"Italian Navy Air Recognition Stripes" Topic

I'm aware that Italian battleships and heavy cruisers carried the red and white stripes, but did light cruisers and destroyers?

How common was it to have the red and white stripes on the stern of ships?

Thanks,

Dan

Hi Dan,

"Painters Guide to WW2 naval Camouflage" writes that the stripes were painted starting in July 1940, after the battle of Calabria (Punta Stilo for us Italians) since September 1943, on "many Italian ships".
Sometimes on the bow also.

I painted the stripes on all my ships, they add a nice touch of colour.

Hope this helps!
Marco

I have pictures of them on everything down to MAS boats.
And Marco is right they do brighten your models up.
Egg

BBs, CAs, CLs, DDs, etc. You can actually see this on photos taken by the British of Taranto after the raid, if you can find an image with high enough resolution. In particular, you can see stripes on the DDs. The DDs look something like this: picture

They were usually on the forecastle (forward); sometimes on the quarterdeck (aft) as well (although the latter may have been later in the war, and I've only seen it for some BBs). Here's an image of Littorio showing stripes both forward and aft: picture

Mark H.

I have an exhaustive book on Italian Camouflage in Italian by Bagnasco and Brescia and it shows stripes on almost every type of warship.

I also have an image of Littorio on page 37 of the Italian language book "La Mimetizzazione Delle Navi Italiane 1940-1945", which shows the stripes forward, with the amidships section gray, and with the quarterdeck still apparently in a wood color.

My crude translation of the caption is: "The new battleship Littorio during a training cruise in the Gulf of Taranto, probably in August 1940. The ship is marked forward with white and red stripes for recognition by the air force; later these stripes were extended aft to just forward of the forward heavy caliber triple turret, and for a brief period, were also carried on the quarterdeck.". The above reference to "extended aft" pertains to the fact that in this particular image, the forecastle stripes extend only from the bow back to just aft of the capstans, which is about half the coverage shown in my Littorio link above. Evidently the forecastle stripes were extended further soon after, as the Taranto images show them as in the Littorio link.

Mark H.

Thanks for all your comments. I've put the red and white stripes on my BB and CA models and will do so on my CLs. Still not sure if I'll put them on the DDs.

Dan