Cag wrote:
Hi Mike,
With all these things it is so difficult to tell from black and white images. The gaps between the camo colours is quite small and in differing lights can change quite a bit.
There is a document in existance that contains observation reports by camo officers of ships in Scapa Flow in July 42, unfortunately as with all these things it gives us a hint here and there, but never says "HMS so and so had these paints"!
Norfolk is in there, MS1 is mentioned as is MS4, and in the general report there is a column that is headed 'distance at which blue/B5 shows as blue' and in that column Norfolk has 1 nautical mile written.
Im sorry I cant help more and I know this doesn't really help much, but it seems to be a four paint scheme on Norfolk and the report only gives us two and a possible third with B5. What the fourth is I'm not sure, it would depend on whether we think the fourth tone is darker or lighter than the B5, again hard to judge!
Sorry I can't be of more help, I'm sure when Richard sees this his input will be of much more help!
Best wishes
Cag.
Morning all,
We do have this which is from a short cine reel. Alan Raven's 1942 book back cover does state that the camouflage was kept with only small changes, but the illustration does appear to show B6. The second lightest tone (large panel on hull below bridge and forward funnel) looks a lot like MS3 to me, but I'd question where the MS4 is alleged to be. Given that the lightest tone blends well into the snowy background, I personally would have assumed that was 507C at the lightest and probably MS4A.

The B5 is on the prow - the second darkest tone, although it does look a little washed out here but it usually does in cine film. The MS1 should be fairly obvious.