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Kull -> Mountbatten Pink camouflage (3/1/2020 5:33:51 PM)
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Mountbatten Pink (Admiralty "T" DDs):
While on the never-ending quest for ship camouflage, I came across an interesting book intended for ship modelers, called "British and Commonwealth Warship Camouflage of WWII". On page 17, there was a colored drawing of DD Thanet (#1) in brilliant pink (#2), along with this curious anecdote:
"Many years ago I was told by an Australian veteran that some of the British ships on the Far East station adopted Mountbatten Pink late in 1941 due to contact with officers from the Mediterranean Fleet." The author admits there is no written evidence to support that contention, however "unofficial schemes were quite common early in WWII" and "Mountbatten Pink was very popular with crews and thought to have superior qualities".
And sure enough, templates of RN ships colors from WW2 include three different shades of Mountbatten Pink (#3) as apparently several of the larger vessels applied it in multi-toned schemes.
Digging a little further, shipcamouflage.com tell us how it all came about, and expands on it's popularity:
"A further unofficial type that originated in 1940 in home waters was a singular idea thought up by Louis Mountbatten. In the autumn of 1940 while escorting a convoy he noticed that one ship in the group vanished from view much earlier than the remainder. The vessel in question turned out to be a Union Castle liner that was still wearing her pre-war hull color of medium lavender mauve grey. So convinced was Mountbatten of this color’s effectiveness at dawn and dusk, often the times of greatest danger, that with only a slight variation in tone, he adopted the color and had it worn by all the destroyers in his flotilla. At this time the ships of the fifth flotilla were all “K” class destroyers. As originally worn, the color was a medium grey (507B) with a small amount of Venetian Red in the mix. The red tint produced a very distinctive color and is one of the few camouflage types an observer never forgot once he had seen it. No reports were ever received from sea as to its effectiveness but belief in its properties was strong enough to convince captains of other vessels, so that by early 1941 several destroyers and some cruisers were wearing this scheme, known by this time as “Mountbatten Pink”.
Read further in the link, and you'll learn that this unusual color was worn by HMS Campbeltown during the St. Nazaire Raid...even after her superstructure had been altered to resemble a German destroyer.
Well!! That's good enough for me. How can we NOT have this in AE???
Accordingly, here's a new look for the three Admiralty "T" class destroyers, Thanet, Tenedos, and Thracian (for comparison purposes, #4 is the current AE shipside):
12/6/41 = The new "Mountbatten Pink" colored 0296.bmp file (with a few other alterations) (#5)
6/1942 = Shift to the BigB version (#6)
1/1943 = An optional upgrade is available at this time, in which 0117.bmp replaces 0296 (already in-game and not included with this download)
It's going to be a loooong time (if ever) before I do anything systematic with the Allied shipsides, so I'll make these available in the next post as a zip file for anybody who is interested. Fully compatible with all AndyMac and DaBabes scenarios (including in-process games).
[image]local://upfiles/25668/7E02A17EA3DD4F44BD1FA98E902EF4B9.jpg[/image]
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