Colours & Pattern of UK built River Class Frigate HMCS Annan

[George W.]

My next project will be building the WWII Starling 1/350 River Class Frigate model HMS Nadder as HMCS Annan and have questions about the colour scheme used for Annan, there are not very many photographs available for Annan.  The best one is produced here (if my OneDrive host works as I have not used it for this before, otherwise see my note below) with some questions about the use of off white and a darker colour, perhaps B55, which was common at the time (1944) and recommended as the darker colour for Nadder, along with off white as the light colour.

 

So my questions are what the pattern would be applicable and what colours if not off white or B55?  Any other comments on the photograph would be useful too. As a final option perhaps any pattern and colours used by Annan or any other UK built frigate used by the RCN would be useful, I noticed that there may be one profile in this thread.  Also, the pattern depicted in the Annan photograph does not look like any other pattern that I have seen in other reference books Malcolm Wright, Friedman, or in MacPherson’s books.

 

I’m avoiding the extra work of converting a UK built frigate to a Canadian built one, which means there are fewer UK built frigates to choose from that were operated by the RCN  7 vs 60 Canadian built ones.  My reference material, beyond the Canadian Internet sources, includes Macpherson’s Frigates of the RCN and hisThe Ships of Canada’s Naval Forces.

Thank you

George  

 

I copied the URL in but I do not think it worked, so . . . . .

 

URL note - my annotated photo is also reproduced here - http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=302211  

 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Hi George. Do you have CB.3098(R) 1943 edition?

 

Annan (K404) appears, at first glance, to be wearing a sort-of adaption of Plate 21 with the colours reversed on the hull and the aft shapes omitted, and with lighter upperworks as per the original design.

 

Let's do this @dickrd and solicit an opinion from Richard.

 

Incidently, HMCS Annan, nee HMS Annan (K404, since the first River frigate called HMCS Annan built in Canada in 1942 went to the US Navy) was another product of Hall, Russell and Co. in my home town of Aberdeen where my last model ship was also built

[George W.]

Thank you Jamie

No, I do not have CB.3098(R) 1943, I'm not familiar with that those. You did mention a reverse scheme and I did notice that HMS/HMCS Ribble may have had the reverse of Annan based on the photograph in a MacPherson book, particularly the white area midships is in the darker colour. 

 

I will check my Canadian references again to see if I have something that looks like the reverse of what I'm looking for.

Thanks again

George

 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I suspect this is just B55 and white but would value Richard's opinion also.

[dickrd]

Ah crossed boards! I have just posted this over on MW:

 

“George,
I think that with those particular diagonal stripes running the whole way up her hull, Matane is in another camouflage design. She was built in Canada and it may be a Canadian design. I think this (see below) 1943 Admiralty design for River Class frigates is what Annan’s was based on. Annan was built in the UK and more likely to apply an Admiralty design or variant of it. For some reason some individual ships inverted (reversed) the lights and the darks in WA designs and it looks like this has happened on Annan. It also looks like they may have dispensed with the two camouflage panels further aft (as on Teme: p 98) and just kept the one amidships. As you suggest, she may also have used a very pale light grey in place of pure white on that panel.”

 

Clearly Jamie and I are thinking along the same lines. 

 

It is a tough one to call from that one not terribly good photo of yours, but I think Jamie may well be onto something suggesting that the upperworks were the light tone also, but I’m not sure it was uniform.  There are some on-board images on this site which may help you to decide:

http://www.forposterityssake.ca/Navy/HMCS_ANNAN_K404.htm

 

The tone in this image seems fairly light:

 

But in this one seems darker:

 

And this one seems to show two tones in various places:

 

So there was perhaps some form of patterning on the upperworks! If so, as a generalisation, I would expect the lighter of the two tones to predominate on the forward upperworks, the darker tone to predominate further aft - but since Annan has reversed the scheme who knows what she did!

Edited August 19, 2020 by dickrd

[George W.]

Thank you Jamie & Dickrd

 

Jamie 

I have Colourcoats B55 (the greenish shade), is that the one.  Darren Scannell wrote at MW that there was an earlier, light grey version of B55, I saw an RN colour chip (not yours) page at Steel Navy and the lighter grey version was not listed there. 

 

Dickrd

Thanks for your additional information and again for your information provided at MW.  I do not think I saw that site provided above so I will spend some time there.

 

Thanks again

George    

 

 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

18 hours ago, George W. said:

Thank you Jamie & Dickrd

 

Jamie 

I have Colourcoats B55 (the greenish shade), is that the one.  Darren Scannell wrote at MW that there was an earlier, light grey version of B55, I saw an RN colour chip (not yours) page at Steel Navy and the lighter grey version was not listed there. 

 

Dickrd

Thanks for your additional information and again for your information provided at MW.  I do not think I saw that site provided above so I will spend some time there.

 

Thanks again

George    

 

 

 

Hi George.

 

B55 is a colour which has left me a little less certain than the rest, although there are some aspects I consider to be fact.

 

What is a fact is that from introduction of B55 in April 1943 through to end of the war the published formulation and ratios of pigmentation remained unchanged. There is no evidence in the documentation record of an early/late version.

 

Richard and I have reason to believe that there were still civilian ready-mixed paints in use after the change over to the B&G series paints.

 

I've ended up offering two variants of B55 under our new range because when I made new oil paint from the official formula I ended up with a very weakly saturated shade. This 'feels' like it's right when used on Admiralty Disruptive Schemes, but juxtaposed with white on Western Approaches designs it feels like it would need to be a bit more saturated. Indeed the official formula gives something which looks a lot like MS4A is now known to (not the old Snyder and Short medium-light green) and nothing like the printed portrayal in CB3098 which Richard shared a photo of on the other forum*.

 

Hence I've made two versions, both 55% LRV in tone, one weaker and the other stronger in hue, and the modeller can either use one, the other, or blend them and still be confident of maintaining the right tone.

 

 

 

*This doesn't alarm me too much however as there is another formula in the official documents which doesn't really work and that's G20, which when I carefully weighed it out lacked enough staining pigments to get the white base pigments close to 20% LRV in tone, never mind the colour saturation. The Confidential Books were issued with shade cards to match to which is what civilian suppliers would have used to determine their own formulae, and aboard ship or in a dockyard mixing oil paints I expect the official formulae would have been treated as instructive of the pigments to be used and the mixer would have used more of them if the formula gave him something lighter and paler than the shade card.

[George W.]

Thank you Jamie

I will be printing this out so I can use it for future reference and knowledge.  Thanks again
George