More 1941 Camouflage.

So as I had mentioned a while ago I found some camouflage documentation back in May at the San Francisco NARA. I'm slowly going through it as I get through stuff or if I get a bee in the bonnet to. Someone over on SteelNavy said something less than educated and I found that what I wanted to post in response as a reference wasn't online yet... so I back-burnered the Franklin report and started in on three documents regarding the shift from pre-war gray to the early war camouflage paints.

The #5 formula had been in production for quite some time at the beginning of 1941 and it's clear when reading through the documents that Mare Island had problems switching over; the first document posted (Feb 1941 - New Paint Formulas) has the formula for both 5-D Dark Gray and 5-U, a white base formula. Both contained a fair amount of zinc oxide, and even in May Mare Island was scrambling to get some. So it's probably safe to say that the west coast fleet didn't start receiving full 5-D shipments until June or so.

As always, your mileage may vary. I think it's cool that we've got the full recipe for 5-D, 5-L, 5-O, and 5-S on the net now at least!

Museum Visit Fail!

A couple of years ago while passing through Oak Harbor, Washington my wife and I saw an old gas station that had been turned into a mini-museum of sorts. Plastered across the front was the silhouette of a PBY Catalina patrol plane from the second world war. Both of us like the plane and we stopped by, only to learn that they were closed; only being open on Fridays. It was the temporary headquarters of the PBY Memorial Association, and we kept it in mind as a place to visit. This last friday made our way back up to look it over and see what they had. I burned a disc of some of the PBY items I had found during research at the various national archives I've been to.

They had since moved to a new location on base. There was no description other than "Building 12," and there were no directions on their site other than a link to the NAS Whidbey Island page that only gives vague directions to the ISLAND itself and none of the base gates. Given that they're focused on a plane that was based on the amphibious side of the base, I figured it wouldn't be that hard to find.

Two hours later, we arrived at the gate I thought was our best bet. It was in building 12 of NAS Whidbey, and we hit the gate near the base exchange, which used to be the seaplane base hangar. Just as we get close to the gate a MP comes up and says they need to close the gate for 15 minutes but that we can use "torpedo gate." I should say at this point, that my grandmother lives in Oak Harbor and while I have no idea where Torpedo gate is, I'm fairly familiar with the area, so I figure no big deal; we'll just swing it with my phone and google maps. I take one wrong turn; google maps didn't know that the Navy had closed off one road probably post 9-11.

About ten minutes after we leave the first gate we reach the gate on Torpedo Road and as we pull up I tell the guard "We were just sent here by the other gate; we're trying to get the the PBY museum." The guard gets this uncomfortable look on his face and replies with, "they just re-opened the gate, and I can't let you go driving through the base..."

So... back we go. We get to the gate, and it is indeed open. Pulling up, we get an MP with what was probably a South African accent, and I go through the spiel again. He looks confused; is the museum open to the public? The other MP says yes... and then he tries to give us directions. It's close enough; the building is literally right above us on the hill.

So we drive down, make the first left, and then left at the fork at the top of the hill and pull up to the building. No cars in the parking lot. "Uh-oh.." I think to myself. We park and walk up to the doorway and the dark hall on the other side. Edges quivering in the breeze is a little paper note that says "November and December Hours." Scanning the note, we see that they will be open on Thursday, December 11, and not the regularly scheduled Friday the 12th that we had arrived on.

I had really looked forward to posting some neat pictures of the museum and what it contains here, but at that point we just turned around, headed back to the warmth of the car, and called my Grandmother to make arrangements for a (hot) lunch at the nearby Mitzel's Kitchen. It was worth it, at least, to see her.

More Frankie

Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks, so updates have been slow, but here I sit with 15 other people in a Seattle Starbucks at 10:20 PM on a Saturday night, and I've been working on the Franklin 1946 Damage Report. Most I've been able to do in a month. It's proof read to page six, but I've added about 15 blank pages at the end for photos... once I get all the way through I'll add the photos themselves and text.

In Memory: Joe Canavan

For the last seven or so years I have enjoyed the chili of an amazing man. I was introduced to Joe Canavan's World Class Chili by a co-worker when I was working down town. It was truly world class chili; the best, in my opinion, on the west coast. A group of friends and I had been eating at McKinley soups at Westlake center on pretty much a weekly basis (although we also ate at other restaurants there), but we quickly started walking the extra five blocks to Joe's place in the Pike Place Market. Joe was always very friendly with his customers, although he was known as the "chili Nazi" to some people due to him chasing non-customers away from a table he had just outside his restaurant. We used to sit at that table specifically during lunch hour to make it easier on him as he was there at work, starting every day at 6AM, over seventy years old and with bad hips that hurt him.

Joe was a Marine (not Army, as his obituaray is currently saying) and had fought in the Korean War, taking part in the Battle of Chosin. You could tell he was special; he'd been there and had seen hard things, but was enjoying life; he was tough but fair and friendly if you were.

I started helping him out; I did his website and would go in once or twice a month to help him with his computer. Robin and I helped judge the chili contests he ran at the market and tabulated all the results from the voting for him so he could concentrate on other things. It was the least I could do as thanks to a man who had fought for our country, and who was so nice to those around him.

Joe died this month while snorkeling in Maui. We'd talked about his trip for a couple of months... I lived on the island for a while and sent him ideas for things to do during their first trip to Hawaii. I don't know if he was at one of the locations I suggested when he had a heart attack, but regardless, he went out as I knew him; active despite his pains, living life to its fullest.

Joe, I will miss you and keep you in my thoughts. You set the gold standard in my book for chili, and were an inspirational person in my life. I can offer no higher tribute.

EDIT: A food writer for the Seattle Times has blogged about Joe.

Lack of updates

I've been working on a review of Hasegawa's 1/350th Aircraft carrier Akagi for ModelWarship.Com. Text of the Franklin report was finished about a week and a half ago, but none of the proofreading has been done yet, nor have I done any work on the photos and damage plates. Hopefully this week.....

Way to lame out

I don't pull punches. If something is wrong, I usually speak my mind, unless I have to be diplomatic for work. Even then I'm pretty outspoken. If someone wants to accuse me of being too much of a hardass on this, I won't argue, but I think that ModelShipWright.Com is run by a bunch of amateurs who are knowingly trying to build their site up by theft of the hard work of others.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a couple of threads on u-boat aces such as this one that contained an awful lot of text and photos. There was extensive information, and you just don't normally see someone post that much material in such a fashion, so I got a little suspicious and started poking around. It turns out that most of the text and photos were lifted en mass from other sites, without any sort of attribution.

I posted responses to a couple of the threads to that affect, in one cases showing paragraph examples and in another simply listing the two pages that material had been copied from. The threads were removed from the message board without comment, but this morning I received two notices of actions taken upon my posts:

Hello TracyWhite,
This is a courtesy email to inform you that a recent post of yours on ModelShipwrights was removed for the following reason:

Offensive Post (LEVEL LOW)

and the kicker:

Hello TracyWhite,
This is a courtesy email to inform you that a recent post of yours on ModelShipwrights was removed for the following reason:

Inflamitory/Rant

Removed Post Text:

----------------------------------------------------------------

Sites this post directly copied and pasted text from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Schultze
http://www.uboat.net/men/schultze.htm (Copywritten)

----------------------------------------------------------------

Posting a warning is an inflammatory RANT?

And then a new "Copyright Infringement Policy" post by Mark Smith went up, with the following text:

Some of our posts of late have come under question of copyright law infringement, and after close and careful examination, the posts have been re-instated.

Simply stated, this is the KitMaker Networks policy outline on the issue:

"These posts (by a volunteer with no financial interests in KitMaker or Model Shipwright) were meant to be informative and done in the spirit of 'fair-use' as outlined by US copyright law. Further we are asking all users of the site to (as a courtesy, not a legal requirement) give credit to any sources of information they may post.

Also it is the site owners policy that if a copyright owner takes issue with any of their material being used by modelers on a community based web site such as this, than they can contact us to ask that the information be removed."

This indicates that they don't understand copyright law and are, in fact, just fine with misuse. Naming it a "Copyright Infringement Policy" is ironically apt.

Section 107, Title 17, US Code:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In regards to part (1) while they may argue that the poster receives no monetary compensation for his posts, he is listed as a "News Writer" for the site, and the site itself does generate some revenue through banner ads and google AdSense, I.E. it is of a commercial nature.

In regards to part (3) "The amount and substantiality of the portion used," Instalment 2 has 14 images "courtesy" U47.org and the words "Extract from www.u47.org" below portions of text 14 times as well (some of those are multi-paragraph sections). I don't have the time to come up with a percentage of the U47.org site used, but that is a significant amount of both text and images. Additionally, the US Copyright office says this:

Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.

Finally, part (4); the "effect of the use." This one is harder to quantify but I believe that any time you copy text you in effect dilute the original. If there is one site on a topic, it is the un-disputed top ranked site, but if there are two, then its position has been diluted. When they permit the copying of that text, they are in effect making it so that less people may stumble upon the site that invested the time and work into posting that material in the first place. Regardless of any monetary damage, they are causing actual harm in terms of the traffic that goes to that site.

One of the reasons I post information, for example, is that it tends to draw more out. I have a site on the USS Ward, for example, and after my site went up I received somewhat regular contacts from former Ward sailors who provided me with even more information. I have received photos from at least two sailors as well as action reports and deck logs, and these are things I would not have been able to obtain otherwise.

Now, I'm not claiming there should be any monopoly on information like that, I'm just arguing that there is actual harm in such reposting of material, even if the person who originally posted it hasn't done so with any obvious commercial intent.

Mark Smith says;

"These posts (by a volunteer with no financial interests in KitMaker or Model Shipwright) were meant to be informative and done in the spirit of 'fair-use' as outlined by US copyright law. Further we are asking all users of the site to (as a courtesy, not a legal requirement) give credit to any sources of information they may post.

But there is no SPIRIT of fair use, copyright is a law. Stating that giving credit is a courtesy and not a legal requirement further demonstrates lack of understanding of copyright law as well as taking a weak stance against plagiarism; it's not an endorsement of it, but it really does nothing to discourage it either. Attribution is one of the requirements of fair use as the owner of the work in question has the right to claim ownership, and by stating it's not a legal requirement the crew over there are setting the site owner up for a nasty surprise at some point.

And in his final sentence. Mark Smith states with emphasis that if the COPYRIGHT OWNER takes issue, then they should contact ModelShipWright to have the material removed.

Written another way, UNLESS you are the copyright owner, we don't care if what we have posted is done legally or not.

Truckin' along

Got about 15 pages added to the Franklin Damage Report today while doing the "hurry up & wait" routine on a client computer. Up to page 35 out of 45
After that there is still much to be done:

Save out the photographs that were in the booklet

Stitch the two remaining damage plates back together

link everything up (where it says "see photo X," I like to photo X directly

Proofread, proofread, proofread!

I'm going to take a break on this for the rest of the weekend though.