, you will see that it is an exact match for the cammo pattern on the Juneau.

PM me with your email address, and I will send a copy of the image. It is about 9MB.

And, as I said, I will give another attempt at an export or save at a lower size or quality to get a photo/image that will post here.

MB

_________________
OMG LOOK! A signature

Working on:


1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

Great photos. Did all the sisters carry the midships life rafts, mounted in pairs?

It's your imagination. It's Hornet.

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Dan

Good point.

Per all of the San Diego photos I have, some on line but some from a crewman, she did NOT have 2 rafts side by side amidships.

Tracy White sent me an email suggesting the gizmos might be floater rafts. Another good call. The gizmos are not visible in the 1/43 San Diego photo on navsource.

Fred

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FRED BRANYAN