Love your use of the film’s score. The Alamo was one of the most underrated movies of 2004.

Camouflage was meant to fool fire control directors making it hard to focus and thus get a true bearing. It worked best for submarines as they had only a periscope rather then the binocular directors used on surface ships. Painting the decks a darker color made it harder for dive bombers to achieve hits, and painting the lower hull a dark color made it harder for torpedo bombers to judge the distance to the ship they were attacking. Haze grey allows a ship to blend in with the haze over water from a distance. Other "decorative" trims were used to avoid friendly fire and on carriers it made it easy for pilots to find their home when multiple carriers were present.

Nice!

Can you do a british version?

You are not going to be able to hide your carrier. Or, apparently, your cruiser transiting from Guam to the Philippines at night.

That deep blue deck camo must have been real fun to work on in the Pacific tropical sun.

Old pilot adage: takeoffs are optional, landings are mandatory. Gotta have a plan to get back down! Landing is almost always more of a technical challenge. On a carrier? Multiply difficulty by maybe 10 (I’ve never done it). With weather? At night? With your postage stamp landing field pitching maybe 10 meters? Keep multiplying the difficulty!!!

Rationing of blue paint by the civilians! 😉😉

Great Stuff!

These paint schemes were actually misnamed. Never were they intended to camouflage (i.e. hide from view) a ship. Instead, in the days before radar, ships gunners used optical rangefinders to determine range, course and speed of a target. These patterns were intended to make the job of an enemy gunner a little more difficult. Seconds matter in a naval gunfight. He who gets the range first, usually wins. Sometimes, a false bow-wave was even painted on to make the ship look like it was moving faster than it was since runners used that observation as well to judge speed. By the end of 1942, this definitely no longer mattered as shown when USS Washington sank the battlecruiser/battleship Kirishima at night using radar. Optical rangefinders were obsolete and it mattered not how a ship was painted.

Rather than constantly discussing armor thickness perhaps we should be discussing paint thickness. Especially on the older ships! LOL. Great video, thank you.

absolutely well done! this video will definitely help me with designing future lego ship models!

Not sure if the repair / maintenance of these fell to the ship electrician mate or an aviation electrician. Better contact one fast as WWII era men are disappearing fast. My ships lighting was very minimal, and my service silent, USS Catfish, USS Diodon. Narragansett Bay

So what are the Tamiya equivalents? 😆

NGL you’re my hero. I was doing a color scheme in Naval Art to make a right colors for each ships. You’re nailed all of them :D

Well done. Thanks for your effort.

So i think that a lot of the US Navy ships decks were painted navy blue to mask with the colour of the sea? That would make sense right?

Great video. Thank you.

You did an awesome job. Measure 21 was always my favorite wartime camouflage but I was always sort of gothic, I suppose. My father had a really good color picture of his destroyer in a floating drydock right after it had been repainted in 21. I have no idea what happened to that photograph. It would have been a great picture to share online today. Thank you for taking the time for this in-depth and well presented video. Again, it is an awesome job. I have been a hobbyist World War II historian and all-around information gatherer for over 50 years and work such as this is needed and hugely appreciated.

Remarkable. It explains the many variations to camouflage measures in the many photos I see of WW2 ships. Bewildering array. I wonder did it fool the enemy at any time?

I like

Excellent video. As a naval model builder I always appreciate such information. (Now if someone could produce a video on how to easily "mask" to paint some of the more...elaborate camo schemes...Mighty Mo had a cool one...but I've never been able to paint it).

nice video mate

Exceptionally well researched and presented. A must have guide for hobby modelers of these WW2 ships. Thank you sir!

Great video, you actually hit the nail in the head towards the end with the depiction of the Iowa class battleships listed, including Iowa and Missouri. I’m not familiar with the documentation they have, but New Jersey does have some documentation of measure 21 being used first, and then measure 22 in 1945.

Finally a video not entirely rehashed?

I enjoy your channel and the topics you’re covering.

Thank you for all your work preparing this video!...

Excellent.

I'm going through some dockyard pics my researcher buddies have shared with me and I see them on the deck of Yorktown in September of 37. Will update if I find any good pics of them open or anything. (edit: removed Enterprise)

How 'bout not going through the slides at 10 per second and give us a chance to actually look at what you're presenting?

Amazing job with the models, well done! Also nicely compiled.

The paint manufacturers must have loved the Navy in ww2 😅

Hi! This is a really nice video! What program did you use to make and display the models? Did you model the entire hull, or just the waterline?

G’day, A most impressive video. I particularly like the effort you put into your illustrations of the many ships which were brilliant. My issue is with the thinking of the USN during this period. The Navy went to great lengths to experiment, trying to find the optimal camo scheme for their capital ships. Your video highlights the near desperate search for the most effective camouflage carried out by all combatant sides in the air, on the ground and at sea. Even before WW2 began, the RAF, for instance, were experimenting with light blue, even all pink Hurricanes and then Spitfires. I understand that, at sea, there are many varied optics due to sea state and weather conditions. Apart from the complex ‘dazzle’ schemes borrowed from the RN, an aircraft carrier, no matter how it’s painted pretty much looks like what it is. Some schemes might have been worthwhile when viewed, briefly, from a submarine’s periscope but, from the air, or viewed from another warship, for any prolonged time; it’s difficult to make a large warship look like it’s something else. Although, I liked the idea of a bow wave painted 20 or 30 feet back from the actual bow. I’m a military historian specialising in aviation and it’s easy to work out that in the decades since WW2 it’s been pretty much established that various shades of grey make for the best camo for modern aircraft; similarly, the USN and most other navies are clad in, basically, all ‘Haze Grey’ or shades close to it. In my spare time I’m a scale modeller and I still concentrate on WW2 aircraft as modern warplanes are visually ‘boring’ even though their liveries of grey are the most effective camo. During WW2 and onwards, perhaps the best aircraft camo were ‘night fighters’ painted all matt black. There was, initially, an unforeseen danger of all black aircraft flying in tight formations. They could easily collide with each other or inadvertently drop their bomb loads on each other. (A risk, by the way, with any bombers operating at night, no matter what their livery; as the RAF discovered over Europe.) Smaller squadrons of, for instance, black Catalinas and P-61s night flying around the Southern Asian theatres were particularly successful in ‘tailing’ Japanese convoys; picking ships off and flying away without being spotted. At first, the Japanese thought these losses were due to sea mines. Black aircraft also made swift raids on grounded bombers, and some fighters, in the middle of the night. This was a great tactic for aircraft if they stuck to the ‘night shift’. Not so much if one painted warships all black; especially on bright, sunny days. My studies, some years back showed me, as you would understand, that wartime camouflage was a huge, complex, experimental aspect of war that had to be applied to the entire range of new weapons, vehicles, buildings etc., as they were developed. It’s hard to believe now, given computer designed battlefield uniform camouflage; that at the very beginning of WW2 a large number of French troops went into action still wearing their old blue trousers with the big red stripe down each leg. Thank you for opening up this fascinating topic. Cheers, Bill H.

Excellent work. It's amazing how much paint alone it takes to run a fleet. And the Alabama looks great in #12.

Great video, well done.

Things you don’t know. Good job

Great video.

good photos, good explanation, quality content all around

nerd ahh video but good.

The city should re-build the palace, as well the Alfred Giles bldg that burned recently. Really!

Fantastic! Subbed!

I thought that was David Crockett buried in that casket in the church

I was at the ALAMO in 1996... Seemed quite small until I later learned the area was much bigger in 1836.... It is SO UNFORTUNATE that over the decades business were able to be build so close.... I say the ALAMO should be RE-BUILT to it's original design by tearing down all those surrounding business.... This would make a fine attraction.

A shame no one took a photograph of the original interior with its altar.

Great Video !!! I have always studied history and especially the WW2 history and maritime stuff. Have never seen this stuff explained so well. Great Content !!! - Hope you make more of it. Best Regards from Alaska

Great video. A lot of information.

really good video!

Great video thank you