Bismarck's Baltic Camoflage

[Karl Heidenreich]

Vic Dale:

There were a good number of holes made in the bow above water during Bismarck's last battle and I believe it has been considered impossible to determine accurately which one came from PoW.

As a matter of fact during the Cameron´s inmersions and filming PoW´s bow hit on Bismarck was identifiable. I also believe (not 100% sure about that) that Bill Jurens also identified the famous hit.

[Olaf]

@ Vic ~ I’m not sure if I understood you correctly… that the false bow wave(s) had been a) extended downwards in a way that there was no longer the boot-topping visible, thus 'touching' the RAL-8013 antifouling paint and b) extended forward by painting over the stem-shape? Or would have been a narrower version of the boot-topping be the most plausible thing to do? Difficult for me to explain, please have a look, which version, 1, 2 or 3, would it then be?



#1 is what I understand from all the sources stating that ‘the dark bow panel was painted over and that the false bow wave remained in place’…

#2 is what I understand from your reply although I’m not quite sure about the forward stem-shaped edge of the false bow wave.

#3 is my personal favourite as I don’t think they hassled around with overpainting the boot topping, or making it as narrow as below the false bow wave (which could have been the case with the dark bow panel in place anyway…).

There are so many possibilities such as narrow boot-topping (as under the bow wave), no boot-topping, enlengthened bow wave, enlarged (downwards) bow wave, etc, etc… I didn’t want to draw in every possible combination… that’s why I asked for wreck photos (or maybe footage), if anything is visible there.

Best ~ Olaf

[Vic Dale]

To Olaf.

It appears from close study of the wreck photos available here;

http://www.bismarck-class.dk/bismarck/w ... eck_1.html

that your No. 3 is the correct representation and the false bow has not been extended farther than half way down the boot topping.

Using IMG photo-suite I squeezed the photo sideways so as to counter the angle of view to some degree. The forward curve of the false wave can be seen - though shot through by PoW's shell - plus half the width of the boot topping.

Photo No. 35 on this site's gallery shows Bismarck underway having painted out the stripes and dark bow and stern and with her bow-wave altered as per your illustration. The ship has been retrimmed fore and aft and the false wave can be seen to have been immersed, so that the after vertical at it's base is not visible. Possilby when the ship was trimmed by the stern for painting at the bow and being so deeply laden with fuel, it did not permit more than half the boot topping forward to come out of the water.

From what I have been able to gauge from the way the aftward trimming lifted the bow, it seems that Bismarck was immersed so as to submerge her boot topping when she left Gotenhafen. Very likely she was carrying a good deal more fuel than has been prviously thought and indicates that the fore and after trimming cells were filled with oil, to give the extra bunkerage.

Hope this helps

Vic Dale

[Olaf]

Thanks a lot Vic, this helps a lot.
Very interesting that a question about something like a shape of a false bow wave can lead to other questions such as fuel capacity and fuel consumption, HA!

Of course I know all the photos and illustrations on John's site but as for the photos, I wasn't really sure about what I'm actually looking at. It would be really nice to see the port bow wave of the wreck...

Ok, with the bow wave now sorted, it would be nice to know (for model builders like me), what they did with the boot-topping when they painted on the dark bow panel in March at Kiel. Was it - below the dark bow and stern panels - half the width as below the wave/wake/stripes? (Which would mean that my No. 3 illustration is wrong as it depicts the boot-topping in full width fwd of the wave...)

Thanks again for your time and patience ~ Olaf

[Vic Dale]

It's a pleasure Olaf.

I have just put the photo of Bismarck at sea, having left Norway, through the mincer and lightened it up as far as it will go and it appears that the boot topping was not painted in forward of the bow wave. The ship's side grey extending down to cover the full extent of the dark grey, so the appearance forward of the false bow wave would conform to your No. 2.

If you think about it, there probably wasn't time to apply the boot topping as the first coat of ship's side grey had yet to dry out - about 6 to 12 hours. It may well be that it was deliberately left like this to indicate a job half done and to continue next day.

Vic

[Olaf]

Thanks again Vic ~ Okay, from my understanding now it appears to me that they trimmed the ship fore and aft in order to paint out both the bow and stern 'Dunkelgrau 2' plus the stern false wake. If I remember correctly, there are still parts of the b/w stripes at b/t-level visible on the wreck. I haven't been there but I remember having seen it on the Cameron DVD.

As to the b/t at the bow and stern. I took one of the Grimstad photos (from Steve Wiper's Warship Pictorial), scanned it in high resolution and it seems to be that even with the dark bow/stern panels painted on, there was either the b/t the width as below the false wave/wake or missing at all. So, my No. 3 is then definately wrong. I think I cannot post the photo from the book here because of the copyright... (and what the hell are those two guys doing atop "Anton" with that looooooooong stick? A barrel sweep? Taking/rolling off grey canvas?)

This means, that No. 2 would be more correct. I still don't know if there wasn't the lower half of the b/t left as it is...

But for this I need wreck photos/footage. I will have a look at the Cameron DVD again, I think it shows quite a lot of footage around the missing stern/rudder/screws area for obvious reasons...
Maybe there is something visible which could give an idea about what they may have done at the bow...

Best ~ Olaf

[Olaf]

Hi all again ~ May I change my mind here...?

In Kennedy's book about the Bismarck is a photo which shows the crew working on the foreship paint job. The 'Dunkelgrau 2' panel seems to be reaching down to the CWL, which means half the width of the boot-topping. The boot-topping on German WWII battleships stretched 1m below and 1m above the CWL (which is taller than me...). Ok, I have no idea if the ship is really floating exactly on its CWL but for modelling purposes it is close enough to let half of the boot-topping in place when the bow is darkened.

The same seems to apply to the stern. I watched the Cameron DVD again and I believe there is in one scene in which the ROV is leaving the hull downwards through the torpedo hole, and I believe there is a dark band (the rest of the boot-topping?) visible in the upper left corner of the screen.
Additionally, and I'm not entirely convinced about this one, when the DVD shows their "first" approach to the wreck, provided the scenes outside and inside of the submersibles are NOT a cut-and-paste-job, they approach the ship on its starboard side shortly behind the "Dora"-barbette. There, when they are hovering upwards the hull, is the forward end of the false stern wake visible plus a bit of the boot-topping. Yes, I know, the false wake was painted over but I have no other idea which of the remaining white 'splotches' this could be. Maybe the ship was so deep in the water at Grimstadfjord that the lower part of the false stern wake was submerged? I do NOT tink that they submerged it deliberately only to have better access to the foreship paint job, that they did not trim the ship fore or aft to paint one or the other end of the ship down to the antifouling.

Ok, that's now sorted as well.

Next topic, the b/w stripes; re, overpainting them.
Some time ago I had a look at Peter Beisheim's model over at John's site. I stumbled over some white strips on the superstructure which are not in the places that we know from the Baltic Scheme. He represented these on his model - and they are really hard to see, I asked him via PM to point me to them some month ago but I never got a reply... anyway, I found them and I think these are not really white stripes (on the wreck). One of those light 'stripes' is located directly in front of the forward b/w-pair on the superstructure. The black part is facing forward, the white part is facing aft. On the camouflaged ship, just forward of the black part, is the light grey (Hellgrau 50) base coat which is older and therefore to a greater degree worn than the light grey they slabbed on the b/w stripes (and who knows what any kind of fire may have done to the paint job).

It may be difficult to understand, but let's go back to the hull: On the Cameron DVD, when the show how they investigated the hull and armour belt for shell penetrations, there is a beautiful shot of a painted over b/w stripe. The boot-topping is visible, 'sticking' into it is the rest of the white stripe and directly above it, at the same angle (but not painted with a ruler or masking tape), a nice and almost clean grey paint job. To the left of it, heavily worn (and older) base coat of the same colour which appears lighter.

I EVER doubted that they painted the entire hull (or ship!) and now I can see it clearly, they really just painted over the stripes.
I don't think that from leaving Norway until the sinking, the b/w stripes where 'shining through' - instead I believe that only subtle stripes of brand-new grey paint was visible - not from great distances of course. Unfortunately I can't post screenshots here for copyright reasons but I could go back to the DVD and note the time frames in which all of this is visible...

Any other toughts about this?

Best ~ Olaf!

[Olaf]

Ok, this is it:



At least what I think...

Dark bow (and stern) painted over, boot-topping only half the width than before, false bow wave extended forward down to the boot-topping.

The colours:

The boot-topping:
= Dunkelgrau 1 (dark grey)
= Schiffsbodenfarbe III Grau 1 (ship's bottom paint, antifouling paint)
= Wasserlinienfarbe 23b (boot-topping paint)
= Trittfeste Außendeckfarbe Grau 53 (hard-wearing paint for outer decks - this is NOT non-slip...)
= RAL 7016

The dark bow/stern panel:
= Dunkelgrau 2
= Absatzfarbe Dunkelgrau 52 (camouflage paint dark grey)
= RAL 7024

Hull:
= Dunkelgrau 3
= Deckfarbe Dunkelgrau 51*
= RAL 7000

Superstructure, not visible here:
= Hellgrau 4
= Deckfarbe Hellgrau 50*
= RAL 7001

Underwater hull, antifouling
= Deckfarbe Rot 5*
= Schiffsbodenfarbe III Rot 5 (ship's bottom paint, antifouling paint)
= Kaiserrot II = RAL 8013


For all who will ever wrongly translate "Deckfarbe" into "deck colour": This has NOTHING to do with a ship's DECK...'Deckfarbe' is the term used for the final, covering layer of paint. Otherwise it would be "Decksfarbe" (not e the "s" in the middle)... ;o)

Best and Happy Modelling ~ Olaf

[The_Ships_Cat]

I find there is conflicting notes on her paint scheme.
On another site it suggests Bismarck during Rheinubung had her "stripes" painted out which all evidence as we know is correct. The Revell 1/350th shows this as well but this is where a conflict arises.
The artwork shows that the dark grey at the bow and stern was also painted the same colour as the hull. Revell suggets that this was not the case and only the stern was painted out.
So if the whole of the hull was painted the lighter grey what was the point of not painting over the false bow wave? From how I interpret the Baltic scheme the whole effect was to not only break up her outlines (black/white stripes)but to make her look shorter (the dark grey with false waves). Why was this not done if she wasn't dark grey at the bows at this time? that seems like painting a door, say pink and leaving the frame it's original colour, say blue, in place. aesthetics etc wouldn't come into it, I couldn't see anyone in command saying "You know, that false wave looks great against that lighter grey, lets leave it like that! The crew seems to have managed to have time to paint out the rest....hmmm .

Why am I being so anal about this? I want my Bismarck to look as good as she can as I'm doing the exact same thing with the Hood.
Another problem I am finding is using scale colour, something Matt and I believe in a great deal, I might have to do her shades darker as being "floated" on a sea base that will replicate the colours *hopefully* of the conditions at that time Bismarck would be darker...that goes against scale colour

[Vic Dale]

Hello to the Ship's Cat.

Yes it is perplexing to think of a false bow wave and no dark grey visible. They did paint it out though as can be seen on the wreck photos (have a look at the "Bismarck and Tirpitz" website also).

Warship paint is a funny thing. It is designed to change with the weather, so that it is impossible to repliicate colour in a particular scene without employing a fixed form of lighting. A light grey warship can change to dark grey in a matter of moments just by turning so that less light is reflected and if the ship has the light behind her she will appear very dark, even though the foreground remains light. I saw a carrier off the Spithead in very peculiar weather which chaged by the minute and I watched her change from light grey (almost white) to darkgrey and through to brown. Hard to imagine a brown ship, but it happens. Ther are many pigments in Warship Paint and they get picked out by different light frequencies

That grey also reacts with background colour. If you place a light grey model against an orangy back ground the ship will appear dark blue. I recall seeing Vanguard looking like this at sunset one time when I was a boy travelling across from the mainland to the Isle of Wight.

My advice is to paint you model as light as you possibly can and scale back the blacks and colours so they almost can't be detected, particularly the boot-topping (waterline) and the red below (pale red/brown works best) then your model will have depth.

If you are rigging your model, use ultra fine thread. There is a brand of elastic invisble darning thread which can be bought from haberdashery stores. It can even be teased out to thinner strands. The beauty of this is, you can rig halyards and wires so that they disappear from view at about one or two yards distance. That adds realism and draws the eye right in. It sticks well with super glue and that makes rigging all the more easy. This thread also takes paint well, so a thin wash with a pale grey with a hint of brown, will diminish it down further.

Here is a trick I invented as a boy; Take a piece of very thin card and make a very fine needle hole in it, get it as small as possible and place it to your eye, so that you can see through. Now you can view your model right up close and see everything without suffering agony as your eye tries to bound out of your head trying to focus.

I didn't realise what I had discovered until quite a while later. All it does is to blot out the peripheral parts of the eye's lens where curvature causes image distortion. It uses just the very centre of the eye and you can view your model without magnification. Try that on a previously finished model and see how your colours look then.

Warmest Regards

Vic

[The_Ships_Cat]

Thanks Vic. The advice is very useful I shall endeavour to heed your words.
I understand that a lot of modelling is compromise I just want to get her as good as I can.
Thanks again.