Posted by James Pepper on November 24, 1999 at 17:10:17 in 205.188.200.48 :
In Reply to: To James Pepper posted by Blake on November 24, 1999 at 11:05:36:
Dear Blake:
My Olympics are built to F-deck, with everything in them, the working engines, turbine, propellers, etc. And since it takes nine months to build a ship, and I am constructing 6 ships at this time, it is going to take a while to get up to the proper levels. I have been planning two Olympics in Dazzle for a long time now. The picture in Hull Down is an excellent print of the ship, it was colorized. That picture was taken by a naval plane observer and it is sharp! The funnel stripe color on the 4th funnel was very dark, almost black. I do not think it was light blue. On this photograph it looked either red or black. Black was a color used in camouflage. There were many critics of the use of White, since it is an unnatural color at sea and it would surely indicate a ship.
Finding information on ship camouflage is difficult because as you know it was a military secret, even in the twenties it is hard to find. I wonder if that colorized photograph was the right colors. If it was printed even in World War II, the colors may be a red-hering. They would keep military camouflage a secret as long as possible, all ships photographed in World War II had to go past the Navy, who edited them, mainly to get rid of the radar posts. Changing camouflage colors on a tinted photograph during the twenties and thirties would not be a problem.
During World War II ship camouflage got more professional, as can be seen in the color footage of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and the kamakazi attack on the Benjamin Franklin Aircraft Carrier.
The color will be applied as I build the portholes, as the ship is built, since the exterior paper is an intergral part of the structure of the ship. I can't just make the black background of a regular ship, because the paper must be opaque, so if it is a white section, the paper must be white underneath, the same for yellow green etc.
It should get interesting as I get to D-deck. All of the machinery is completed on the ships from the Tank Top to F-Deck, the rudder is not applied until the C-deck floor is built.
The ships, photographs of my entire fleet, will be posted on the Debris Field soon, see the link below.
Sincerely,
James Pepper