What colour is US Navy Glossy Sea Blue?

[John R]

I have just sprayed my Fury XFJ-1 with Xtracolor FS15042 Glossy Sea Blue and it has come out a different shade to the rest of my early US jets. I can't remember which paints I used for the Panther and Phantom but for the Pirate I used Humbrol Authentic HB9 Sea Blue Gloss. As it was very old I suspect that it was used on the Phantom too but as the Panther dates back to the 1980's it was probably Humbrol.  I was happy with the colour of the earlier models as they seemed to match colours from photos and what my eyes had seen at airshows but the colour of the Fury seems to have a greyish/green tinge.

 

I did wonder if I had not stirred up the paint sufficiently before using but the colour seems pretty close to that on the lid of the tin.

Please can anybody offer any help on this matter?

John

PS. There was a thread about this in 2010 in which someone stated that the Xtracolor was the 'gold' standard but has it changed in the interim?

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/42748-us-navy-sea-blue/

 

 

[Troy Smith]

 

hi John

 

the colour changed !

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235014486-usn-hellcat-colours-an-unexpected-query/&do=findComment&comment=2589271

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There are a couple of other reasons the model paint manufacturers have had problems matching the Sea Blues.  Most are working from the FS595 chips, which never accurately matched all three versions of the wartime colors.  The other problem is that the formula for ANA 623 Glossy Sea Blue changed in 1947/48.  The original color faded to quickly and was replaced with more resilient pigments.  When the US Navy gave modelers the old stocks of ANA paint chips in the 1960s/70s, some of us got the 1944 card-stock chip of ANA 623, while others got the 1948 metal replacement chips.  I can well remember the arguments back then, arguments that arose because we were working from different standards!

 

Cheers,

 

 

Dana

•  

 

Sovereign Hobbies do the full range of USN paint now,  

Quote

We ended up matching ANA607 Non Specular Sea Blue and ANA623 Glossy Sea Blue to a US Navy monogram, sense checked with L*a*b* values provided by Nick Millman. Our existing ACUS07 colour was near perfect for ANA606 Semi-gloss Sea Blue, whilst FS15042 that is oft quoted as matching ANA623 Glossy Sea Blue didn't match any ANA wartime Sea Blues, so we made that as well. So now we have:

 

ACUS07 - ANA606 Semi-Gloss Sea Blue

ACUS08 - ANA608 Intermediate Blue

ACUS33 - ANA607 Non-Specular Sea Blue

ACUS34 - ANA623 Glossy Sea Blue

ACUS35 - FS15042 post war Gloss Sea Blue

 

as well as

 

ACUS37 - ANA601 Insignia White

 

and

ACUS39 - ANA605 Insignia Blue

 

Offhand I don't now if any of early jets got the wartime colour.

 

HTH

T