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 Author  Topic: Color of boats in Ron 9 movies
Frank J Andruss Sr

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Frank J Andruss Sr   Send Email To Frank J Andruss Sr Posted on: Apr 22, 2010 - 2:20pm
Dick

For what it is worth, I spotted the green colors before you did your magic with the photos. I think this is one of the reasons that many of our models are green or grey. Green in the Pacific, gray out of the Factory, Gray in the Med, Gray before being painted Green. I now have a headache. Unless you know for sure the colors of the boats, you would not be wrong, in painting them gray or green. Depends on the time frame that the boats were there. It would have been so much easier if they had color film in the field in those days........................Oh Well and so we move on..............


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smallwi

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of smallwi  Posted on: Apr 22, 2010 - 4:04pm
David,

To follow up on Dick's comments, a dark green (with dark grey content) would be close to what is refered to as Marine Corps Green. This paint was more available to the boat crews at Tulagi and the Solomons than would have been 5-D.

Dick,

I looked at the film a bit yesterday and recall seeing shots of trucks bogged down in mud. These would have been painted what I am refering to as Marine Corps Green. You may want to look at these parts of the film and do a similar analysis of the color of the trucks.


As mentioned in an earlier post Kenneth Prescott described the painting of the PT 61 in his book A PT Skipper in the South Pacific. He describes his use of "Army Green" adding white until "we thought we had reached what we thought was an acceptable shade." He further stated that the boat took on a "bluish-green" shade. There are color photographs on the dust jacket of the book showing the green with olive drab helmets sitting on the trunk, providing a perspective of the PT 61 color against the known color of the helmets. Another boat in the back ground (77 foot ELCO) is a darker shade of green, more reflective of my idea of Marine Corp Green. The point is the boats were all over the place from a color perspective, but lots of green references.

As for 5-D, I have reservations about this paint being on the boats in 1943. The major US Navy warships started to go away from the Measure 1 scheme (5-D) in late 1941. It was pretty much eradicated from the fleet by April of 1942. Although anything is possible, I would bet that there was no ready supply of 5-D in the South Pacific. Looking at the posted stills from the video I would lean towards 5-O (Ocean grey). Most of the fleet auxilaries (tugs, barges, troop transports, etc.) were painted 5-O. Major warships used 5-O in the measure 12 scheme common in the Pacific in early 1942. But given Dick's comments about green content that choice would be in doubt.

I think I will go engross myself in the physics of planing hulls for a while. This color stuff makes my head spin.

Bill

Bill Smallshaw

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TheBridge

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of TheBridge  Posted on: Apr 22, 2010 - 5:26pm
Dick - Thanks for the Photoshop analysis. I went down that path his morning but realized I don't have good enough Photoshop expertise or color corrected display and was hoping that someone (you :-) ) would have done this.

There is a definite tie between this subject (color of PTs) and my post on the PT-157 and when the boat numbers were painted over from white to a dark grey. For sure the boats were painted (green or camo) after their arrival in the south pacific; not before. Whether they were done immediately on arrival or at some time when the boats were dry docked (at the main base in Talagi which is maybe the only place that had dry-dock facilities) for routine maintenance or emergency work. Although not clear on this point Captain Liebenow believes the PT-157 may have received its paint job when they had to have emergency repairs (at Talagi) after getting an engine shot-up and 60+ holes in the boat from a mission.

We maybe can converge on a few solid working assumptions about PT's painting:

1. PTs were painted when dry-docked. Difficult to do so at any other time. Definite that the PT-157 was painted by a land based paint crews (which again points to Talagi) and not by the PT crew (as I once thought it might have been).
Also it appears the PT-157 was painted when they put into Talagi for emergency repairs. Surprising the change from gray to green did not leave any notable moment in the the minds of either Capt. Liebenow or Welford West of the 157.

2. PTs were dry-docked only when other purposes required it and not just to be painted. Why? Well dry-docking is a valuable resources and a time consuming process. To do so just for painting when you have other PTs limping in needing the dry-dock for one of a myriad of reasons would say priority to major repairs.

3. To my point about the white boat numbers being painted....it appears MOST were repainted to a dark gray during the re-paint process. I do note that there is the appearance of red letters in a few photos. So far that seems very rare and maybe done by the PT crews themselves. As mentioned in the PT-157 post when I asked both Liebenow and West about the boats numbers being in red (this was in an early conversation with them and since then and I am now very convinced the PT-157 numbers were dark gray based on the color video evidence) they were very clear, and seemed almost replused, as to the PT-157 having red numbers.

4. I agree with Dick's comment that schemes and colors were at the mercy of supplies and paint crews officer's directions. Indeed it would be most effective in camouflage terms, to have different colors and schemes to avoid a standardized look that could be more easily spotted. I'm not sure the paint crews knew that really and it just turned out what the did was for the best!

I've just sent a note to Captain Liebenow asking if there is anything else he remembers about the color. If he recalls anything I'll post that.

Bridge


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Alex Johnson

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Alex Johnson  Posted on: Apr 23, 2010 - 1:00pm
Bill had a good idea about comparing the PT Boat colors with the colors of clothing and equipment in other scenes of the film. Here are three stills.





ALEX


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Drew Cook

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Drew Cook  Posted on: Apr 23, 2010 - 2:34pm
Alex,

I forgot to thank you for posting those original screen captures --

Thanks!

-- Drew


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TheBridge

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of TheBridge  Posted on: Apr 23, 2010 - 3:32pm
Welford West (torpedo man on the PT-157 (1942-44) said yesterday in a call with me that the PT-157 was 'a pea-soup color..maybe just a hair lighter'. He said is someone were to gives him color samples he could assuredly pick-out the very shade of the 157.

Bridge


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