About merchant ship wartime colours

[Mister_M]

Good info !

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

both got sunk because the bright paint on "Janus" helped submarines find their convoy:

Is this clearly stated by the U-boats' captains themselves ?

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Mister_M

Good info !



Is this clearly stated by the U-boats' captains themselves ?

It was in a complaint to the Admiralty from an officer on the freighter "Hoyanger", which survived the battle. Not 100% sure that the U-Boat crews confirmed this, but I tend to believe his complaint - he said the "Janus" practically glowed in the moonlight bc of grey and white paint.

Out of curiosity I looked up Janus's shipping company in a WW2 ID book - sure enough the paint scheme for that line was grey and white. They also had bright yellow funnel markings...probably didn't help.

I also read an article on the TM-1 convoy disaster, with 7 of 9 tankers sunk (can't find the web page anymore, sorry) - the destroyers escorting the tankers were painted an inappropriate shade of grey, which the U-Boats used to locate the convoy in the moonlight.

Apparently, certain shades of grey paint made a ship highly visible on a clear night when the moon was out....thus the highly specific regulations about what shade of grey you were supposed to use.

[Mister_M]

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

...the destroyers escorting the tankers were painted an inappropriate shade of grey, which the U-Boats used to locate the convoy in the moonlight.

Apparently, certain shades of grey paint made a ship highly visible on a clear night when the moon was out....thus the highly specific regulations about what shade of grey you were supposed to use.

I think that's why dark/black hulls were not repainted : it was very good to camouflage the ship at night. Only ships with white/bright/saturated colors were repainted with medium/dark grey paint.

To confirm this, it would be useful to find original (peace time) paint sheme of these ships :

Originally Posted by Mister_M

3. Ships with superstructures (probably) repainted in grey : the hull remains very dark (black). HEINA superstructures are perhaps actually white...

 

4. Ships in plain grey (probably a war repaint) : note that there are different shades of grey from ship to ship...

 

[Mister_M]

Originally Posted by Mister_M

I think that's why dark/black hulls were not repainted : it was very good to camouflage the ship at night. Only ships with white/bright/saturated colors were repainted with medium/dark grey paint.

To confirm this, it would be useful to find original (peace time) paint sheme of these ships :

The first ship I've searched for tends to confirm my hypothesis : Mercier had white superstructures (https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/986.html).

Same for Talthybius : https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...29&postcount=1

Phidias had white superstructures and a black strip at the top of the stack (https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/982.html).

Daru : https://www.wrecksite.eu/img/wrecks/z_daru_mv.jpg

Sally Maersk : https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/1089.html

...

So, finally, it seems that it was more important to remove white surfaces than black ones.

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by kapuhy

Description of second image says:

"Dazzle painting was not used as she would almost always be sailing in convoy"

...which kinda makes sense: dazzle does not help to hide a ship, only obscure its AOB, but if your target is in convoy accompanied by several rows of ships all sharing same course and speed, you have more ways to gather data then eyeballing a single target?

No idea if this was really the reasoning behind dropping dazzle of course.

Originally Posted by Mister_M

I think that's why dark/black hulls were not repainted : it was very good to camouflage the ship at night. Only ships with white/bright/saturated colors were repainted with medium/dark grey paint.

To confirm this, it would be useful to find original (peace time) paint sheme of these ships :

I am pretty sure Talthybius was an Alfred Holt co. ship, so her colors would have been white superstructure with brown trim, brown masts, blue funnel, & black hull. Not sure about the others....unfortunately they are not as distinct looking as the Blue Funnelers and I will have to look up!