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#1
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French Armoured Cruiser Jeanne d’Arc
With six funnels, positioned in two groups of three, the cruiser Jeanne d’Arc has the most distinctive profile of any warship I know (even the Danton class battleships only had five). Launched in 1899 she failed to reach her rather ambitious designed speed and was initially plagued by boiler and engine troubles. However these latter were evidently overcome as her career in one role or another lasted through until 1933.
I encountered an unusual problem at the start of the build, as one page of templates for the frame appears to be missing, so that seven of the twenty hull cross sections are absent. Fortunately, the official French naval plans and drawings are available (see the Dreadnought Project website) so that I have been able to identify the missing hull profiles and calculate the appropriate scale to print equivalent templates based on these official plans. Attached are some photographs that illustrate the solution to this problem. The hull cross sections coloured blue are the ones I have created myself. (Note – there are not two models here, just two halves of a hull being built outwards from the waterline. This is intended to ensure that, when joined, I have a complete hull frame that is not banana-shaped.) |
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#2
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Lucky the plans were available.
I look forward to following your build here.
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The SD40 is 55 now! |
#3
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Looking forward to watching your rendition of "Jeanne d’Arc".
The "Dreadnought Project" is a good source of information. Mike |
#4
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Jeanne d'Arc
I remember a report elsewhere, probably on Kartonbau.de - Alles rund um Papiermodelle, Kartonmodellbau und Bastelbogen, where the superstructure was not colored the correct way, which was grey. Instead of that, it appeared rather somewhat of a light green.
And the underwater part of the hull must be green, not red. I do not remember how the paper model I talked about was.
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Renaud |
#5
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French Armoured Cruiser Jeanne d’Arc
I may be mistaken but all the documents I have read referring to the normal colour for French warships' upperworks at the time called it 'wet canvas' (translation) and it was a pale buff shade.
Maurice |
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#6
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The underwater hull is supplied in green but the kit supplies grey upperworks, I agree that the best available information is that that the upperworks of French ships prior to about 1905 was a creamy sort of light brown - wet canvas is a good description. I'll use my paint shop program to re-colour those parts to conform to my other 1890's French cruisers pictured below. (Dupuy de Lome and Chanzy)
Last edited by roncar; 04-05-2021 at 11:01 PM. Reason: typo in the date |
#7
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Beautiful renditions of Dupuy De Lome and Chanzy. The old French cruisers are very attractive as model projects. At some point, I need to build one of those. It would be a lot of fun.
Mike |
#8
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Depending on the fleet, upper works were either buff or grey.
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Fred Bultman |
#9
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Is there any evidence that would indicate a systematic approach - e.g. Mediterranean fleet, Atlantic Seaboard,etc? Maybe even dockyard of construction?
(I see from some old postcards that light cruisers on tropical stations were white overall.) However the available photos of Jeanne d'Arc are all black and white showing either the later overall light grey (very uninteresting) or the earlier black hull with light coloured upperworks, but of an indistinguishable colour. Models and drawings abound in either grey or buff. Opinion seems to be divided. |
#10
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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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