Quote:
Originally Posted by Katze
I was referring to the merchants' flag, which should be the NZ Red Ensign according to the wiki.
I'd have to look up the military flag for the WW2 period.
Edit: looks like during WWII the navy ships used the blue National Flag.
"During the Second World War New Zealand ships wore the National Flag in addition to Baffle Ensigns." - from http://navymuseum.co.nz/the-new-zealand-white-ensign/
I don't know if you can set up to have both flags in game (I notice they are currently using the same image file) but I've run into NZ merchants in the game ( even in the Med. ) more often than military (IE: never) |
The introduction of the red ensign defaced with the Southern Cross (i.e. the four white stars) as the
civil ensign of New Zealand dates back to 1901, so using it in game as the Kiwi merchant flag should be safe enough.
https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/nz_ens.html#cen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Ensign#New_Zealand
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Talking about the naval ensign, matters are a bit more complicated. The current national flag (i.e. the blue ensign defaced with four white-bordered red stars) was introduced in 1902, one year after the civil ensign. A Wikipedia article displays the same as the
naval jack of New Zealand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_New_Zealand_Navy
Another Wikipedia article reports the national flag being used by the Royal New Zealand Navy as
battle ensign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_o...lown_in_battle
These facts, and the confusion between
naval ensigns,
naval jacks and
battle ensigns, might mislead us in believing that the naval ensign of New Zealand used during WWII was the same as the current (blue with red stars) flag. A similar evenince would have been a bit unusual though, as the usage of (variously defaced) blue ensigns aboard Commonwealth vessels, has been traditionally associated with naval reserve, auxiliary services, special corps, governments, etc, but very rarely with navies (the Indian naval ensign used between 1879 and 1928 being a clear exception to that rule).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ensign
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Matter of factly, various sources agree that the
naval ensign used on RNZN vessels before the introduction of the current one (in 1968), was the undefaced white ensign, the same flown by the Royal Navy and by other Commonwealth Navies, though they don't state the year of its adoption by the Kiwi Navy (for RCN and RAN, the year is 1911).
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/phot...d-white-ensign
https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/nz%5Enav.html#rnzn
Yet another Wikipedia article confirms the usage by Commonwealth Navies of the white ensign together with the national flag of each country, flown respectively as naval ensign and naval jack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_...lth_of_Nations
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A few remarks about flag support by the game. As already stated by Vecko, we have two types of ensigns for each nation, that we can easily link to any vessel. In vanilla game, one of them is used as mechant flag (=civil ensign), while the other is meant for use as "naval flag", whatever that means. Discarding naval jacks (which are hoisted on a jackstaff near the bow of a vessel, a position never seen in game for warship flags), we can imagine that SH naval flags currently implemented represent either a naval ensign or a war ensign. Naval ensigns are hoisted near vessel's stern, and I think they are flown without interruption while a ship is sailing in open sea. Battle ensigns on the contrary are especially large ensigns (so that they can be easily spotted by friendly units) and they are usually flown from the main mast just before going into battle.
Unfortunately we cannot make in-game flags to be lowered while an AI ship is at anchor, or when she is cruising far from enemies; so, whether we opt to represent the one or the other ensign, we are going to face some limitations, the battle ensign being probably the least appropriate in most occasions where there is not a battle going on.
That said, I think we are not strictly limited to only have one type of flag on each warship. If we decide that the vanilla flag is, let's say, the naval ensign, we could add jack and battle ensign to any warship by setting them as equipments and by adding new equipment nodes in the correct position of each vessel. Then the new flags could be linked to each unit through eqp file, but in order to make the ships of each nation to sport their correct flags, we should create proxy copies of those units that are in more than one national roster, so that each nation has its own customized version of that class of vessels. A bit tricky, but still possible. The same goes for pennants and, with merchant vessels, for shipping companies house flags.
