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David,

1) Your Courbet 1925-1926 is unavalaible (host-link lost ?)

2) Roooh David, you draw too quickly !
For Paris-1940, you forget the twin 13,2mm aft in the side-view

They have both been fixed.

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French Vice-admiral Louis-René-Madeleine Le Vassor de La Touche, comte de Tréville
The original spelling of my last name is: LaTouche.

Nice additions, and some more unusual/lesser known profiles too.
I believe Paris was used as an AA battery in Portsmouth during 1940, be interesting to see that one if the sources exist.

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You are correct; yes, Paris was used as an AA battery in Portsmouth while she was under British control. I have not been able to find any sources to draw from, and since colombamike has not asked me to draw that rendition, I doubt that even he has any either.

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French Vice-admiral Louis-René-Madeleine Le Vassor de La Touche, comte de Tréville
The original spelling of my last name is: LaTouche.

The battleship "Paris" was under british control since July 3, 1940 & remained throughout the war

I) AA Battery : July 1940 -Spring 1941
For the "whole" of the Battle of Britain (july 1940 - spring 1941), this ship was mainly used as a AA floating battery to protect Portsmouth harbor.
Initially (during summer 1940), in a "emergency basis", the british used Paris without modification (they extensively used the French AA guns : 75mm; 13,2mm), but as the months passed (by late 1940), with the depletion of French AA ammunition, the british modified the light AA armament (mainly by replacing the french twin 13,2mm by few singles 40mm pompoms).

II) Barrack & Depot Ship : Summer 1941 - end of the war
When the German air threat was greatly reduced in the spring 1941 (he fired upon on rare occasions on few German planes over the harbor by late 1941-1943), he was used* for the remainder of the war as a depot & barrack-ship (mainly by british & polish crew).
*the storage/barrack facilities on board were installed progressively throughout 1942-1943

Obviously I have sources & refs, but for this "Paris, summer 1940-late 1941" version, the changes are so small (addition of british flag, 5-6 single 40mm pompoms replacing french twin 13,2mm), I think it is not necessary to draw them

@Hood.

I stand corrected, Colombamike does have sources and refs.

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French Vice-admiral Louis-René-Madeleine Le Vassor de La Touche, comte de Tréville
The original spelling of my last name is: LaTouche.

Sorry to hijack this thread, but I'm trying to find out about French colour designs from the early 1900s specifically Danton class predreadnought VOLTAIRE. I haven't seen Danton in the Real Designs forum but there are pictures in this thread from Alvama (who I have messaged): http://shipbucket.com/forums/viewtopic. ... lit=danton

It seems like under the water, green is the preferred colour on all French battleships of the era. People here seem to use a vibrant shade of green. Is this supposed to be the exact colour or could it be a darker green?

This is followed by a red waterline strip and a thin white band. What is the story behind these?

The rest of the ship is the usual light grey. Though I don't know if the turrets were painted differently, like they are here in Courbet. Would you know if the Danton class had different coloured turrets, maybe on the top side only?

I'm asking because I'm making a model of Voltaire and the painting instructions are very different compared to drawings I've seen on this website. For instance, it directs me to paint the deck a dark brown, which seems odd since most warships deck are light tan/sand.

EDIT: this photo of Voltaire shows no noticeable colour difference on top of her main gun batteries in 1911. Perhaps in wartime the turrets were painted black like other French battleships? And all structure above the hull looks like a darker shade of grey than the hull, though this could just be lighting/angle. Thoughts? I'm planning to paint my model this weekend.

Hello Dynamotor

I can't specifically say anything about deck colour; according to one source it was slightly darker than on German or British ships due to a more relaxed cleaning routine in the French navy.

As for the hull colour, French ships had black hulls and dirty white superstructure till about 1908/09; afterwards they were a relatively dark, distinctly bluish Gray (gris bleu). I have not found any precise description of that blue-gray in the net; I tried to approximate the colour in my thread about French WWI destroyers (look up the archive for French WWI-era destroyers, most of them are rendered in what I think Gris Bleu must have looked like). Black turrets were usual on French capital ships during the First World war; some Dantons definitely had them, but as photographs from that era usually are labeled rather arbitrarily, I really can't tell which ones. I'd call black turrets more likely than Gris Bleu ones for all of them, and the likelyhood of black ones increases throughout the war (many capital ships had them well into the 1920s, even after the hulls were painted in a very bright shade of Gray soon after the war).

The underwater hull of French ships was usually painted bright red by the shipyard, topped by a white line denoting immersion at full load; at normal load, both this stripe and some red from below were visible. From the 1890s through the end of WWI, the Navy painted the hulls over with a colour called 'Vert de Schweinfourt' (ironically the English called the same hue 'Paris green'), leaving a stripe of the red original visible at the waterline; the green part remained fully submerged at normal load. This green colour was made partly from Arsenic and also used by the Austrian Navy, who called it 'Giftgrün' (poison green). It is indeed a very vibrant hue; there is a Wikipedia entry about it. I have seen models of French ships who have black waterlines over poison green hulls, all of them showing late-war guises (with black turrets); my guess would be the French started to paint the waterline black at some Point around 1915/16. From then on, both the red stripe at the waterline and the thinner white one above it disappeared. As most of this Information is from a French-language modeling Website that seems to be no longer accessible and my French is really rudimentary, you should take it with caution; on the other hand, I have not yet found any solid info that disproves it.

Greetings
GD

Thanks Garlic, that is very interesting. Do you know what the French intended by painting their turrets black for the war? I like the look of the black turrets on the Courbet in this thread and think I will implement them for my model Voltaire. It doesn't seem likely anyone will be able to prove otherwise if they were black or grey specifically on this ship.

Can you please link that thread on the WW1 French destroyers.

Because the Dantons were 1906-1908 projects, do you think their hulls would have been painted the bright red first and then the 'Vert de Schweinfourt'? Like I said, Alvama's depiction of Danton features the green and red strip.

Hi Dynamotor

Maybe an even better colour example would be this (page seven in the Thiaria:Other People's ships thread):

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5720&start=60

The ships themselves are of course fictional, but I tried to make the colours as authentic as possible. Green lower hulls were standard since the 1890s, so I'm quite sure all the Dantons would have them.

Greetings
GD