Quote:
Originally Posted by kapuhy
This is Dutch ship "Java", from NV Stoomvaart Maatschappij 'Nederland' - photos are from 1939 (peacetime colors) and in unspecified time during the war:
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From their posters, funnel colors should be black top, yellow bottom.
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Yes, that's correct. Lloyd's Book of House Flags and Funnels also gives the same color combination.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapuhy
What is visible here is that while ship was entirely painted grey, funnel is still in two different colors, with separation line between them matching pre-war one (possibly different shades of gray?)
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If you look closely, king posts and masts display the same scheme. My guess is that their tops had the same color as hull and superstructure, while the bases were painted in a darker shade of grey. That might have made them lesser distinguishable from far away, when their silhouettes were the only visible part of the ship against the light background of the sky.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapuhy
Edit: BTW, was there any documented case of ships belonging to neutral countries sailing camouflaged and darkened?
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I have read reports of neutral vessels having been attacked by U-boats because they were darkened at night, because they were zig-zagging, because they were sailing where they shouldn't (according to German restrictions), because they lacked neutrality markings and their nationality wasn't otherwise clearly distinguishable, and because of... human error. So yes, darkened neutral ships were a thing, but from the game perspective they should be set as valid targets (i.e. they should be placed in "free" national rosters).
As for camouflaged neutral merchants, I can't neither confirm nor discard them, but I think the best "camouflage" for neutral vessels would have been displaying their national flag and neutral markings as clearly as possible. This is so true that they retained those marking even when sailing within Allied convoys. See the convoy sketches posted by iambecomelife in this thread for an example of that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapuhy
It would be helpful to know this for implementing proper colors in SH5, because clones keep "borrowing" textures from their parent ships, leaving modder a choice between having some camouflaged neutrals in convoy or lots of uncamouflaged combatants with navlights on. The former situation would be of course preferable, but was there any such case in real life?
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If no better solution is found, I think we could make the grey skin standard
