Shipbucket

@MAOMATIC
my grain of salt

The drawings look excellent, and with the high quality photo research provided by Colombamike these can become some of the most accurate drawings of the class ever produced. Good work!

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

Thanks for the comments!

@Colombamike:

All in all I suppose we kind of came to the same conclusions?

- The single 2cm on the forward searchlight plattform was indeed removed by early 45, apparently because of poor firing-arcs.
- I am not entirely sold on the 4x2 2cm's underneath the fwd rangefinder. I don't think that there's enough space for four such guns and the picture is too blurry to say for certain.
- The twin mounts fwd of turret A are supposedly 3,7cm Flakzwilling 43's. (As are the guns behind the torpedo tubes)
- The gun next to the rear rangefinder should be a Bofors Flak 28. (6 single mounts were equipped)
- According to Koop & Schmolke, light AA consisted of 6x 4cm, 10x 3,7cm and 28x 2cm (3x4, 6x2 shielded & 2x1 unshielded +2unknown).
From looking at the photos, I had to disagree with them here and there and came up with 6x 4cm, 8x 3,7cm an 26x 2cm (5x4 + 2x2 shielded + 2x1 shielded).


Due to the declining war situation, I believe changes to te AA-outfit were made frequently (without documentation?) and it was simply mounted what was available.

So, I guess we will never be able to tell with certainty what is wrong or right in that matter...

Well, I never claimed to be right, or now better than respected authors and historians, but those were just my 2 cents...

Cheers!
maomatic

Just brilliant! The detailing is 1st class, I love the summer '43 camouflage, which is stunning IMHO.

In reference to the large drawing that Colombamike had used, it would be awesome if Shipbucket used a scale similar to that.

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My Worklist
MD Scale, 4 Pixels : 1 Foot
Official German Parts Sheet
German Capital Ship Projects of The First World War

I'm confused about the AA guns, which some posts
identify as 40mm Bofors. I thought that all German
AA guns were either 20mm or 37mm. According to my
history books, only Sweden and the Allies used 40mm.

FALSE,
By 1944-1945, the Kriegsmarine used some bofor single 40mm mount (named "4 cm/56 Flak 28" in german service).

Guns intended for german naval use were manufactured at the Norwegian Kongsberg Arsenal. The Arsenal started license production of this weapon for the Royal Norwegian Navy in the 1930s and was kept in limited production throughout the war. Introduced into German naval service about late 1943 and was used to arm the cruisers Admiral Hipper and Prinz Eugen as well as some Schnellbootes. As far as is known, only single mountings were ever used on warships and only HE tracer was issued. The Kriegsmarine received 578 guns for use on ships with an additional 247 guns delivered as coast-defense weapons.

@maomatic
After Lutzow
Eggs for Admiral-Scheer

Beautiful artwork of these ships! Thanks for the info on
AA guns.

Again, thanks for the comments guys!

@Tempest:
That would be awesome, wouldn't it? But imagine all the work it would take to draw a cruiser or a BB in something like FD-scale. (I leave that to master arists such as ALVAMA...)

@Colombamike:
Very cool, thank you!
I'll have to look at Admiral Scheer again to make some changes. Adding a late '44 drawing with two tone dark grey / medium grey and a different AA-outfit might be interesting, too.

I'll PM you when I'm able to come up with something. Might take a while, though!