In re: cargo ship colors, here's a very useful series of color sketches by a convoy commodore during the war. Apparently some ships did indeed keep the black hull paint for a long time after war broke out...also, tankers were often painted with tan superstructure and funnel for some reason.

https://i.postimg.cc/0Q30kSPV/DSP0e-I9-XUAIsvm-D.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/KY05WVVS/Hext-R...drawings-0.jpg


https://i.postimg.cc/LXhVFDKq/Hext-Rogers-SL38.jpg

Oh, okay, I had misunderstood you. That happened before the USA joined the Allied side. American pilots fought as volunteers though, so I suppose they were operating RAF aircraft.
What about ships? You had mentioned something about US vessels wearing British ensigns. I know that a number of US destroyers were involved in the so called "Neutrality Patrols", which actually were a covert way for the USA to defend their own coasts and Allied shipping against the U-baot menace even before December '41, but I believe those warships to have sailed under US flag.

:up:

You did an excellet job bby, your degree in history is paying back the college fees :D:yep:

WOW, I was hoping for some more color photographs but those hand drawings are actually better!

I wish we could have access to the full series. Ah btw I have found the name of the talented Commodore, he was the Rear Admiral Hugh Hext Rogers. Here is some background:

https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/...onvoy-drawings

Are you insinuating that our "primary source" wasn't aggressive enough lol? :haha:

Stumbled upon this thread covering the same topic as well:

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=152218

Some interesting information from there:
- Early war British regulations were supposedly different:
"black hulls and funnels, with brown or dark buff superstructure, masts and derricks"
vs later in the war:
"dark grey hull and funnel, with brown or dark buff as above"
and by 1943:
"By 1943 Allied shipping was pretty standardised on all over grey. However the exact shade could vary depending on what was available. Where possible many still used dark grey hull and lighter upper works."

- availability of specific paints was a problem especially if ships were spread over many ports, so it wouldn't be unusual to have convoy consist of varied paint schemes. Still, general rule was to paint everything in dull colours.

-on varnished wood:
"many of the older ships had varnished brown derricks and masts, and this was often retained as the dull colour was considered sufficient"

- decks and upper surfaces were painted in dullest possible colours by ships approaching European waters, because of widespread fear of being bombed by Condor aircraft. This was done outside of regulations, often at sea with any paints on hand so shades would vary depending on what paints were available.

My bad!! Silent Otto Kretschmer was never in Wolfpack West which attacked convoy OB 330. Engelbert Endraß, however was, in command of U-46 which attacked the convoy; sinking HMS Phidias Jun 9, 1941 https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/br/phidias.jpg

Quote:

was hit by one torpedo from U-46 north of the Azores, but it did not explode. The U-boat was now out of torpedoes, so they opened fire at 00.10 hours with the deck gun. The ship first fought back, but soon she caught fire and stopped shooting because the crew abandoned ship. At 00.45 hours, the U-boat ceased fire after firing 71 rounds and left the burning and sinking wreck. The master and seven crew members were killed.

and damaging Hms Ensis the day before on Jun 8 1941:

Quote:

The tanker was en route from London to Curaçao in ballast.(ie: outbound empty with ballast water) Both torpedoes hit, but one was a dud. The damaged ship proceeded under own power to St. Johns, arriving on Jun 15, 1941.

https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/br/ensis.jpg both depicted in Commodore, Rear Admiral Hugh Hext Rogers sketches...along with HMS's Mercier and Tresillian; both sunk by two other West wolfpack U-boats. HMS Ensis had ultimately "put paid" to Endraß's patrol though, as she had rammed U-46 after being torpedoed, necessitating U-46's return to St Nazaire for repairs. https://i.pinimg.com/236x/14/a0/5e/1...1e6525e804.jpg Subsequently (pun intended) HMS Ensis would survive two more U-boat encounters and survive the war!

Quote:

At 01.10 hours on 4 Apr 1942, the Ensis was slightly damaged by 20mm gunfire from U-572 in 35°43N/66°08W (grid CB 7588). At 17.04 hours on 29 Feb 1944 the Ensis was torpedoed and damaged by U-407, while in an unknown convoy in the Mediterranean.

Conclusion: Commodores can be passive artists; it's those nasty tanker captains who take up the slack and survive!!:Kaleun_Salute:

Strangely, HMS Phidias is not listed in OB.330 on Arnold Hague database : http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/ob2/index.html

Sorry for hijacking this thread... :oops:

This confirms my idea that, in war time, it was not so easy to find the exact paint color as required by "official" rules... :


I'm not a native english speaker, and I can't understand very well what does the key word "dull" mean (even with WordReference.com). Does it mean "dark" ?

So in fact, "dull" paint was better than "light grey" ? ... This would be logical, since dark paint will render your ship less noticeable from the air and during night times.

Also not a native speaker but afaik "dull" means low saturation, or an opposite of bright. So, any color as long as it's not bright and saturated, with shades of gray being dullest by definition.

Hence why (unfortunately for someone wishing his ship models to look cool) "dull" also means "boring" :-)

Ogólnie rzecz biorąc, wszystko jest złe! Da Kapuhy? :timeout:
I think. that I should try to draw something for ships using a color table courtesy of our amigos.

:up:

This transition must have happened around mid 1941, since one of the sketches posted by iambecomelife, relative to Convoy OB.330 (June 1941), depicts ships painted with either of the two schemes in more or less equal proportions. Judging by the same drawing, grey hulls with buff upper works and funnels was another possible scheme:



Another of the convoy sketches posted by iambecomelife is notable too, as it depicts a number of funnels painted in brilliant colours:



Unfortunately its resolution is rather poor. Notes and captions are not easily discernible, but despite that I managed identifing the convoy as Convoy SL.60 (July 1940). What would be interesting is comparing funnel colors with the company colours of each ship.

This is more or less the standard colour scheme adopted in stock game, though I don't remember superstructures to be painted in a lighter shade of gray than hulls.

By the way: did you manage solving the problem of LOD models not matching the color of main models (i.e. configurable textures not applying to them)?

Has anyone checked if two ships sharing the same 3D model can be rendered at the same time with two different textures if one of them is set as a "proxy clone" with its own texture?

Both issues might be a major obstacle to having more ship color variety in game :hmmm:

Obviously an oversight since the same database lists Phidias among the losses of Convoy OB.330:

http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/ob/index...ses.htm~obmain

You are on topic Mister_M, OB.330 is one of the convoys "in color" we are discussing, and SS Phidias is among the ships skecthed by Commodore Rogers as part of that convoy :yep:

Maybe the Hague dtabase includes enscorts in the count? :hmm2:

EDIT: no, I just checked that, it doesn't

In part, yes.

Indeed time factors and paint availability played a big role. Many ships were sunk before they could be repainted, and there was no colour omogenity among the ones which eventually were repainted. You were right on that, but you had also speculated that old ships might have been not worth the extra paint, and this is the point that I and kapuhy disagreed on :)

:up:

Good idea, but please read my final notes at post #30

Here are some - in German - regualations about interiors of ships and submarine.

From the General Regulations No. 31, March 1940 edition, regulation for applying paint to ships and vehicles of the Kriegsmarine D. Paints for submarines: http://www.u-boote-online.de/dieboot...aerz_1940.html

From the General Regulations No. 31, July 1944 edition, regulation for the application of paint on ships and vehicles of the Kriegsmarine D. Paints for submarines: http://www.u-boote-online.de/dieboot...juli_1944.html


https://i.postimg.cc/xTKMXH1P/German...-jpg-thumb.png


https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pr...TlgB0NSKkCz8EL


https://www.shipcamouflage.com/images/kriegsmarine3.jpg

Oh thank you GrenSo, that's another nice contribution, I only wish I knew a bit of German :doh:

BTW: do you happen to know if there was any special colour regulation which applied to German merchant ships non-commissioned in the KriegsMarine? I know most of them were either seized in enemy ports, confiscated in neutral ports or blocked in friendly ports, but a number of them saw active service either as coastal shipping or as blockade runners, and I wonder which colours might be more realistic for them.

PHIDIAS is not in the list and this is obviously an error.

The list has 4 more extra ships (all British) :
- CITY OF BARCELONA
- KING EDWARD
- STANLAKE
- TORTUGUERO

There are also different spellings (drawing/database) :

- BORGHOLM / BORNHOLM
- PRINCESS MARIA PIA / PRINSES MARIA-PIA
- BANGKALIKAT / MANGKALIHAT
- LANGLETARN / LANGLEETARN

Who's right, who's wrong ?

I'm not sure that new paint would camouflage them better. They are smaller than Liberty ships for example, and they emit black smoke, which instantly nullifies the effect of camouflage (against sea spotters). But it was certainly useful to camouflage them from air spotters, with dull paint on the deck and upper surfaces... :03:

Also :

Probably same as for the allied size : hide all shiny and saturated colors with grey paint. And perhaps sometimes a camo pattern... Just speculating... :hmmm:

Here is my analysis of the commodore's (Hugh Hext Rogers) drawing of convoy OB.330 ships (assuming that colors are accurate) :

1. Ships with their original colors : hulls are black (sometimes dark grey), and upper structures are white, light yellow, buff or brown, funnels have different colors (orange, blue, black). MANAQUI is plain dark grey (maybe a repaint ?). Many of them are British (so "rules" are not very respected...).



2. Ships with hull (probably) repainted in grey : most of ships are tankers, it's a light grey paint.



3. Ships with superstructures (probably) repainted in grey : the hull remains very dark (black). HEINA superstructures are perhaps actually white... :hmmm:



4. Ships in plain grey (probably a war repaint) : note that there are different shades of grey from ship to ship...

Unfortunately, the answer is "no" on both questions.

As for LOD problem, only workarounds for it that I know of are:

1) disable/delete LOD file forcing game to render main model at all distances.
2) set LOD switching distance to far enough and make color variations similar enough that player would not notice color switch at LOD distance.

As for second question - I did a test with one of my coasters, created a clone and set it to use another texture, then put both ships (original and clone) together in one scene. Both showed up with the same texture set. This might warrant another test though since I did it just once and might simply have made some error in configuration.

That's easy to discover:

https://southampton.spydus.co.uk/cgi...GTRN/WPAC/HOME

Enter ship's name in the search field and check the results. If no record is displayed, the spelling is probably wrong

You may be right or wrong, but I don't think this is the actual point. Whether camouflages were effective or not, they were used, this is a fact, and we are trying to discover which ones were used and when :)

Oh, that's a cool analysis, well done! :up:

I am preparing a similar analysis for the other convoy whose sketch we have available (SL.60). I will get it finished tomorrow.

Okay, talking about proxy clones a trick that comes to me mind is placing secondary textures directly in clone's folder rather than in the folder of the main unit. It probably won't work, but it is worth an attempt anyway :hmmm: