![]() ![]() On the 26th the crew received orders to paint the turret tops yellow, in which case she would have looked like this.īut it is unknown if this order was ever carried out or, if it was, how many turrets were actually painted by the time she came under attack again. The last good photographs we have of Bismarck show her in this paint scheme. The Swastikas were painted over with grey paint on the 22nd but her time on the bottom has seen the paint fade or wash away to reveal the swastikas below. It does make one wonder if this was a major concern for all navies, and if these ships had significant stores of paint just in case they need to apply new paint jobs multiple times during a cruise. I guess if you're the Bismarck and your primary or only fear is of British bombers, then maybe having swastikas on the deck makes it just a little too easy to ID your ship and you'd be better off with a more subtle paint job, like the yellow turret tops. Who do you worry more about bombing your ships, the enemy or friendlies, if you don't have such easily identifiable markings? That said, I suppose that it's a double edged sword. It always seemed a bit odd to me for ships to have markings that ANYONE could easily identify, such as the swastikas or the red and white candy cane stripes on some Italian ships. But if the turret paining thing is true, then it would make sense to cover the Swastika as well either with taros or removable paint. Think they kept the Swastikas, but painted turrets special color once underway so friendly aircraft could ID the ship, but enemy planes would not necessarily be able to ID the ship. ![]()
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