Model Forum / General / Models / February 2008

Mask it out and airbrush it, or buy a sheet of black decal paper and cut
your own.
What are the heavy black stripes on the deacal sheet for ? Are you meant
to make up a swastika with them or are they for some thing else?

Lookie what I found:
http://www.epier.com/store/outpostflags/Category.asp?cat=4998

Pat

As Bismarck was trying to avoid detection I doubt if they were left on, the
camouflage was changed to standard outboard grey while she was at anchor at
Grimstadfjord , she was repainted during the day 21 May 1941. So if you want
to do her as she saw action with Hood and until she met her demise I would
paint her grey without the Swastiks.
  A good reference for this " Battleship Bismarck" A survivor's Story by
Baron Burkard Von Mullenheim-Rechberg. He was the Gunnery Officer for C and
D Turrets and also the captains Adjuntent.   Book is printed in English By
Bodley Head press , 9 Bow street, Convent Gardens, londen.
                                 regards  Jim

They thought that was the case, but when Bob Ballard found it it had
swastikas on it both fore and aft.
http://www.bismarck-class.dk/bismarck/wreck/pictures/5_aft_rudder_area/05_collap
sed_stern_air_marking.jpg
Detail info on the paint schemes here, although they don't show the
swastikas on it when it was sunk:
http://www.bismarck-class.dk/bismarck/paint_schemes/paintbism1941rheinubung.html
Those are from this webpage:
http://www.bismarck-class.dk/bismarck/bismarck_menu.html
The explanation may be here: http://www.kbismarck.com/operheini.html

"On 22 May, the weather worsened. During the night, the German battle
group headed North, with the three destroyers in the lead and the Prinz
Eugen closing the formation. At 0420, the destroyers were detached and
headed east to Trondheim, while the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen
maintained their northward course at 24 knots. At 1237 there was a
submarine and air alarm, and the German ships zig-zagged for about half
an hour. When the alarm ended, the tops of the main and secondary
turrets were painted over, and the swastikas on the decks were covered
with canvas, as they could help enemy aircraft to identify the German
ships."

So the swastikas weren't painted over, they were covered with canvas -
which has rotted away in the years since it sunk.
Neat model of the sunken Bismarck:
http://hsfeatures.com/features04/bismarckak_1.htm

Pat

it sure shows up on the wreck.

on 2/25/2008 9:20 AM Richard Brooks said the following:

I remember when I was a child (during WWII), my uncle had a house with a
parquet wooden floor with a border that had a continuous swastika inlay
all around the border of the floor. I knew what a swastika was back then
(I was 8 when the war ended).  It was just curious at the time.
Charles Lindberg had a swastika painted inside his "Spirit of St Louis"
propeller nose cone when he crossed the Atlantic in 1927. It was an
American Indian good luck symbol. The cone is in a cabinet in the the
Air and Space Museum in Washington DC showing the swastika.
The banning of the swastika in Germany is just an attempt to deny
history and hide the fact that WWII was started by the Nazis. Much like
Japan denies that the Rape of Nanking ever happened.
Many of the content in reissued books on Japan's role in WWII have been
politically corrected to eliminate the photos of atrocities they
committed. When I was a kid back then, the books showed photos of
smiling Japanese soldiers holding their rifles up in he air with Chinese
babies impaled on their bayonets.

Gahan Wilson was way ahead of you. He had a cartoon of soldiers sporting
smiley-face armbands marching in review before a stand festoon with
smiley-face flags. It was in Playboy or National Lampoon, I can't recall
which.