HMS King George V 1941

[ArtickWarspite]

Hi all,

 

I've been given another commission build to do, this time it's the Airfix 1/600 HMS King George V. This also comes with the full WEM PE set, brass barrels, 3D printed props and everything in between.

 

I'm required to do this one in it's 1941 "sink the Bismarck" appearance.

 

Looking online, I can't seem to pin down exactly what her colour scheme was during this time as it seems no two images are the same. Some sources say she was grey all over (including deck), and some show that she had a long dark grey rectangle right across the hull with a wooden deck.

I know later in the war she adopted a camouflage scheme, but I believe this wasn't worn during 1941.

 

Can anybody please tell me the actual colour scheme for this period?

 

Also, the Airfix instructions call for Humbrol 145 Matt Grey. Is this the proper grey? Traditionally I use Testors Model Master acrylics and the only RN colours that they have is TES 4869 RN Dark Grey and 4870 RN Light Grey. Are these the right colours as well?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

  

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Easy peasy.

 

Quote

and some show that she had a long dark grey rectangle right across the hull with a wooden deck. 

I know later in the war she adopted a camouflage scheme, but I believe this wasn't worn during 1941.

 

Yes, and it's wrong anyway. That is Standard Scheme A, introduced in 1944 and using the April 1943-onwards B&G series paints G45, a light grey, and B20, a medium blue shade with G10 on horizontal surfaces - the hull was not light grey with a dark grey panel. There are countless colour photographs and cinefilm reels showing this, and furthermore the scheme is presented in Confidential Book C.B.3098 1945 edition. The right combination are shown on the image below

 

Right, that dealt with, HMS King George V was Admiral Tovey's flagship of the Home Fleet in 1941. Ships of the Home Fleet were painted in the predictably named Home Fleet Grey. It's a very simple concept yet bizarrely some authors managed to cause untold confusion by getting that wrong two. There were two main formulations of actual ingredients to make Home Fleet Grey, one an interwar formulation with enamel content giving a hardwearing attractive glossy finish, the other being a cheaper matt finish better suited to war time economy and avoiding glare which is bad for being discreet when baddies are out to get you. The interwar formulation was called Admiralty Pattern 507B. In 1939 Admiralty Pattern 507A was introduced (the names 507, 507A, 507B and 507C date back to 1902 as the basic greys used on British warships - that's why in WW2 context 507B existed before 507A) and in 1940 enamel use was banned.

 

In May 1941 HMS King George V (and pretty much every other warship in the Home Fleet) was wearing Home Fleet Grey on all vertical surfaces. A slightly darker non-slip grey was used on horizontal steel surfaces. Decks were darkened either with the non-slip paint or stained with a turpentine dilution of Japan Black - which for all intents and purposes leads you back to a dark grey. Here's Home Fleet Temporary Memorandum 288 dated 20th August 1940 (a facsimile - the original resides in The National Archives, Kew, London but I suspect you don't want to travel half the world for a commission build of an Airfix KGV!) on the matter, both reiterating the order to paint Home Fleet ships in Home Fleet Grey, but also stating the instruction to darken the decks and suggesting Japan Black for that job:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0730/0927/files/HTFM_288_20Aug1940.pdf?10927326570092329013

 

 

Unlike all other colours in the RN WW2 colour palette which have a single set of colour values/properties, Home Fleet Grey is quoted in several different official sources (i.e. primary source documentation between Admiralty, fleet and individuals officially engaged in camouflage matters actually at the time - not some post-war distillation of what someone remembered or thought they heard) as being between 10% and 13% Light Reflectance Value. You can download this here to see how much difference that makes. It also compares the correct shade (or tolerance thereof) to what most people will sell you as being the right colour:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0730/0927/files/Royal_Navy_colours_of_World_War_Two_-_The_Pattern_507s_G10_and_G45.pdf?6399082584985931582

 

 

The Humbrol 145 colour is acceptable in character ( a bluish grey) but light at 16% LRV - it might look ok on the model. Model Master 4869 Dark Grey is matched to Snyder and Short 507A which you will see in the PDF above. Model Master 4870 claims to be 507C but public domain renders have colour coordinates lighter than any colour ever used by the Royal Navy except white.

[ArtickWarspite]

Hi Jamie,

 

Wow, glad someone thought it was easy. It's great to actually have a definitive answer on this, as this commission is the second of three RN builds. (The first being HMS Achillies which has been finished, this KGV and then the Airfix 1/600 HMS Hot Spur.)

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply to this, it has proven to be extremely useful with this model and my own ones in the pile that will one day be built.

 

I've had a look at the Humbrol 145 which looks acceptable for sure, though the Tamiya equivalent XF-20 medium grey looked way too light. For this KGV build, we'll go with the Testors 4869 507-A RN Dark Grey (Home fleet grey).

 

Presumably this Home fleet grey is also applicable to the HMS Hood?

 

In regards to the other Testors 4870 507-C Light grey- I originally thought that upon first seeing the colour it was going to be too light. Glad to know it wasn't just me.

 

Since you have so much knowledge on this, maybe you could help with another colour scheme? I've recently built the 1/350 Trumpeter Warspite, and I'm not certain the colours & camouflage pattern were correct. What was the actual colour scheme for the Warspite in WW2? I've got the Academy one to do next and I really don't want to get it wrong again.

 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235028475-trumpeter-1350-hms-warspite/&tab=comments#comment-2854539

 

Again, thanks for all of your help, it's greatly appreciated.

 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

8 hours ago, ArtickWarspite said:

Hi Jamie,

 

Wow, glad someone thought it was easy. It's great to actually have a definitive answer on this, as this commission is the second of three RN builds. (The first being HMS Achillies which has been finished, this KGV and then the Airfix 1/600 HMS Hot Spur.)

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply to this, it has proven to be extremely useful with this model and my own ones in the pile that will one day be built.

 

I've had a look at the Humbrol 145 which looks acceptable for sure, though the Tamiya equivalent XF-20 medium grey looked way too light. For this KGV build, we'll go with the Testors 4869 507-A RN Dark Grey (Home fleet grey).

 

 

Hi,

 

I don't know whether you got around to having a read of the research paper in particular, but this is the image I wanted you to see. The Testors dark grey is slightly darker than the render the red arrow points to. Snyder & Short's 507A is overly age-darkened (and slightly greenish for a paint made from black, white and ultramarine blue - a result likely due to the strong tendency for linseed oil based paints to yellow with age).

 

I'd recommend that, particularly for small scales, you want to lighten that colour to get to the lighter end of the Home Fleet Grey range.

 

To put this another way, the darkest camouflage paint used by the Royal Navy, often described as "near black" and indeed looking that way on many images e.g. HMS Rodney below was MS1 which measured around 6% Light Reflectance Value. The next darkest was Home Fleet Grey at nominally 10% but 13% was acceptable. If you use the Testor's 4869 as it comes out of the jar, you're going to end up with a ship that looks almost black. The little image below has some shades not relevant here but it does show how MS1 and 507A should look together, and how they look together if you do go with an unadjusted Testor's 4869. We have invested a small fortune writing off Snyder & Short based products and remaking corrected ones, but when looking at the evidence we felt we had no choice; the Snyder & Short ones just don't work together.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Rodney_(29)#/media/File:HMS_Rodney_after_refitting_at_Liverpool.jpg

 

This here was a little mockup I did a few months ago showing the 13% Home Fleet Grey product applied to a scrap of MDF with a black faux-boot topping added. I wanted to show how the 13% LRV blue-grey looks in colour versus black and white. From there, we can see that this is indeed the paint seen in so many photographs between 1936 and 1941ish:

 

 This is the 13% paint chip against the MDF to demonstrate that the following aren't cheating

 Taken from up-sun

 Taken from down-sun

 Up-sun image greyscaled

 Down-sun image greyscaled

 

 

Quote

Presumably this Home fleet grey is also applicable to the HMS Hood?

Presumably this Home fleet grey is also applicable to the HMS Hood?

 

 

Indeed HMS Hood was painted in Pattern 507A Home Fleet Grey between 1939 and 1941. You've perhaps seen the colour cinefilm reel the above stills came from (it's on Youtube). Hood still has her foretop mast so it's not 1941 here, but you get the idea. Most people want to paint all RN ships light grey for some reason but that really wasn't the case.

 

Quote

In regards to the other Testors 4870 507-C Light grey- I originally thought that upon first seeing the colour it was going to be too light. Glad to know it wasn't just me.

Wow, glad someone thought it was easy. It's great to actually have a definitive answer on this, as this commission is the second of three RN builds. (The first being HMS Achillies which has been finished, this KGV and then the Airfix 1/600 HMS Hot Spur.)

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply to this, it has proven to be extremely useful with this model and my own ones in the pile that will one day be built.

I've had a look at the Humbrol 145 which looks acceptable for sure, though the Tamiya equivalent XF-20 medium grey looked way too light. For this KGV build, we'll go with the Testors 4869 507-A RN Dark Grey (Home fleet grey).

Presumably this Home fleet grey is also applicable to the HMS Hood?

In regards to the other Testors 4870 507-C Light grey- I originally thought that upon first seeing the colour it was going to be too light. Glad to know it wasn't just me.

Since you have so much knowledge on this, maybe you could help with another colour scheme? I've recently built the 1/350 Trumpeter Warspite, and I'm not certain the colours & camouflage pattern were correct. What was the actual colour scheme for the Warspite in WW2? I've got the Academy one to do next and I really don't want to get it wrong again.

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235028475-trumpeter-1350-hms-warspite/&tab=comments#comment-2854539

 

Again even if it matched Snyder and Short, it would not be particularly good as Snyder & Short's 507C is already too light.

And, once again, it might seem no great shakes but as with 507A, 507C was regularly used in disruptive camouflage schemes also and when the tonal values are wrong, the whole thing goes to pot as can be demonstrated here. Snyder & Short's 507C is lighter than their MS4A, which was in fact the lightest camouflage colour used, besides white and there should have been a 10% LRV gap between 507C and MS4A at that. The Testors 4870 product render places it closer to white.

 

 

(note 507A and B were nominally the same colour. They're listed separately because Snyder & Short shows them as distinct and very different shades - I've used these two boxes under the correction column to show 10% (darkest) and 13% (lightest) tolerances for either)

 

 

Quote

 

Since you have so much knowledge on this, maybe you could help with another colour scheme? I've recently built the 1/350 Trumpeter Warspite, and I'm not certain the colours & camouflage pattern were correct. What was the actual colour scheme for the Warspite in WW2? I've got the Academy one to do next and I really don't want to get it wrong again.

 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235028475-trumpeter-1350-hms-warspite/&tab=comments#comment-2854539

 

Again, thanks for all of your help, it's greatly appreciated.

 

 

And all the above does infact lead quite nicely in to here, would you believe?

The simple truth is that I don't know for sure what colours exactly were on Warspite. As a fairly early camouflage scheme, it is entirely possible that the greys used were custom-mixed; a practise halted by the Admiralty in 1941. You will find many authors claiming the colours were 507A and 507B. Hopefully by now you've read that paper linked to above and will recognise that as nonsense in terms of fact, but it may be that those authors pulled off the old school exam trick of arriving at the correct ultimate answer but scoring zero marks because the workings were flawed throughout, arriving at the answer by accident. By that, I mean that there was an emergency mix grey approved by the Admiralty from 1942 onwards at least, made by mixing 507A and 507C in equal parts, arriving at a tone approximately equal to that of Mountbatten Pink or MS3. That would be 20% Light Reflectance Value. Now, the reason this wasn't recognised before may be due to lack of affordable colour measurement technology for amateur researchers, but with the old idea of MS3 actually measuring out at 30% LRV, the following would have gone unnoticed. The medium tone bluish grey which Snyder & Short thought was 507B actually measures at approximately 20%. Alan Raven claims that Claude Muncaster (a prominent figure working on camouflage paints in the Admiralty mid-war, according to archive records) told him in the 1990s that 507B was a 50/50 mix of 507A and 507C. This is directly contradicted by multiple 1930s and 1940s vintage Admiralty documents recorded in the archives. It is possible that someone along the way got their wires crossed, applied a bit of layman's logic and arrived at the conclusion that 507B must sit between 507A and 507C. That even makes sense, providing you don't know the history of the 507 family and haven't mapped out the timeline from their origins.

 

It's a bit like waterboarding in Guantanamo Bay sounding brilliant, providing you don't know what either of those things are!

 

All that rambling background aside, there were many RN ships in 1940-1941 painted in two tone grey like Warspite was:

 

If you correct 507A and correct 507C, the tonal gap between them narrows down significantly. In practise, black paint is normally around 4% LRV whilst white paint is about 80% LRV. That's a total scale of around 76% to play with in paint terms. When both your 507A and 507C are too dark and too light as per Snyder & Short or any model paints copied from that source, you have 46% between the two. When they are corrected to their proper tonal values, that contrast is reduced significantly to 32-35% between them, a figure approximately 2/3 of the previous one.

 

Suddenly, 507A and 507C, two completely standard off-the-shelf paints look pretty sensible together.

 

[Chewbacca]

On ‎11‎/‎07‎/‎2018 at 12:03, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

 

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0730/0927/files/HTFM_288_20Aug1940.pdf?10927326570092329013

 

 

 

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0730/0927/files/Royal_Navy_colours_of_World_War_Two_-_The_Pattern_507s_G10_and_G45.pdf?6399082584985931582

 

 

Fascinating thread.  And to think that for years I used Hu27 for 507A and Hu64 for 507C.

 

Forgive me for being a little dull Jamie, but both of these links appear to point to the same file?  I'd be very interested in seeing the facsimile of the original document (purely from its historical context if nothing else)

 

Thanks

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

7 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

Fascinating thread.  And to think that for years I used Hu27 for 507A and Hu64 for 507C.

 

Forgive me for being a little dull Jamie, but both of these links appear to point to the same file?  I'd be very interested in seeing the facsimile of the original document (purely from its historical context if nothing else)

 

Thanks

Please allow me to check how on Earth I achieved that... 🤨

 

Edit:

Post #15 on this thread has the file linked correctly - or at least it seems to be!

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235035483-royal-navy-colours-of-world-war-two-the-pattern-507s-g10-and-g45/

 

[iang]

On 13/07/2018 at 07:47, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

 

 

All that rambling background aside, there were many RN ships in 1940-1941 painted in two tone grey like Warspite was:

 

Hi Jamie,

Is that Barham?  But your point stands on the 507A/C contrast. 

 

IG

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

On 7/14/2018 at 10:04 AM, iang said:

Hi Jamie,

Is that Barham?  But your point stands on the 507A/C contrast. 

 

IG

Hi Ian,

 

I'll need to check the file name on my desktop PC, but it was either Resolution or Revenge - I can't remember which!

 

EDIT: It's HMS Resolution

[Chewbacca]

Thanks Jamie.  I had seen that before but hadn't realised that it was that AFO that you were referring to

[ArtickWarspite]

Hi Jamie,

 

Yes, I did have a look through the links, though upon deciding my choice, I accidentally omitted the part where I would lighten it slightly. How much was still being decided until your reply came through with your test shots that you did outside. I painted the hull yesterday based on the info that you have sent through.

Choosing the Testors 4869 is a no brainer for me as I work for a company that distributes Testors paints.

May have to purchase some of these Colourcoats to make life a bit easier next time..

 

 

On ‎7‎/‎13‎/‎2018 at 6:47 PM, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

And all the above does infact lead quite nicely in to here, would you believe?

The simple truth is that I don't know for sure what colours exactly were on Warspite. As a fairly early camouflage scheme, it is entirely possible that the greys used were custom-mixed; a practise halted by the Admiralty in 1941. You will find many authors claiming the colours were 507A and 507B. Hopefully by now you've read that paper linked to above and will recognise that as nonsense in terms of fact, but it may be that those authors pulled off the old school exam trick of arriving at the correct ultimate answer but scoring zero marks because the workings were flawed throughout, arriving at the answer by accident. By that, I mean that there was an emergency mix grey approved by the Admiralty from 1942 onwards at least, made by mixing 507A and 507C in equal parts, arriving at a tone approximately equal to that of Mountbatten Pink or MS3. That would be 20% Light Reflectance Value. Now, the reason this wasn't recognised before may be due to lack of affordable colour measurement technology for amateur researchers, but with the old idea of MS3 actually measuring out at 30% LRV, the following would have gone unnoticed. The medium tone bluish grey which Snyder & Short thought was 507B actually measures at approximately 20%. Alan Raven claims that Claude Muncaster (a prominent figure working on camouflage paints in the Admiralty mid-war, according to archive records) told him in the 1990s that 507B was a 50/50 mix of 507A and 507C. This is directly contradicted by multiple 1930s and 1940s vintage Admiralty documents recorded in the archives. It is possible that someone along the way got their wires crossed, applied a bit of layman's logic and arrived at the conclusion that 507B must sit between 507A and 507C. That even makes sense, providing you don't know the history of the 507 family and haven't mapped out the timeline from their origins.

Is it known when the Warspite got that camouflage scheme? What was the scheme she was wearing before the camouflage was applied? Also, did she remain in that two tone scheme for the remainder of the war?

I wasn't entirely sure when I did the last one, but the dark grey was straight from the bottle, so that's too dark, the light grey from the bottle was too light (which was really only used for the masts & top of the superstructure), plus the wrong tone of reds for the anti fouling. I ended up using an aircraft blue/grey for the lighter grey on the camouflage. Then again, I'm pretty sure that the pattern is way wrong too. Multiple sources have it as wavy as opposed to a hard edge scheme. Good thing I've got another to build- it's all learning..

 

 

On ‎7‎/‎13‎/‎2018 at 6:47 PM, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

It's a bit like waterboarding in Guantanamo Bay sounding brilliant, providing you don't know what either of those things are!

Hahaha!