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Dear Mac,

I’m building the Revell model of SeeAdler and have a question. In the model instructions, the painting scheme indicates dark green for the hull below the waterline. Color prints or drawings of SeeAdler are hard to find, but one, a color print based on the Christopher Rave oil painting, depicts the area below the waterline as red.

Which of these is correct?

Sincerely,
Rick Fritsch
Juneau Alaska

Rick,

I believe Seeadler was bottle green below the waterline.

See below: That is an extract from this URL: http://smmlonline.com/articles/kriegsmarinecamo/kreigsmarine.html

In the official painting instructions some directions were included about camouflage applications. These refer to four colors, (products 30-33), but nothing was said about the kind of camouflage. Presumably this referred to the experimental trials during naval maneuvers in the late twenties. Some experimental schemes were tried on torpedo boats of the MOWE class in 1927-28. SEEADLER was painted a bottle green, FALKE was in the two gray, 50/51 scheme, while GREIF had another gray. During the early to mid-thirties these boats were painted black like the older torpedo boat types but, from 1935 onward, were painted in 50/51 grays again. Several photos are presented in A.T.D.K. showing the MOWE class vessels with different patterns of dark gray or black applied over the 50/51 finish. A photo of WEICHSEL, run aground in August, 1938, shows another one color pattern over the 50/51 finish. The target ship ZAHRINGER carried a multi-colored pattern, (exact colors not known), for a long time, perhaps until the beginning of the war. Therefore it is obvious that some testing and analysis was done regarding ship camouflage between the wars but few reports were generated by these tests. The trials had little impact on policy and did not result in any specific directives regarding camouflage painting in the event of war. Later, when the test data was recreated for analysis during the war, the resulting compilation was destroyed before the surrender.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Mac.

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