Wetherhorn

You can find a reference to all my Japanese ship camouflage posts at:

https//wetherhorn.wordpress.com/2022/07/12/japanese-ship-camouflage-cross-reference/

Corona virus has given me time to review some data I’ve collected in the 2 years since I posted my original series on Japanese WWII camouflage. Those posts were the ones that attracted more viewers than any others.

In the post on concealment I left out heavy cruisers TAKAO and MYOKO. They were hiding in Malaya and not at home with the other surviving ships of the Combined Fleet. They were painted with greens and browns to hide their existence/location. As with their counterparts at Kure, this camouflage was never intended to be carried when, and if, the cruisers went to sea again. I am not going to add them now.

Destroyer KIKUZUKI was sunk at the start of the Battle of the Coral Sea. She was later raised by the USN and later abandoned again. One photo of her after her second sinking/grounding has been used to claim that she might have been in camouflage. She was NOT! The discolored lower part in her picture just shows where she had been under water after her first sinking. The white added camouflage was used only in the Northern Fleet. KIKUZUKI was lost in the Solomons, far South of where white camouflage was briefly in use. The photograph shows how it could be interpreted, incorrectly, as being camouflaged.

So what am I putting in? Well, in the time since I published my camouflage diagrams I’ve run across a few more photos that show Japanese ships in Camouflage,

One vessel used as an escort was the minesweeper W-21.  Here is a diagram of her  camouflaged starboard side.

Early in the war the sister submarine tenders JINGEI and CHOGEI both carried false bow waves intended to give the impression that they were moving, or moving faster than they actually were.

I originally thought that IRO was the only fleet oiler to carry camouflage. Since then I found photographic evidence that HAYATOMO also was camouflaged in 1942.

Something I omitted mentioning in my earlier posts was that there were a few ships that carried special markings, Hospital ships carried an internationally recognized coat of overall white with a green stripe on the hull and several red crosses prominently displayed. I am not showing a diagram here of those markings, But other ships were specially painted while engaged in exchange of diplomatic detainees and the like. The following examples are to close that omission.

Late war Japanese aircraft transports looked like escort carriers because they had flight decks. Here are two examples in green with a darker panel on the side.

Finally, I need to mention that many merchant ships were given a coat of overall light green. I’ll just list names of a few that I believe were painted green. A black and white photograph cannot distinguish between overall grey and overall green. KASHII MARU, KANSAI MARU, and HUSIMI MARU were probably in overall light green.

As always, I am interested in hearing from anyone having photographic proof of other Japanese ships in WW II camouflage.