[Von Hilde]

either rusting and staining the paint to appear darker or have just been re painted after corrosion control and appear lighter in the B&W pics, its hard to tell. If you check out close ups of the 505 and the 995 there is no oil canning and in fact, the outer hull rivets are mostly flush, small and somewhat indented. The Vesiko, appears that way as well. Thats due to the fact that when the boats came in for a short time between patrolls, the crew would hang over the side and hammer the rust off the rivets, and slop some red lead in the void and repaint just touching up around the rusty area. Not much time to spend painting the entire hull but alot of touch up on rusty worn spots. The tower and above deck were constantly being chipped and painted while underway. The, at sea corrosion control, on steel ships, was standard procedure to hammer the rust and old paint off, wire brush the area, then apply the red lead over the bare metal, before painting the color coat. This procedure was common among all Navy and merchant marine ships up until the advent of the air power hammers and grinders of today. You can see the different shades of grey paint areas in most close ups of the boats, where they have been chipped and painted,as well as some sections that were red leaded primer but not yet painted grey. I say,"Sand them rivets, on the Revell boats, those things are the size of goose eggs in 1/72 scale"