mister me wrote:
ouch... my dark camo on warspite has been done in "medium" 507... not the dark one...
but this picture, once again plays in favor of a kind of "medium 507", especially when comparing to the strange dark boats alongside : I find there is not many contrast betwen the 2 camo colors. or was it not a "medium 507" but another color ? B5 ? MS3 ?
and the ship seems to be freshly repainted ! so no fading.
Attachment:
1a.HN-Ma-Academy-HMS-Warspite-1943-1.350.jpg
PS : is it your car this purple beauty ?
I'll caveat this by stating that I am away from the references various folks have shared with me, but I seem to remember some discussion via multi-way email recently about camouflaging using the 50/50 emergency mix. I may be imagining that though.
I think we can probably help clear things up if we get away from talking about 507A and 507B, and just call it Home Fleet Grey. If we see something talking about, for example, HMS Barham, painted in 507A and 507B camouflage, keep in mind that the author
thinks 507A and B are distinct colours. What he's really observing is Home Fleet Grey and
Something Else. That something else may be too dark to convince anyone it's 507C Mediterranean Grey (sometimes referred to as Light Grey in Admiralty docs) then it's possible that the
Something Else MAY be the 50/50 emergency mix.
There have been long-post war narratives of "507B" being a 50/50 mix of 507A and 507C. That effect observed and application of resultant paint may in a roundabout way have been correct but an extra assumption has been thrown in and someone's erroneously done the old 2+2=5 and Christened the 50/50 emergency mix as 507B, causing decades of confusion to follow.
Documented facts from primary references (i.e. official period documents) are:
1) 507B was Home Fleet Grey with enamel varnish for durability at the beginning of WW2
2) 507C was referred to as Mediterranean Grey, Foreign Stations Grey or Light Grey from the beginning of WW2 until renotated to G45 by 1943 - the shade never changing
3) 507A was reintroduced as Home Fleet Grey without the enamel varnish early in WW2, the 507B formulation to be discontinued effective immediately
4) There was a shade described as 50/50 emergency mix being discussed by 1941 - it was never given a formal notation
5) The mid-1943 onwards shade "B20" was indeed a 50/50 mix of B15 and B30, which were themselves described as renotated B5 and B6 equivalents
Now if my hypothesis is correct, and someone has taken it upon themselves to attach the name "507B" to the 50/50 emergency mix, the remaining unknown is whether when we see 507B stated as being the colour of a particular subject, from whom did that information originate? If it came from someone conversant with the notation at the time, then they mean 507B as it really was - Home Fleet Grey. If it came from someone long-post war from studying photographs etc, then there is a possibility that they have correctly judged /assessed the shade that they can see, but have misidentified it thinking 507B was an intermediate shade of grey.
I feel I may be labouring the point, but to drive the point home - Raven, Snyder & Short didn't make up the "AP507B" samples they obtained, and some of these photographs strongly suggest a shade other than Home Fleet Grey or Light Grey on the ship. If we can accept that 507A/B is Home Fleet Grey and that 507C is Light Grey, then the intermediate shade sample the above Gents received must be something else. The 50/50 emergency mix is a possibility but not a certainty.