WW2 Destroyer fighting lights help required please.

[nick@albion-manufacturing.com]

Dear All,

My father has a question regarding fighting lights used on US
destroyers in WW2.

He is building a RC model of the USS Nicholas which features fighting
lights.

He knows that they consist of an 18" high unit that houses 3 lights,
in a traffic light manner. He has technical drawings and black and
white photos and knows that they are mounted on masts and
superstructure.

Does anyone know how they were used and what colours they would have
been?

Does anyone know where this information might be found?

Thanks for your help!

Best wishes,

Nick

[Dbot]

Try this site.
http://www.floatingdrydock.com/

Great model ship people

[William Biegel]

Nick,
I too was building a destroyer and has the same question. Heres what I found, the fighting lights were used to identify
friendly vessels during a night fight so as not to blast your own ships out of the water. I finally found a site where they
mentioned the use of them during a battle http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/base/1250/duncancape.html and below is
a quote of the paragraph. Apparently while they state "green over green over white, this could be any combination of the three
obviously by pre-arrangement.

Here's the quote from the above site document where they actually used them to identify friendly's (now we use electronic
recognition to suppress fire at friendly aircraft ships etc).
Hope this helps your dad complete his apparently extremely accurate model.





"
his ships up ahead on the starboard side. Scott, still not satisfied, wanted to know if his crusiers had been shooting at Tobin's destroyers. The squadron commander replied, "I don't know who you were firing at." Still uncertain, Scott ordered Tobin's three ships to flash their battle recognition lights. Lights green over green over white in a vertical position flickered momentarily to starboard. Satisfied at last -- and four minutes had elapsed -- Scott at 2351 ordered Resume Firing! "


Regards,
Bill