New photos of my 1/35th Elco wip

Greetings,

Did you change the brown or is that a photo thing?

Looking good!

I changed the color based on conversations with crew to reflect the boat's colors during the last part of '44, the Battle of Surigao Strait. The boat, like the 493 in my WWII color photos may have been brown at some point, probably mid-'44 in New Guinea. There is little or no doubt that the 493 was Green/Brown but the photos are not dated other than knowing it was prior to late Oct '44 when she was lost. Crew of my subject who joined the 495 just prior to the trip to Leyte from New Guinea insist the 495 was Dark Green and a "lighter olive green, sort of like a Marine uniform" and had green decks.

Comparing photos of the 493 taken while she was sinking in Oct'44 to other photos of her suggest that the camo pattern, at least on the bow, had changed. This possibility suggests to me that perhaps she also changed colors prior to going to Leyte. Ron 33 arrived in Leyte only a day before taking part in the Battle of Surigao Strait.

Got it Ed.  I like the way it looks.  Looks lilke you're heading for home now.

Dave

From what I have been able to discover the warheads were a number of different colors.  Yellow, I think, were practice warheads. I've been told that the warheads were white, various shades of grey, black, green and I actually have a coler photo that show an Elco boat leaving the factory with torpodos paint in the same camo pattern and colors as the boat, which happened to be 31/5P. 

I used black, light grey and haze grey to add interest.

Thanks Garth.

I added the second smoke dispenser the the crewman told me they carried. They had no depth charges. Wile the resin was curing I added the 40 mm depression rail and when that was done i started looking at photos to see where to best mount the 2 dispenders.

It was then that I saw that boats of this vintage and time period in general and the Ron 33 boats specifically, did not have depression rails. They also did not seem to have the rails built into the rear of the 40 mm mount that late boats had. Lastly, the 40 mm ammo locker was wider and generally bigger than the late boat's had. Looks like i have more work to do.

The photo in Chun's book, page 61, shows several boats. By close examination I can make out the boat numbers 490, 491 and 493 and they are like I will be changing to.

Just when i thought I was getting close!!!