Royal Navy Colours of World War Two - The Pattern 507s, G10 and G45

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Our latest work is available to download now:

https://www.sovereignhobbies.co.uk/pages/royal-navy-colours-of-world-war-two-pattern-507s-g10-and-g45

 

The revised Colourcoats are not available to purchase just yet. We have decided on a "hard reset" due to the number of changes ongoing with respect to Royal Navy WW2 colours, and we will be rolling out a new coding/numbering system. This way, customers will know for sure whether they're getting new-research colours or not.

[Ray S]

Jamie, you have been doing some serious detective work with RN paints recently! What with this and the Blues (B5 +B15 if I remember correctly), you are turning percieved thoughts upside down!

 

About 3 hours before you posted this I ordered a lot of RN paints from you, I will stick with them for the time being!

 

Thanks for all your great work (and your co-investigators)

 

Ray

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Thank you Ray!

 

Yesterday was spent making an almost full set of B&G series paints from the AFO2106/43 promulgated formulae, published in April 1943. They're not for colour matching per se, but to check that the formulae arrive in the same ball park as our other references suggest they should. It would seem stupid to have the formulae and not take it as far as it will go...

 

[Courageous]

After your research, it would be interesting to see the differences between the old and the new colours?

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

3 minutes ago, Courageous said:

After your research, it would be interesting to see the differences between the old and the new colours?

 

This will be forthcoming

 

A couple of the samples have required a tweak but for quantifiable and justifiable reasons - i.e. I had to use zinc white for 2 of them which should have been made with white lead flake which is banned nowadays. Zinc is less solid/opaque than lead white so the correct staining ingredients have made it darker than documented records state. Keeping the first cards, last night I started to adjust the two "problem" samples by adding in a little more white, make another card, let it dry, digitally measure, and iterate until it's the correct tone.

 

I expect these two to desaturate in colour slightly and have made a simple calculated prediction on how much but I really want something physical to prove it.

 

As a general theme, almost everything is going to be less yellow and a lot of the tones are going to change such that each shade fits in to its proper space in the relative tones from dark to light that were the fundamental principles of the camouflage designs.

 

[Courageous]

Too much science for me Jamie, you do what you need to do. Carry on the good work.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Without wanting to make the paper too complicated, we elected not to include a section on application of the paints, however I can describe it a bit more here for anyone interested.

 

First, definitions:

Colour, hue - characteristic properties / adjective for example green, grey, blue-grey etc

Tone - chroma (lightness / darkness)

Shade - a specific combination of colour and chroma

 

507A, B and C are not shades. They were specific recipes to make paints using shipboard stores from the Rate Book to one of two recognised shades. These shades were Dark Grey (used by the Home Fleet) and Light Grey (used on foreign stations). Dark Grey was referred to as Dark Grey, Dark Grey, Home Fleet Shade, or sometimes simple Home Fleet Grey. Light Grey had likewise had other names, including Foreign Stations Grey and Mediterranean Grey.

 

I have collated multiple documents which deal with formulations to achieve one or both of the aforementioned shades. Portsmouth Dockyard did not use 507A,B,C etc - they had their own formula to arrive at "matt paints" of the same shades. Later, ready made matt paints were procured from civilian suppliers as "matt paints" in these shades. Non-slip deck paint became available from civilian suppliers in Black, Dark Grey, Home Fleet Grey, Light Grey etc. Likewise, both Australia and New Zealand had a period without access to the ready mixed Pattern 370A and Pattern 371 cans of blue-black paste, and were given alternative formulations to achieve the shades using separate black and ultramarine pastes. As it happens, it was these alternative formulae which made it possible for me to "reverse engineer" Pattern 371 Blue Black paste in order to use it to create G45, B15, B30, B55 and B20 using the B15 and B30! If any document exists specifying the ratio of blue to black in Pattern 371 Blue Black paste, I never found it - even after buying BS390/29 for £152 which describes oil pastes. I did get a document which stated that either white or inert content was acceptable to make these pastes, and the blue and ultramarine were documented. What worried me for a while was that a full 7lb can of Pattern 370A and Pattern 371 Blue Black very stiff pastes added to almost identical weights of white oil pastes either made a dark grey or a light grey respectively. Clearly pattern 371 had to be bulked out with something to make it a stiff paste other than only blue and black, otherwise 7lbs of it would make a dark grey same as Pattern 370A did!

 

Anyway - as camouflage pattern designs became more prevalent (and importantly after 507B had been "dead" for more than a year) the nomenclature seems to have evolved, and indeed official documents from around 1942ish start to simply talk about 507A and 507C on disruptive pattern design plates.

 

By 1943 we have the whole colour palette replaced with G5, G10, B15, G20, B30, G45 and B55. Later B20 and G55 appear. These are shades. There were to be matt and glossy type paints, A.1 and A.2 introduced, but in the end A.2 did not materialise. Thus, the official designation for a specific paint type after 1943 would have been of the format B15/A.1.

 

 

As only A.1 type ever actually appeared in use, for practical purposes it is safe enough today to only use the B15 part. When using the terms 507A or B though, more so than 507C, it is important to understand that these were two different formulations of the same shade;

• 507A - a lower cost matt finish linseed oil paint with less hard-wearing characteristics but more suitable for wartime use when glare from shiny surfaces is contrary to the principles of camouflage - exactly similar to G10/A.1
• 507B - a linseed oil paint with sizable enamel additive making it a tougher, harder wearing semi-gloss paint intended to keep a ship looking clean, smart and sharp in peace time - ordered across the fleet to be discontinued from 1940 - quite possibly discontinued or overpainted with 507A or shore-supplied matt paint to same shade from outbreak of war at commanding officers' discretion because nobody in war time wants to twinkle on the horizon with glossy paint
• 507C - pre war a linseed oil paint with modest enamel additive, which continued in use albeit without the enamel from 1940 onwards - the post-enamel version was exactly similar to G45/A.1

[Graham Boak]

4 minutes ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

 

 ....at commanding officers' discretion because nobody in war time wants to twinkle on the horizon with glossy paint

 

Thanks for the background Jamie, but remembering that a new captain of HMS Norfolk had the camouflage paints removed from the wooden deck in the interest of looks, I think this statement is perhaps a little optimistic.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

1 hour ago, Graham Boak said:

 

Thanks for the background Jamie, but remembering that a new captain of HMS Norfolk had the camouflage paints removed from the wooden deck in the interest of looks, I think this statement is perhaps a little optimistic.

 

Yes perhaps. That's the sort of thing which obliges the Admiralty to write fleet orders formalising as clear instructions what probably should have been obvious to the 80th percentile or more in the first place!

[iang]

I've just downloaded and read your findings, which are very convincing. Thanks for making them available.  I'm also pleased that you intend to clearly identify Colourcoats based on new research from the existing range. Because the mid-war documents make no reference to a prewar medium grey, but do discuss dark and light greys and their new equivalents, it seems very unlikely to me that you have missed an earlier set of Orders relating to medium grey.  

[robgizlu]

Fabulous Research Jamie and so rationally argued and presented.  I really appreciate your PDF document.

 

I buy into it alll

 

I'm waiting for your RN white shade to come back into stock and I'll be taking  a selection of your paints and using them

Kudos to you for your application and rigour

 

Rob

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

2 hours ago, robgizlu said:

Fabulous Research Jamie and so rationally argued and presented.  I really appreciate your PDF document.

 

I buy into it alll

 

I'm waiting for your RN white shade to come back into stock and I'll be taking  a selection of your paints and using them

Kudos to you for your application and rigour

 

Rob

 

Hi Rob,

 

 

Thank you for the feedback

I'm actually seriously thinking of discontinuing RN10, because from the various formulae etc we do have, it should have just been white. Indeed it seems to have been suggested to add a dash of ultramarine just to kill the "warmth" that the linseed oil gave it. Hence, I believe the freshly applied colour would have been as close to white as they could get.

 

 

3 hours ago, iang said:

I've just downloaded and read your findings, which are very convincing. Thanks for making them available.  I'm also pleased that you intend to clearly identify Colourcoats based on new research from the existing range. Because the mid-war documents make no reference to a prewar medium grey, but do discuss dark and light greys and their new equivalents, it seems very unlikely to me that you have missed an earlier set of Orders relating to medium grey.  

Thank you Ian, this one has taken a long time to get out. It's been rewritten around 6 times would you believe. It was a lot of effort to arrive at a balance of background, context, etc and of course wording that seemed satisfactory. When I started it, I naïvely thought it would be the easiest one because we had so much supporting documentation for it! 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Being in the business, I have an awareness of some nuances of colour perception that perhaps others are not party to.

Given the prolific numbers of photographs of Royal Navy capital ships in black and white photographs which appear to be in a medium grey, it is understandable why so many were willing to believe the existence of a lighter "507B".

Please forgive the somewhat-less-than-corporate look of the following. I have left these uncropped and very amateurish looking to hopefully demonstrate a point and to convince anyone who perhaps doesn't quite believe that a medium grey by whatever name was not in widespread use.

The shape of cones in the human eye is not uniform. A consistent feature of the human eye is that looking at a small colour swatch in the centre of our vision will always appear darker than observing it at a wider range of viewing angles. This is not the same as scale-fade or anything like that. Just that a 5cm x 5cm swatch of colour will look darker than a whole object painted in that same shade which reflects that frequency of light onto the different shaped cones further from the centre of our eyes.

With a relatively dark shade like Home Fleet Grey, this is exaggerated when displayed against a completely unnatural background such as a white card.

This very issue has inspired some empassioned debate amongst our little group of research contributors!

The following is one of 6 test cards I made around October last year, made by cutting up painted post-card sized samples into 6 pieces. I kept one at home. Four went to those individuals assisting me, and the last one is kept at our Colourcoats factory. Our 13%RF Home Fleet Grey is now ready to go on sale 

 

 

I used some left over paint in the lid-spraying airbrush to (very!) roughly paint a modest sized piece of MDF board. I then (very!) roughly sprayed a black faux "boot topping" on the bottom to give us some reference that we are all used to seeing on the old photographs. Just to prove I'm not cheating - here is the swatch used to match the production model paint against the 30-second concourse paint job on the MDF board:

 

 

Now, look at this. Down sun, up sun and obliquely across sun:

 

 

 

 

 

If you're not convinced now that Home Fleet Grey was the paint used extensively on British warships in the Home Fleet from 1936 to 1941 prior to disruptive pattern camouflage becoming de rigour, then I don't think we can be friends any more 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

And one more for the road - crops of the above turned to greyscale (losing the intricacies of panchromatic film, but still you get the idea)...

 

 

Down sun

 

Up sun

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

We've collated a little more of the background material we used in our Royal Navy WW2 revelations for people to see. In general the reception of our work has been overwhelmingly positive, but every now and then I see something that makes me think someone is reluctant to believe me yet lacks the motivation to look up the references listed.

 

So, we've recreated a few key documents pertinent to the introduction of the inter-war Pattern 507 greys, as well as some documentation discussing which paints were in use in the first 2 years of the war.

 

Admiralty Fleet Order 1658 / 1927 introduces a dark grey for the Home Fleet, and a light grey for foreign stations and assigns the Admiralty Pattern numbers 507B and 507C respectively.

 

Admiralty Fleet Order 2680/36 introduces a change of shade in 1936 to 507B, giving the colour that would remain in use until after the war ended.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0730/0927/files/AFO2680-36.pdf?8058593617178735373

 

This extract memo referencing (Confidential Book) C.B.3016 details how various classes of Royal Navy ships are painted according to station and tells us that matt surface paints are used (meaning 507B with its glossy finish thanks to 10 pints of dark grey enamel is not being used as the surface coats, if at all) by December 1939:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0730/0927/files/CB3106_Extract_Memo_dec39.pdf?8058593617178735373

 

Admiralty Fleet Order 211/39 dated 19th January 1939 introduces the long-absent Pattern 507A to the authorised list of paints. It clearly states that 507A and 507B are both "Dark grey paint, Home Fleet shade" and that their formulation is the same except 507A lacks the 10 pints of Pattern 11 Dark Grey enamel:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0730/0927/files/AFO_211-39.pdf?3526008614875121614

 

This Temporary Memorandum from August 1940 orders the cessation of green and brown camouflage efforts and reiterates that ships in the Home Fleet are to be painted Home Fleet Grey. It also addresses deck staining and painting of turret tops etc to match the decks using non-slip paints. Note the non-slip paints are NOT described as 507A:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0730/0927/files/HTFM_288_20Aug1940.pdf?8058593617178735373

 

In summary, these are but a few of the documents communicated to the entire fleet or reported up through the chain of command discussing paint use in the terminology of the day which directly contradict the 1990s narrative that 507A and 507B were distinct dark and medium tone greys.

If there's a demand, I will reproduce the correspondence ordering the cessation of enamel use in 1940 (although the relevant texts from these are already included within our Royal Navy Colours of World War Two - The Pattern 507s, G10 and G45 paper).

[Chewbacca]

Fascinating stuff!  And there's me just choosing the colours that I think look "about right".  I shall have to order some Colourcoats for my next WW2 project.