JensOle
SOH-CM-2023
It would seem the green deck lasted a good bit longer than either of us thought, the shots on the following link are all dated as 1977:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/with/5449475158/
Rather confusingly I've seen other shots captioned as 1976 where she has a grey deck with a red deck strip, others captioned as being 1980 with a grey deck and red strip.
I'm sure I've seen a shot of one of the Blue/Green A-4's onboard with a yellow deck strip, which would place the shot as post 1980 though for the moment I can't find it.
The link above is full of shots I've never seen before, sadly they don't seem to be in any particular order.
Craig
Certainly a hard topic to research! It does look green indeed, but the entire picture looks greenish and the exact grey/green colour shade is hard to judge right. I have read somewhere that the RAN used a more greenish grey for their ships (to blend better in in the tropics) as well compared to the RN and their ships which were mostly in the Atlantic. Regardless the "green" looks a lot more greyish than the paint scheme used on RN and RCN carriers. The contrast with the rest of the deck points to it being a separate colour which favour the green option.
When it comes to the centre line so have at least my research shown no red line before the last paint job in 1980. But I have found a few 1980 pictures mislabelled as in the 70s. This fits with the original RN deck colour scheme from the 1950/60's. The RN introduced the red/white centreline fairly late on their carriers and if I remember right only when they started to paint the deck dark grey. I can of course be completely wrong..
It could of course be that they painted the decks rather often to make life hard for us...lol