by SovereignHobbies » Sat Aug 08, 2020 1:52 am
We've all been dancing around this without just straight out saying it, so here it is:
A great many narratives of which ships wore which paints are predicated on a flawed understanding of the colours and names assigned to them.
Whilst we do appear to be making some headway to correct the fundamental mistake here, the wider implication is that the majority of published works which touch on Royal Navy WWII camouflage are wrong.
In this particular case, there were no 507A,B,C three-tone schemes because A & B were the same. Where a 3 tone scheme is apparent in B&W photographs, they were clearly 3 tone but at a minimum one of the 3 paints named is wrong, but sometimes 2 or perhaps even all 3.
As always though, it's harder to make an authoritative statement about what paint is on a ship than it is to state what's claimed to be there is incorrect.
If someone posts a photograph of some new species of beetle and captions it as an elephant, it's much easier to say "that definitely isn't an elephant" than it is to correctly describe what kind of beetle it is. Similarly, the amount of time that goes into any one camouflage scheme of any one ship is much larger (and often with residual uncertainties at the end) than it takes to glance at a published colour illustration, compare to photographs and updated understanding of the paints available and say "Nope, that's not right".
We've all been dancing around this without just straight out saying it, so here it is:
A great many narratives of which ships wore which paints are predicated on a flawed understanding of the colours and names assigned to them.
Whilst we do appear to be making some headway to correct the fundamental mistake here, the wider implication is that the majority of published works which touch on Royal Navy WWII camouflage are wrong.
In this particular case, there were no 507A,B,C three-tone schemes because A & B were the same. Where a 3 tone scheme is apparent in B&W photographs, they were clearly 3 tone but at a minimum one of the 3 paints named is wrong, but sometimes 2 or perhaps even all 3.
As always though, it's harder to make an authoritative statement about what paint is on a ship than it is to state what's claimed to be there is incorrect.
If someone posts a photograph of some new species of beetle and captions it as an elephant, it's much easier to say "that definitely isn't an elephant" than it is to correctly describe what kind of beetle it is. Similarly, the amount of time that goes into any one camouflage scheme of any one ship is much larger (and often with residual uncertainties at the end) than it takes to glance at a published colour illustration, compare to photographs and updated understanding of the paints available and say "Nope, that's not right".