RAF Late War Camoflage

[Harry Lime]

As a linguist, I get that people have different perceptions of colour and this can be evidenced in the words they use to try and describe that colour to another person. However, thanks to Nick Millman's post above, I now understand the whole sciencey thingumybob behind it all now as well. Britmodeller really is an educational resource!

BTW, I took that colour test and scored really badly on it (173), so don't ever take my advice on any colours!!!!

Mark.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

The "anything goes brigade" should look away now.

The MAP swatches were measured with a photospectrometer and the resultant values in L*a*b* compared to those for the FS values ...

Post of the year!

Thanks, Nick. That was very interesting indeed. As Harry said, BM is an educational resource.

[John @ WEM]

Brilliant reply, Nick. I would have had to refer to--assuming I could find--my notes & manual from my Munsell training course of some years back.

As to lightening white: add a smidgeon of blue and it will appear "whiter".

[Navy Bird]

Brilliant reply, Nick. I would have had to refer to--assuming I could find--my notes & manual from my Munsell training course of some years back.

As to lightening white: add a smidgeon of blue and it will appear "whiter".

Hi John,

Who are the sources in the US for WEM paint? The White Ensign Models web site (that's you, right?) lists Squadron and a few others, but I only found the paint on one of the web sites, and then it seemed to be just the naval ship colors. I'd love to give the WEM paints a try - any procurement advice you can give me?

Cheers,

Bill

PS. My Spit is now painted in Gunze colors (H73, H75, and H335). I think it looks pretty good and I'm happy with it! (I hope nobody comes to the contest table with a spectrophotometer!!) More photos will be posted soon on the WIP thread.

[John @ WEM]

Hi Bill,

I'm currently sitting in my wife's hospital recovery room in Charleston and can't log on to the WEM remote computer to check which US folks are stocking aircraft Colourcoats, but I'd try MidTenn Hobbies and Freetime Hobbies as a start. I'll be able to check for sure later on this evening after we get home. Of course, you can always order direct from us.

[dfqweofekwpeweiop4]

Hi Bill,

I'm currently sitting in my wife's hospital recovery room in Charleston and can't log on to the WEM remote computer to check which US folks are stocking aircraft Colourcoats, but I'd try MidTenn Hobbies and Freetime Hobbies as a start. I'll be able to check for sure later on this evening after we get home. Of course, you can always order direct from us.

Tell Caroline to get well soon!

thanks

Mike

[John @ WEM]

Hi Mike,

Will do, thanks mate!

[Navy Bird]

Hi Bill,

I'm currently sitting in my wife's hospital recovery room in Charleston and can't log on to the WEM remote computer to check which US folks are stocking aircraft Colourcoats, but I'd try MidTenn Hobbies and Freetime Hobbies as a start. I'll be able to check for sure later on this evening after we get home. Of course, you can always order direct from us.

Thank you, sir, I will try some as soon as I can. Speedy recovery for your wife!

Cheers,

Bill

[Fernando]

I've always wondered how do you lighten white? I think that white at a distance actually starts to look grey. At enough of a distance, everything starts looking grey.

Bill

Hi, NavyBird,

What I have done on would-be White surfaces is previously preparing it with a variety of colors, greys and tans, masking panels to achieve hard edges, and after that a freehand preshade in the usual dark umber concoction along hinges and panel lines. Then the White in irregular mottle fashion. It gives a varied and "tired" look to the surface... but White cannot be made lighter!

Fernando

[Navy Bird]

Hi, NavyBird,

What I have done on would-be White surfaces is previously preparing it with a variety of colors, greys and tans, masking panels to achieve hard edges, and after that a freehand preshade in the usual dark umber concoction along hinges and panel lines. Then the White in irregular mottle fashion. It gives a varied and "tired" look to the surface... but White cannot be made lighter!

Fernando

Thanks, Fernando. The technique you describe is also one that I use regularly, not only for white but also light greys. It is an excellent weathering technique. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,

Bill

[Steve in Ottawa]

Hi Nick,

Thanks again for a comprehensive and almost comprehensible post on this topic. I find your inputs very informative and educational and I want to thank you for taking the time to weigh in on these important issues here on BM and on your website.

I'd like to ask a follow-up question, but I'm not sure how it fits into your points. I think we are generally talking about how one model paint colour looks compared to its real world counterpart. What I am interested in is if you can comment on how these differences are perceived or viewed when they form part of a total colour camouflage scheme? E.g., Dark Green, Ocean Grey and Medium Sea Grey.

I'm not sure if I'm posing this thought correctly, but if one colour is 'off' by such and such values, and the other colour is 'off', in the opposite 'direction' compared to the first colour (i.e., dark vs. light, red vs. green, blue vs. yellow), how much is generally tolerable before the modeller says 'Whoa - that really don't look right'? I think we’ve all seen models where one or more of the paint colours are really off the normal path of what is generally acceptable and the model looks quite unrealistic.

If the scheme’s colour values, taken collectively, are mapped on a ‘CIELAB dartboard’ are 'out' by a range of values, there may be a greater and more noticeable error or shift between the two colours.

I think I see this kind of like target shooting - getting a tight grouping of shots (colours) vs. a bunch of rounds hitting all around the bulls-eye, but not grouped together.

If all the colours were 'off' in the same direction by roughly the same values (a grouping of colour 'bullets' on a target), would the scheme look more-or-less 'normal'? Perhaps in the same way that colour photos of an aircraft paint scheme are not quite colour corrected, but the discrepancies affect the entire scheme the same way?

I've just re-read this and I don't think I'm making myself clear, but I hope you get what I’m trying to say here. I've got to stop eating directly from the sugar bowl at lunch...

[Fernando]

If all the colours were 'off' in the same direction by roughly the same values (a grouping of colour 'bullets' on a target), would the scheme look more-or-less 'normal'? Perhaps in the same way that colour photos of an aircraft paint scheme are not quite colour corrected, but the discrepancies affect the entire scheme the same way?

Not Nick, but, Hi, Steve,

It would depend on the familiarity you have to the subject modelled, but IMHO you would (that's what would happen to me, anyway) perceive the shift in a general way, i.e., the model would appear on the whole too light, or too dark, or too bluish, or too bright, or... you put it, probably without being able to pinpoint the error at first glance.

Fernando

[Nick Millman]

Hi Steve

Thank you for your kind comments. I understand exactly what you are getting at here but I'm not sure I can provide any kind of definitive guidance for getting it right! Sometimes that old cliché "if it looks right it is right" applies and then there is that element where a model might be accurate in terms of full-scale colour but just somehow looks wrong.

With the colour scheme you cite, essentially the Day Fighter Scheme (DFS), we have all sorts of inputs to condition our minds as to how this should look - paintings, profiles, models, colour photos, etc., sometimes over many years. There might be variance but usually it is variance that cannot be differentiated unless two depictions are compared side by side. In reality not all paint colours are equal and although modelling convention suggests that on a model a whole scheme is "faded" or weathered, on the full scale counterpart paints can be expected to degrade differently. In the DFS example is the tendency for the Ocean Grey paint surface to chalk more extensively than the Dark Green resulting in an increased contrast, sometimes to the point where the appearance of the former begins to approach that of Medium Sea Grey. In addition the Dark Green shifts slightly so that the yellow chroma degrades leaving a more blueish, slightly brighter green. That's a simplification of course because the factors involved are complex and cumulative. But there is always a danger in replicating this sort of extreme degradation that the model will just look wrong - partly because it conflicts with our expectations from all those stored images. Wrapped up in all this of course is also that thorny subject of scale colour!

It's interesting because years ago models were built and painted to look much more like models! Weathering techniques were often more artistic than realistic and often imaginary rather than imaginative. Nowadays the trend for ultra-realism is breathtaking, especially on larger scale models and some of the techniques used to impart a convincing impression of a 'real' aircraft are nothing short of awesome. What you often read from these modellers is that although they might use standard paint colours intended for the subject they rarely use them straight from the bottle or tin but adjust them to get the right overall impression - or the 'tight grouping' you refer to. There is no doubt that in multi-colour schemes the interaction of the colours is important, not least because adjacent colours affect the way that colours appear but also because of issues of contrast. But achieving this 'tight grouping' is, I think, more about trial and error and experience than by applying any kind of definable 'rule'.

I still think that the approximate DE to allow the mind to 'adjust' for colour recognition is about 5 or thereabouts (which is quite a generous tolerance) but that anything over this can begin to jar. For example if a model of a fire engine is built and the red paint is 'faded' to represent an older vehicle long exposed to the sun there is a point at which the mind says "That's the wrong colour, fire engines aren't pink" rather than "Cool fading technique" even though the colour appearance of the full size vehicle might have been replicated perfectly. If the DE pulls in opposite directions to what normal degradation suggests, e.g. the Ocean Grey becomes darker towards 5 and the Dark Green becomes lighter and brighter towards 5 I think the result can look very wrong indeed, and I have seen models in DFS with this sort of effect, usually because inappropriate paints have been selected and used out of the bottle. You might expect to try to stay within a shift of 5, in other words colours might only travel in opposite directions to no more than 2.5 each. This is where understanding the 'character' of the colours, usually from the paint colour standard, is perhaps more important than knowing their precise values. Ocean Grey is a deep blueish grey with a very slight greenish caste. Dark Green is a deep olive green - more yellow than blue. Medium Sea Grey is slightly more blueish than some realise.

For Dark Green FS 34079 is frequently cited but it is @ 4.31 to the full scale swatch colour. However, taking into account the DE 5 tolerance together with the issue of scale and it should not be a problem. In fact on smaller scale models it will probably look better than the closer match of 34083 @ 1.14 which might look too dark. Ocean Grey has 26152 @ 2.70, not quite blue enough, but within reasonable tolerance where the full scale blueishness might look too blue on a small model. But bear in mind that the full scale contrast is between 34083 and 26152 rather than 34079 and 26152, suggesting that the latter might need slight lightening to maintain the right impression of a 'typical' scheme. Medium Sea Grey is to FS 35237 @ 2.47, darker compared to the full scale which also suggests that using this match on a model the paint should be lightened slightly. When I used Xtracolor paints on a DFS Spitfire XIV in 1/72 I thought the paint colours were excellent matches to the real colours but looked a little too dark on the model. This is where personal taste and preference come in - I don't think anyone could be faulted for using their paints straight out of the tin - the difference is really quite small. Luckily the closest FS values in the DFS are still useful, unlike some RAF colours where there are no useful comparisons such as Azure Blue and PRU Blue.

In terms of actual contrast the diffuse reflectivity of Ocean Grey and Dark Green respectively is 16% and 7% giving a mean reflective contrast of 9% to aim for on a 'typical' model. Dark Green and Dark Earth have less contrast at 6%.

Not much of an answer I'm afraid but hopefully some food for thought!

Regards

Nick

PS Thanks to others who responded kindly to my previous post. I'm glad that it was of interest.

[Spitfires Forever]

I bought ModelMaster 2057 RAF Ocean Grey, 2060 RAF Dark Green, and 2058 RAF Medium Sea Grey. These are in their category "International Military & Figure/UK and US WWII". As I mentioned in my first post, these colors, in my opinion as a complete neophyte to RAF colorology, are not close to any photos of models or the real aircraft that I have seen. The green is too dark, almost a black-green, the Ocean Grey was too dark and way too green, and the medium sea grey was also too green. For sure, scale effect dictates that these things should be lightened up a bit, but that won't get rid of the green tint to the greys. Maybe this is just a personal preference thing, and maybe their colors are spot-on. But at the end of the day, I don't like how they look. And I really don't want to mix paint, I'm too lazy!

IPMS Stockholm (Urban's Color Charts) provide equivalent FS number for these three colors. They are FS34079 for RAF Dark Green, FS36152 for Ocean Grey, and FS36270 for Medium Sea Grey. Multiple sources on my web searches show FS36118 for Ocean Grey, and FS36440 or FS36375 for Medium Sea Grey. Interestingly enough, Urban provides no Testors matches for these colors. He may not have had access to them. I asked Lidor (Redboost) what he uses, since I was informed that he uses a lot of Gunze paints like me, and he uses their RAF Dark Green lightened up a little, and their FS36118 and FS26440. I think his models look very good.

Next up is to get the colors from Tamiya, as someone suggested, and see how they look.

Cheers,

Be ware old color photos. from what I understand ther was not always consistency in paint formulation. Many of those old pictures show aircraft that are quite weathered. If you are looking for absolutely perfect matches then you need to go back in time, then back to the present and have the color duplicated on the computer. Who is to say what an exact color is? I recommend just trying your best, then weather the paint accordingly. supposedly Testors tried to match Tje colors exactly, but then we have to ask was the paint they used for their colors correctly formulated? you can go nuts trying to do everything perfectly like it was back in the day. find a happy medium or you will never be happy, thus hopefully avoiding the "modelers curse".

Cheers

Bill

PS. Based on web searches, this particular topic is a popular one with lots of different answers! It's going to get worse when I start building my Mustang III, as my references show that the US manufacturer painted them with their equivalents of the British colors. And there are some really big debates about what those colors were!

[Navy Bird]

Excellent reply, Spitfire Addict. Not sure how it got stuck in the middle of my quote from an earlier message, but I usually chalk that up to arrogant electrons in the PC following the path of greatest resistance!

Old color photos fade notoriously too, and yellow. Unlike British rockers - (happy belated birthday to Ian Hunter, who just turned 72!!)

The latest pictures of my Spit are on my WIP. I'm happy with the colors, and am moving forward with the build. But to prove your point, these photos of my model, taken with very modern equipment, don't show the colors the way they look to my eye.

Cheers,

Bill (who is suddenly feeling quite old Hisself)

[Nick Millman]

Just as a follow up to my reply to Steve, I should probably have mentioned an interesting letter winkled out by Edgar which was from the Director of RAE to the Operational Research Section of Coastal Command on 25 Sep 1942. It refers to the "fading" of the Dark Slate Grey and Extra Dark Sea Grey paints on a Whitley and determines that the main cause was 'chalking' with the whitening of the colours "very considerable". It describes the remedial action necessary (doing what we would now call "cutting" the chalked surface to reveal the lower unchalked levels of paint) but comments that the result only darkened (restored) the paint colours to a point somewhere between Dark and Light Slate Grey and Extra Dark and Dark Sea Grey. The author suggests that had the maintenance regime been applied earlier the restoration would have been more complete. This provides a useful clue to the extent of colour loss on a moderately maintained paint surface.

[Steve in Ottawa]

Just as a follow up to my reply to Steve, I should probably have mentioned an interesting letter winkled out by Edgar which was from the Director of RAE to the Operational Research Section of Coastal Command on 25 Sep 1942. It refers to the "fading" of the Dark Slate Grey and Extra Dark Sea Grey paints on a Whitley and determines that the main cause was 'chalking' with the whitening of the colours "very considerable". It describes the remedial action necessary (doing what we would now call "cutting" the chalked surface to reveal the lower unchalked levels of paint) but comments that the result only darkened (restored) the paint colours to a point somewhere between Dark and Light Slate Grey and Extra Dark and Dark Sea Grey. The author suggests that had the maintenance regime been applied earlier the restoration would have been more complete. This provides a useful clue to the extent of colour loss on a moderately maintained paint surface.

Coincidentally, this ties in very nicely with a discussion I'm involved with on the IPMS Canada chat forum. A number of people over the past few years (myself included) have noted a lot of Spitfires in the DFS showing what appears to be a very much lighter grey on the outer wing and tailplanes. There was giddy speculation that it is a new scheme, using Medium Sea Grey on these noted surfaces. At some point I realized (either from figuring out on my own or from reading something like the above) that it was most probably just plain old Ocean Grey that had chalked up. The inner wings got plenty of erks inadvertantly 'polishing' the paint with their routine maintenance work on the guns and such, but the outer wings just didn't get that kind of attention.