water line

[boby34]

Hello I am building a 1/200 scale model of the Bismark. I am painting the hull can any body tell me where to locate the water line. I mean can any body give a measurment from the bottom of the hull. Thank you Paul

[José M. Rico]

Hello and welcome to the forums!
The waterline is located between 8.0 and 10.45 meters from the keel.
Color RAL 7016.

[boby34]

Thank you very much for the information.

[Herr Nilsson]

Hello and welcome to the forums!
The waterline is located between 8.0 and 10.45 meters from the keel.
Color RAL 7016.

Eh?
What’s the source of these figures? The lower bound is officially 8.5 meters (but that is debatable, IMHO it‘s the lower edge of the belt armor) and the upper bound is 10.52 meters.

[José M. Rico]

What’s the source of these figures?

Photos of the ship in Hamburg, August 1940.
The lower edge is certainly below 8.5 m, and the top edge is closer to the 10.4 mark than 10.6.
Did they change the position of the waterline when the ship was repainted in early 1941?

[Herr Nilsson]

José,

each number of the draught marks is 10 cm high. The 4 represents 40-50 cm. The 6 represents 60-70 cm. The empty space between 4 and 6 represents 50-60 cm. The top edge of the waterline is very close to the top edge of the 4. That means it‘s about 52 cm. This would approximately correlate to the draught of 9.522+1 meters.
As I said the lower edge is debatable, but why exactly 8 meters?

[José M. Rico]

My mistake! I read the draft marks wrong.
You are correct, the top edge of the waterline is more between 10.50-10.55 m. I had no idea there was an "official" 10.52 figure, so that should be fine.
As for the bottom edge, I just made a guess assuming the draft marks go from 8 to 13 meters, but since the seawater obscures the lower hull in the photos, I can't say for sure.
It could be that the waterline goes as deep as the Upper Platform deck, 7.9 meters over the keel. Wasn't the lower riveted edge of the 60mm splinter belt at the same height as the U.P. deck?

[Herr Nilsson]

Well, the November 1941 paint job instruction orders 1 m above and below CWL. CWL is 9.50 m. Obviously the waterline ends slightly above 10.5 m. It's just my speculation that the draught on construction displacement (9.522 m) could possibly explain the difference.

In regard of the lower edge I wouldn't rule out 8.5 m definitely. There is a straight line visible in better quality pictures.

Waterline 2.jpg (64.18 KiB) Viewed 989 times

However, IMHO the lower edge of the waterlinie is possibly derived from the imperial instructions which means the waterline is equivalent to the lower edge of the armor belt. Wreck pictures seem to confirm this.

[José M. Rico]

That straight line at 8.5 m is interesting.
It is not a plate weld, and it is not the lower edge of the 60mm belt either since that was located at 7.9 meters and was riveted.
The color seems to be the same as the upper part but darker, so perhaps is just an optical effect due to surface being wet?

[Steve Crandell]

The surface would be wet in a perfectly straight line? I think it must be a plate overlap of some kind, if it isn't armor maybe just skin plating.