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HMS Queen Elizabeth 1941 camouflage colors


thekz

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Hello,
I would like to hear your opinion on one of the most beautiful camouflages of the Second World War - the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth 1941
This is how it looks in an illustration from the book Les Brown

 

26-8680001-041.jpg


And this is how Alen Raven

 

Ensign-04-Queen-Elizabeth-Class-Battlesh
The question is not even about the shape of the paterns - it certainly needs to be clarified. I find the range of colors offered by Les Brown rather strange. Isn't it logical to assume the standard MS1-MS2-MS3-507C set for that time?

The color white seems especially strange to me. Take a look at this photo: you can clearly see the white waterline mark on a “white” background.

 

c0f123bd8f6d3657696e8f4745962a56.jpg

 

In short, I will be very glad to all well-reasoned opinions on this matter.

Especially interesting is the opinion by @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies

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You're correct - the background paint colour very clearly isn't white. This is one of those messy 1941 designs. My imagination might be playing tricks on me but I keep visualising a still from a colour cinefilm with a glimpse of HMS Queen Elizabeth wearing this scheme in it, but I've no idea where I might have seen it. I'd like to tag @dickrd in this. The first step is to verify the placement of colour demarcations then agree how many different tones of paint are actually there. Whilst it may seem secondary, we have to know how many paints are there and grade each paint in order of its tone relative to its neighbours. That process can narrow down likely candidates for the paint.

 

I really need HMS Queen Elizabeth as a vector drawing for this - I don't really have time to draw it at the moment unfortunately but could certainly play with paint colours on it if I had it.

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33 minutes ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

I really need HMS Queen Elizabeth as a vector drawing for this - I don't really have time to draw it at the moment unfortunately but could certainly play with paint colours on it if I had it.

I have such pictures

25-3626089-hms-queen-elizabeth.jpg

 

26-8680001-058.jpg

 

of course, this is not a vector, but maybe they will do

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4 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

I really need HMS Queen Elizabeth as a vector drawing for this - I don't really have time to draw it at the moment unfortunately but could certainly play with paint colours on it if I had it

Specify the task, please:
do you need a vector drawing of a ship or only camouflage spots superimposed on a raster image of the ship should be vectors?

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The way I normally draw camouflage profiles - especially when they need iterations - is to have a transparent line drawing as my upper layer and draw two or more colour layers behind. I use these background layers to work purely on camouflage and I can do so without affecting the line drawing. That method allows me to make numerous copies of the whole set of layers if I want to try changing one paint colour for another, and so on.

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12 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

The way I normally draw camouflage profiles - especially when they need iterations - is to have a transparent line drawing as my upper layer and draw two or more colour layers behind. I use these background layers to work purely on camouflage and I can do so without affecting the line drawing. That method allows me to make numerous copies of the whole set of layers if I want to try changing one paint colour for another, and so on.

here I have depicted my hypothesis about the arrangement of colors.

 

1941-color-01.jpg


the link is available for this picture in eps format. I hope you can use it to depict your version

https://mega.nz/file/Ut1FEISI#-Mis_09-t233mYJkOduBtnhZa-0Zm1E1ZiImWlTINZY

 

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  • 9 months later...
3 hours ago, Tincan_Warspite said:

So is the color white or a very pale light grey? I just picked up the Trumpeter 1/700 kit and i would like to depict Lizzie in her 1941 scheme.

Judging by this photo, not even very pale:

c0f123bd8f6d3657696e8f4745962a56.jpg

(note the white waterline mark)

probably 507C or even MS4
a more detailed answer will probably give you @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies

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  • 6 months later...
On 10/12/2022 at 03:21, Mister Me said:

Hello,

 

Did you make some progress on definining the good tones of paints ?

Print

Hello
based on the results of this discussion, I have drawn another colouring option. please take it as a hypothesis, not as a sample)
No educated guess as to what colours have been used, as you can see no one has suggested.

I can't tell the difference between 507C and MS4 from black and white or poor quality colour photos either:cool:
Try bothering @dickrd and @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies about it , maybe they can tell you :think:

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I've not studied this pattern that much (did notice the pattern/colour of patches may change over time), but what photographs I have do not show much of a difference between the patches you now have as blue and dark grey? (Much closer to your 2021 image?)

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6 minutes ago, foeth said:

I've not studied this pattern that much (did notice the pattern/colour of patches may change over time), but what photographs I have do not show much of a difference between the patches you now have as blue and dark grey? (Much closer to your 2021 image?)

I thought I noticed this difference in your colour picture:

QE_color.gif

 

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507C can indeed photograph deceptively light. If that film has preserved at least some semblance of hue information, then MS3, B5 and 507A are probably not bad guesses at the other 3 colours. But they're still guesses. It's difficult with so few photos, though I'm tempted to try a contrast analysis myself. The pattern needs to be adjusted though, especially on the port side where to me it looks like the darkest colour runs all the way to amidships i.e. most of the blue section in the above drawing shouldn't be blue.

Edited by Vlad
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8 hours ago, Vlad said:

I'm tempted to try a contrast analysis myself

https://mega.nz/file/Ut1FEISI#-Mis_09-t233mYJkOduBtnhZa-0Zm1E1ZiImWlTINZY

 

this link is valid
it contains my source code for the 1st version in vector format

8 hours ago, Vlad said:

then MS3, B5 and 507A are probably not bad guesses at the other 3 colours.

and why do you think the dark colour is 507A and not MS1?

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On 12/12/2022 at 7:41 AM, thekz said:

I thought I noticed this difference in your colour picture:

QE_color.gif

 

Personally I would be extremely wary of trying to draw many definite conclusions re colour from that.  The signal flags, for example; the upper one appears to be grey on grey (& there ain't no such flag)… conceivably white on black, but RN warships seldom fly the flag of Kernow… and the lower one could maybe be Romeo (yellow cross on red), but even that’s a total guess.

 

Given that, gauging shades of blue grey feels on rather thin ice.  To me, anyway

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12 hours ago, thekz said:

and why do you think the dark colour is 507A and not MS1?

 

It's possible, I was just considering one set of options. However, MS1 is very dark and just at a glance the pictures do not have the contrast I would expect. Of course, the other possibility is that the darkest colour is MS1 and the second colour is AP507A, then all the other colours adjust to darker. But again this is a just a semi-educated guess, I haven't had time to measure the contrast ratios on the pictures. And even if I do, there are limitations and the process is not fully deterministic. Within margins for error, photo quality etc. you can get 2 or 3 sets of colour combinations that will produce the expected contrast progression.

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13 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Personally I would be extremely wary of trying to draw many definite conclusions re colour from that.  The signal flags, for example; the upper one appears to be grey on grey (& there ain't no such flag)… conceivably white on black, but RN warships seldom fly the flag of Kernow… and the lower one could maybe be Romeo (yellow cross on red), but even that’s a total guess.

 

Given that, gauging shades of blue grey feels on rather thin ice.  To me, anyway

 

Good point. The top flag looks like a white cross on a blue triangle to me - 'P' Affirmative? (whatever that may mean).

 

If those are the flags, then the film is making blues slightly darker and washing out red.

 

 

 

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29 minutes ago, TallBlondJohn said:

 

Good point. The top flag looks like a white cross on a blue triangle to me - 'P' Affirmative? (whatever that may mean).

 

I thought that we all knew what the "Blue Peter" meant?  Unless that is a different flag altogether, it means "getting ready to sail"

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12 hours ago, Vlad said:

 

It's possible, I was just considering one set of options. However, MS1 is very dark and just at a glance the pictures do not have the contrast I would expect. Of course, the other possibility is that the darkest colour is MS1 and the second colour is AP507A, then all the other colours adjust to darker. But again this is a just a semi-educated guess, I haven't had time to measure the contrast ratios on the pictures. And even if I do, there are limitations and the process is not fully deterministic. Within margins for error, photo quality etc. you can get 2 or 3 sets of colour combinations that will produce the expected contrast progression.

It will be interesting to see the result. Although, IMHO, errors are likely to be high. I used to work with bw films long time ago, and in my experience I faced with inconsistency of tone transfer and contrast, depending on film type and development.

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