A set of five images of HMS King George V just landed in my mailbox,. As luck would have it, these images complement a set of three I bought a few years earlier but didn’t really tell a story on their own.
The camouflage pattern is an overall light grey and a slightly darker hull, matching the late 1945 pattern (meaning hull/superstructure painted in colours B20/G45), a pattern applied when she was in Australia [1]; the location was easily recognized as Station Pier in Port Melbourne. That puts the (probable) date between the 29th of October and 8th of November, 1945. This is the same period when the famous Allan C. Green photographs were taken, so now we have a collection from the port side well. Although these photographs were not all equally sharp, they do show a very large crowd visiting the ship. A brief search at the Australian War Memorial of HMS King George V’s visit indicates a few more shots taken from similar vantage points and even on board.
[1] Sovereign Hobbies, Royal Navy Camouflage Schemes, HMS King George V
