I second that from my personal experience... I can hardly remember what paints were used on my first ship in the German Navy... and I left this ship in 1996...)Antonio Bonomi wrote: I have a lot of respect for the survivor opinions, but I do know that many times their memories is not precise enough, as I had dozens of examples personally.
Agreed. This means, that they had them already painted yellow IN PREPARATION for Norway. (Or the wanted to prevent seagulls droppings on the fresh grey paint, HA!). The sloped side COULD be red. (At least, Tamiya had the idea of showing model photos on the 1/700 kit box... which... to be honest, means nothing...)I think you all would agree that on the photos attached at Gotenhafen on May 18th, 1941 the canvas covering the top flat surfaces is covering a very light colour and it is not Light Grey, as it would not make any common sense.
You can tell me the colour, it cannot be Red, it cannot be Dark Grey like the sloped parts.
Agreed.Than the ship arrived into Bergen sailing all the way thru with that turret camo scheme, sloped parts on Dark Grey, the top flat main turret surfaces on a light camo colour for air identification, previously covered into the harbour with the canvas, and according to me it was Yellow.
Of course the ship had the swastika banners painted on bow and stern.
BLIMEY! The Grimstad Fjord photo does show the canvas over the swastika... note, how the anchor cables are 'disappearing'...The Prinz Eugen arrrived into Bergen Fjords, and already at Grimstad Fjord they started re-painting off the Baltic camo scheme, but on the main turrets they only painted over the sloped parts with light grey, the top flat surface was left as it was, so still Yellow.
The photo above posted by Olaf were you can also see Bismarck into the Grimstad fjord do show a very light colour still on top of the main turrets, on the other photo the Prinz Eugen sailors are only painting the sloped parts of the main turrets, nobody is painting the flat top surface.
The swastika banners were covered with canvas, and it is proved with photos and films.
So... the next in my sequence is actually the departure with this cover removed. (Is there a way to edit own messages...?)
See above. It's accidently the second photo of my sequence... of course, then, my text about the contradiction to the PG war diary is rubbish...The Prinz Eugen sailed out with Bismarck, they removed the canvas covers from the swastika's and the ship was ready again to sail under the Luftwaffe air coverage with yellow top's.
That's how my model will be... although it is still tempting to represent it in progress of painting the turret tops RAL 1003 to RAL 7024... I already have the anchor cable lashings...The job was done and both the swastika banners and the top flat surfaces of the main turrets were painted off ( with a dark grey ) while at sea, the bow anchor chains were blocked with a smaller chain going into the rings of the main chains as you can see on the photo attached by Olaf were you can see the Prinz Eugen forecaste from the top.
Didn't RN ships had darker turret tops? Maybe not, just guestimating...Now if you can tell me why they painted the flat top surface of the turrets with a much darker colour to remove an air identification colour at sea if it was not there, I can try to follow you, ... but it will be very hard to explain it unless over there as I am saying the colour was light and not a light grey and it was a colour used for the air recognition that started from Gotenhafen protected with canvas as proved with the initial Prinz Eugen photos at Gotenhafen.
So... you would agree, that we see a cover there... it's really a tricky one... that 'curved' edge... my problem is... why cover it? It's in Luftwaffe air cover. Or to make it less 'stand out' in harbour for RAF bombers?When Prinz Eugen entered Brest first thing they did was to cover the top of the turrets flat surfaces with a canvas they had,..from Gotenhafen,..guess which colour they had under it,.....
If there is really such a thing like "KM-logic", then it should be easy to draw a line from PG to BS...After having hopefully reached a common agreement on Prinz Eugen top turrets colours evolution,.. we can move to Bismarck,.. that started Op. Rheinubung with that top turret camo scheme showed by Paul on the above attached photo,..... and as of today everybody thinks it was Dark Grey, ..... but we need to know more,.. much more,..
BUT...
This
frightens me a bit....... so get ready to be surprised, ..... one day,...
Anyway... thanks for your input and photos... sometimes, it is easier to 'visualise' such things as photos put into context (although my sequence is faulty) can make it more understandable and in fact, can make it easier to digest your illustrations....
Best ~ Olaf