The Ship Model Forum

not sure if anyone is still thinking about this thread, but i am in the process of trying to figure out the best source of paint for WWII ships Post Pearl, the vareity of Haze Grays offered by the main paint makers varies greatly. Some ore purple, some are green in tint but few if any are neutral which is my recollection of the color of the WWII ships i saw as a young boy when my Grandfather who was a USN Commodore took me around the fleet in San Diego after the war. Many ships were kept in that base in mothballs, and that color is what i remember the best.

for now, i hope to sort out what was used on the fleet in general as i realize in the Pacific they used a darker bllue shade esp at the request of the pilots who thought it would help make the Flat tops harder for the Japanese pilots to see at a distance. I found photos that confirm this but as i have to paint up some hundreds of ships of the fleet in what was the standard color i am trying to sort thru a lot of pots and sources. In the first posts here is a picture of paint ships and the standard 1930s standard gray is the one that looks the closest to me, even tho it is clearly labeled 1930s.

I just got some Tru Color 5H and also some Tamiya XF-19 SkyGray and XF-80 which is seveally labelled Royal Navy Light Gray and RN Gray as candidates. It is not an easy puzzle to solve i had some hard work to figure out deck colors and found the reference to the deck blue but never saw a blue deck in the photos, just neutral shades of browhish gray for the plank decks of the BB that were weathered, and may have been painted as orderd and then worn down. Some Heavy Cruisers had wood decks pre war, and most DD has metal decks worn in to a darkish gray so will mix up some neutral colors for the decks. but in contrast in the photos i found after a lot of work, the BB esp the gray used on the turrents and super structure looks quite light and neutral NOT blush or purplish as some Haze Grays offered by paint makers show up as. if anyone had paint ships of paint makers they like would love to see them.

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It's clearly documented that the tinting medium added to 5-U White base was 5-TM, an ultramarine blue-black paste. Ultramarine blue has a distinctly reddish caste, with all variants of ultramarine being more or less red but never greenish. 5-TM was added in varying proportions and thus the standard 5-x series of US Navy paints were all characteristically similar, just darker and more saturated versions or paler and less saturated versions of each other. That puts all of them in the purple-blue zone of the Munsell notation system.

It's also clearly documented that human memory of colour is incredibly unreliable. Trust the reference material - or ignore it and don't pretend you're looking for a good match for 5-H Haze Gray and just pick a colour you like.

In other news, Tamiya XF-80 bears little resemblance to any shade used by the Royal Navy at any time. I don't know what drugs someone was using when they came up with that name and colour pairing.

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James Duff
Sovereign Hobbies Ltd
http://www.sovereignhobbies.co.uk

Current build:
HMS Imperial D09 1/350
http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=167151

Chris G,

You have posted your question in the wrong place. A new topic in this camouflage forum would be better. I have questions about what you are seeking? USN WWII haze grey (and other paints?) or post-WWII when you saw the ships at San Diego (active and mothballed)? The haze gray (5-H) and navy blue (5-N) paints used in much of WWII were as stated by James Duff. They used the same basic ingredients, just with different blue additives. However, in early 1945 the USN started to transition to “neutral” gray paints since the tinting blue was in short supply. The pre-WWII #5 light gray was a neutral gray, only glossy. Because there were large supplies of the Blue-Purple paints, how many and which ships were painted in the new neutral gray paints before the war ended is debatable. B&W photography doesn’t answer the question.

The same 5-N and 5-H paints were used in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. There were NOT different shades used by each fleet. For much of the war, the Atlantic fleet was mostly concerned with German U-boats and used “graded camo schemes” like Ms 22. The Pacific fleet was most concerned with Japanese air attacks and used the “solid camo schemes” like Ms 21.

Even Post-WWII, the new neutral gray paints (haze gray was the standard) had changes in formulation. In about 1953 a new haze gray formulation was adapted.

Which paints you want to use in your application is depended on what timeframe you are modeling to.