Royal Navy Colours of World War Two - The Standard Camouflage Colours 1941-1943

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Hi folks,

 

I've written one tonight, and this one does not have anyone elses' reputation at stake so it all happens much quicker. The reality is that the written references for this one are a little thinner so it's more of an interpretational exercise than a clear paper trail - but the reality is that the findings are perhaps less contentious than some of the previous shades we've written about that have carried more fundamental anomalies.

 

Hope it's useful?

 

https://www.sovereignhobbies.co.uk/pages/royal-navy-colours-of-world-war-two-the-standard-camouflage-colours-1941-1943

 

 

 

***As this has been a 3 hour hatchet job I do reserve the right to pull and edit this should I realise I've messed something up! ***

 

 

[robgizlu]

Hi Jamie 

Coherent and once again compelling.  

The final table with "suggested typical norms" is particularly useful.

The biggest difference from previously accepted colours seems to me to be MS4A which appears a light grey as distinct from a greeney-grey as previously portrayed.

On an artistic level - a shame really as that light duck egg green hue has always been one of my faves!!!!

All this continues to be erudite and utterly fascinating (to me at least!)

Thanks

Rob

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Hi Rob,

 

Whilst I think the intent was likely that MS4A was simply a lighter version of MS4 (and by that I mean in the same quadrant of the CIELAB colour axis - i.e. a touch yellow), it's feasible that the duck-eggy green could have been seen in practise. That said, it should be noticably lighter than 507C.

 

You can see from this one alone why the apparent pedantry of Snyder & Short 507C being too light and MS4A being too dark does in fact matter - when trying to intepret B&W or even some colour photos you'd run into trouble as the S&S colours have exchanged places in tone but not in hue.

[salmo G]

Hi Jamie

 

Been following all your discussions on RN colours with interest, great work!

 

I presume that you will be releasing a new range of colours to match all your research, any ideas when these will be available?

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

19 hours ago, salmo G said:

Hi Jamie

 

Been following all your discussions on RN colours with interest, great work!

 

I presume that you will be releasing a new range of colours to match all your research, any ideas when these will be available?

Hi,

 

I certainly will. I hope to commit to manufacture in the next week or so. The task of translating between what I have shown above and what I want the mixing machines to make requires an intermediary step; i.e. good quality physical samples. It's a feature of the mixing computer software that even though it works out pigment injection based upon CIELAB values, it will only allow us to establish a "new" colour within the system by measuring that colour through its own spectrophotometer and determining the colourspace values itself - i.e. we can't just type in the values we want.

 

That makes good old fashioned mixing with model paints by eye, letting a swatch dry, measuring, adjusting the sample, letting a swatch dry, measuring, ad nauseum. I have about 4 (I think?) still to do. With the Perth tradeshow looming, and Stew here this coming weekend to help with tinning, I wanted/needed this weekend off.

 

I enjoy having this business, but it's exhausting doing it with another full-time high stress career on the go and a young family too.

[iang]

Thanks for this Jamie.

[salmo G]

Hi Jamie

 

Good news that your committing the new colours to manufacture, I will certainly pick up a new set once they are out (I am hoping to get to the Perth show so will get whats available then, and pick up the remainder at Telford later in the year as long as your going again?)

 

Can you confirm what new colours you will be releasing?

 

Keep up the good work by the way, all your reports have made fascinating reading!

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

11 hours ago, salmo G said:

Hi Jamie

 

Good news that your committing the new colours to manufacture, I will certainly pick up a new set once they are out (I am hoping to get to the Perth show so will get whats available then, and pick up the remainder at Telford later in the year as long as your going again?)

 

Can you confirm what new colours you will be releasing?

 

Keep up the good work by the way, all your reports have made fascinating reading!

Hi,

 

Have we met before at a show? If so then I apologise profusely because this is a face-to-name connection that I haven't yet managed to make (but I try my best!)

 

We'll be at both Perth and Telford this year  I have soooooo much to do for Perth still.

 

We'll have our new Home Fleet Grey (13%RF version, tis nice) at Perth, but nothing else new. The gap between drawing conclusions and the show hasn't been long enough to fit in the final matching samples, the actual manufacture (which takes longer for new colours as it's almost as iterative as the matching samples (the only difference being the mixing machines have a go at it first and remember all the tweaks made so they can reproduce it again later, and then lid spraying, tinning and labelling).

 

There are a handful of colours that don't need an update, but we will carry them over to the renumbered format and we'll be happy to share which ones those are. There aren't too many though. They include anti-fouling red, corticene, buff, MS1, G5, Western Approaches Blue and Western Approaches Green. We'll keep the recent RN07 renumbered as B5, but I will offer a separate alternative B15 at the correct tone but with a greener caste, mainly for the modellers' choice. Depending on which exact ultramarine was used, and which exact unspecified green pigment was used, B15 (and to an extent the mixed to match B5) could take on a range of appearances once applied.

[cruiserguy]

Dear Jamie,

 

That's a great paper. Please don't pull the paper from the site regardless of how it's received and who it might offend, historical research is a living enterprise not a fossilisation of the past.

 

Sincerely,

 

Will.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

23 hours ago, cruiserguy said:

Dear Jamie,

 

That's a great paper. Please don't pull the paper from the site regardless of how it's received and who it might offend, historical research is a living enterprise not a fossilisation of the past.

 

Sincerely,

 

Will.

Hi Will,

 

Thank you for the kind words

 

I will need to update this one as there are a number of daft typos and the like in it. The link should still work when it's done though. I just need to get round to editing it! So much to do, so much of it needs me to physically do it. Sigh...

 

No changes to any of the shades or general conclusions will be made though!

 

 

[Killingholme]

Thanks for making this research available.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

57 minutes ago, Killingholme said:

Thanks for making this research available.

You're most welcome.

 

I didn't however feel I had much choice. Much of the competition had copied the Snyder & Short colours. It was becoming obvious that the Snyder & Short colours we had themselves clashed with evidence plain to see.

 

Colourcoats needed to be revised for me to sell confidently rather than apologetically, but if I hadn't written and made this information available I suspect my customer base would simply have thought I'd lost the plot! I didn't feel it a viable position to try to market new paints without first convincing people that I had a better idea of what was correct than the beliefs they currently held.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

That's the file corrected in a few obvious places now. I turned the colour table near the end round 90deg and enlarged it to fill a page. It's a little clearer now as a result.

[cruiserguy]

Good Morning Everyone,

 

Just noticed on the document reproduced on page 9. It appears that getting the brightness level of the paint correct was more important than getting an exact match for the colour.

 

Will.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

1 hour ago, cruiserguy said:

Good Morning Everyone,

 

Just noticed on the document reproduced on page 9. It appears that getting the brightness level of the paint correct was more important than getting an exact match for the colour.

 

Will.

 

For the camouflage colours, yes, that's absolutely correct. These ones were to be matched visually which possibly explains why I haven't found mixing formulae. For the 1943-45 formulae mixing formulae for each was provided. Some interpretations of the existing documents could support the B&G paints being the same as these - but nowhere is that categorically stated.

 

The brightness level is the main thing wrong with the Snyder & Short colours as far as these particular shades is concerned - i.e. they're all over the place and in several cases they're so far out they've swapped places with other paints.

 

That's a problem when trying to work out from B&W photos which shades they might have been when all we have are graduated tones from dark to light!

 

With respect to colour though, I was/am worried that the sort of modeller who prides themselves on getting everything wrong will read that clipping on Page 9 and conclude "nobody knows - it's a free for all and nobody can tell me I'm wrong". That always has been and remains their choice.

 

However, there is an argument that the ships did little mixing of these themselves and instead the big RN dockyards and a small number of civilian paint firms were manufacturing these. Whilst the Admiralty did not prescribe the formulae, shade cards to match to were provided and the dockyards and civilian suppliers would have quickly determined their own methods to do it with some repeatability.

 

Thus, whilst some variation might be expected in the paints produced, it is my considered opinion that the differences would not have been wild and that the chroma would have been about right and the hue at very least instantly recognisable to the learned observer.