Updating an old favorite:
This is HELENA (CL-50) as lost at the Battle of Kula Gulf on 6 July 1943. HELENA is camouflaged in the overall Navy Blue (5-N) of Measure 21.
CL-50 shows a typical mid-war electronics fit for a USN cruiser, with Mark 4 "FD" radars on the ship's Mark 33 directors, and Mark 3 Mod.1 "FC" antennas on the Mark 34 directors. HELENA's foremast mounts an SC air search antenna and an SG surface search radar below it. Waveguide losses with the early SG installations meant that they had to be placed close to the radar plot room, hence the SG's less than advantageous position. Once these issues were solved, the radar antenna could be relocated to the top mast as on almost all later combatants.
Two Curtiss SOC-3 Seagull floatplanes of Cruiser Scouting Squadron NINE (VCS-9) are spotted on the stern catapults. These aircraft are camouflaged in the early wartime two-tone scheme of NS Blue Gray on the wings and upper fuselage with NS Light Gray on the undersides.
HELENA was lost in this configuration after the ship was hit by three Japanese torpedoes during the Battle of Kula Gulf, with 186 men killed in action.
