Previous Message

While sweeping the prewar Australian Navy online archives personnel recollections section, I came across a jackpot on RAN cruiser colors, a modeler's dream. The memoir described in detail the A.P. 507C so well described by Sovereign Hobbies research. No surpriser here, the blue-gray of the Med Fleet. The surprise was a modeler's dream and nightmare all at once. The narrator claimed the crew was basically in charge of the painted appearance of the cruisers. This was an RAN tradition. All the Aussie sailors liked Med Blue-Gray. On one of the RAN cruisers, which was due for a repaint, the crew decided a tad more blue would improve the appearance of vanilla A.P. 507C, and this was done. The author then, with undisguised mirth, noted that the next RAN cruiser to receive fresh paint opted for a tad more blue until the later jobs had moved away from A.P. 507C into an RAN color quite unlike the A.P. 507C of their RN brethren. The color was an RAN blue by 1939.

Of course, by this time, I was utterly