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Old 04-07-2021, 07:11 PM
mdesaxe mdesaxe is offline
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French Armoured Cruiser Jeanne d’Arc

I cannot give you a definitive response. The only Ministere de la Marine documents I have examined indicate buff upperworks for vessels not on tropical stations. That does not mean there are not any documents indicating light grey upperworks - it simply means I have not seen any (and I am very far from having examined all possible sources).


The situation regarding French naval archives is far from ideal since some are very easy to access and for others it is quite complicated, in part because of the diffusion of archival holdings relating to the Navy - some are centralised and others are held at the dockyards.


What really matters (as many people have found investigating British camouflage in World War II, for example) is accessing primary documents rather than relying on interpretation of black-and-white images or secondary sources and their opinions. This can become quite an effort as I have found, for example, that some local commanders may have presented their own ideas about the 'proper colours' that the ministry may not have approved and it then becomes necessary to hunt through the correspondence to find out what was its eventual response.


Maurice
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