The Ship Model Forum

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".

Both 507A and 507B were the same shade: Home Fleet grey. 507B was a harder wearing paint because it contained enamel. But this made it glossy (and hence shiny) which was a disadvantage in wartime. The use of enamel in RN paints was officially discontinued in October 1940 but the use of matt surface paint was reported as 'the rule' by 18th December 1939 . On Jupiter in that photo you are probably looking at black, Home Fleet grey (507A) and Mediterranean Grey (507C).

(Re Langtree and Kelly in 1940, it rather depends exactly when you are referring to, but often where Langtree suggests 507B on 5DF destroyers in later 1940, they were actually in Mountbatten Pink.)

Hi
I'm trying to wrap my brain around the 507 A/B thing. I've understood that they were practically the same colour, insofar as some posts here have said they were identical (Sovereignhobbies for one).
I'm currently working on HMS Kelly, and I have POW in my stash. Christopher Langtrees book "The Kellys" say that HMS Jupiter had a three tone camo in 1940 of 507A, B and C. This picture is from that book.


To my eye these are three distinct colours, which makes me all the more confused. More distinct than in the table near the bottom of page 35 in this post.

If I'm to make a few guesses, this apparent difference might be because one of the colours had enamel, changing the glossiness? I'm honestly struggling a bit, and can't figure out which colour tone to use for Kelly, which is listed in the book as 507B all over as of 1940.

Thanks for all your help.

Sovereign Hobbies have now published an updated graphic showing HMS Prince of Wales' December 1941 Camouflage scheme:
https://www.sovereignhobbies.co.uk/pages/british-royal-navy-colour-schemes

Which should be helpful to anyone modelling HMS Prince of Wales.

If it were me I would apply the camouflage as normal. The highlighted bit seems to me to be just a reflection with no bearing on the overall camouflage scheme. I certainly would not think it is a different colour or anything like that.

Yes I am, thanks. It has been one of those ongoing issues about this ship that makes it so difficult to recreate.

Are you referring to the two areas I am pointing to in red here?


If so it looks to me that it is just a reflection off the near-horizontal top of the external armour belt?

I would say the same colours as you see above extend downwards onto the armour belt uninterrupted but just look different due to reflection off the near-horizontal top of the armour belt when the rest of the colour is vertical.

I checked the video and that contrast puzzle is on all frames, but none of the photographs...

Paint can easily be adjusted this early on. The rigging is proving to be a headache as it appears different to other KGV ships.

The Pontos detail up kit is rather interesting. It has very good instructions however there are photo etched parts included in the POW set that are not listed on the instructions such as that scupper on each side of the ship. There also appears to be a boom attached to the ships hull proven in photo images. I had to improvise with parts in the Pontos kit that did not appear allocated to use.

I could imagine 1/700 would be extremely difficult. It is bad enough as it is with extremely fine tweezers trying to put some extremely small photoetch parts on a 1/350. With a bit of luck by the weekend I may have it completed to a degree I am happy with.

The video below is going to give people a headache. The bottom right corner appears to indicate completely broken up colours. Perhaps a paint job or primer or colours being altered at the time of filming.

How do you feel about it?

I've made a little more headway on my own 1/700 scale effort recently. I also updated the drawing above to show the individual gun barrels and the turret roofs.

Its not finished yet but making progress. Still got to clean up some finer details and make some adjustments here and there.

Thanks I will post some more photos soon. It is well on its way to being finished. If it were not for those revised paints then I would not have believed that the colours were credible. My only guess was that WEM probably believed they had the correct paints in good faith but I suspect got samples from paint that had spoiled somewhat by going yellowish.

On another note I am trying to figure out the rigging diagram for Prince of Wales and posted in the Battleships KGV fan section if anyone can help me.

Excellent Effort Sutho!
Thank you for showing us how the new Colorcoats look on POW!

Its a black and white video but the keel of the boats appear to be white with the tops white and decks possibly teak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqfHbu6o7HU

Its been a while but I am now working on repainting the Prince of Wales kit I had after carefully stripping the initial paint and repainting with the new revised colours. I hope I am doing the right thing.

I've seen several models and pictures of Prince of Wales, and each seems to show different paint schemes for her ship's boats. Were the hulls camoflage colors as the superstructure/ Were the decks gray [grey], natural wood? Were the upper works, cabins white, camo or some other color? Thanks.
Walt Haynes

Thank you sir

I meant the steel decks, were likely painted 507 A, MS 2 or MS 1 in that timeframe.
"Dark Grays"
I was just pointing out her wood decks were unpainted at the time of that photo series.

I was referring to the steel decks- not the planked decks.

To me, the photo's taken at Scapa look like unpainted wood decks!
However other photos at other times indicate dark Gray. Your choice 507A or MS 2 or MS 1, are all possibilities.
Your model your call!
hth
John