dick wrote:
I am more than a little confused by this latest suggestion for the colour palette for PoW’s disruptive scheme (MS1, 507A, MS4, MS4A, white).
Some years ago EJ and I worked, largely off-line, to determine the detailed design of the scheme and established that there were at least 5 camouflage colours on PoW plus a suggested the white at the top of the funnel(s).
Is it really the suggestion now that the lightest of the 5 camouflage colours was white? Plus the suggested white at the top of the funnel(s)?
This surely cannot be. There are innumerable images showing things we know (or it would be a fair bet to assume) to be white near, alongside or even on PoW. I attach two examples:
- The draught marks at the bow of PoW at Rosyth in 1941. These are painted over an area painted in the lightest of the 5 camouflage colours on the hull
- The false bow on Ripley when alongside Prince of Wales at Placentia (photo posted by Rick E Davies a few pages back)
Maybe something has got lost in the translation? Or maybe there has been a typo?
Does anyone have a better quality version of Richard's image of the bow here? This one is a bit pixelly and it's hard to get more than a few percent difference in contrast between the draft marks and background lightest shade this way.
I know there's a printed version of this in the Roger Chesneau book. I couldn't see it from a quick look in the IWM site but not all thumbnails were loading up for me...
Edit to say - there was at least one more "M.S." colour evaluated by the RN but not selected for inclusion within the "Standard Camouflage Colours" of MS1,2,3,4,4A,B5 and B6. This was M.S.6. It's mentioned in writing in at least one document, but we know nothing about it besides that. It could stand to reason that it followed the graduated sequence of MS1,2,3,etc and was thus lighter than MS4A. We don't know the hue, and we don't know the Reflection Factor.
How much lighter can one practically get than MS4A (55% RF) and still have the brass neck to call oneself a colour, given that by 75-80% we are, in fact, white paint?
Regarding B6, there isn't a lot of evidence about how saturated it really was. The two extant physical samples I've seen and measured do not corroborate well with the design sheet for HMS Farndale showing B6, nor the AD.29 colour data for B.30 that we believe might have been s sample of B6. The two surviving physical samples agree well with the results of mixing the AFO2106/43 formula for B.30, whilst AD.29 data agrees well with the HMS Farndale design sheet colour. The famous photos of HMS Indomitable (actually, they're famous photos of Seafires, with HMS Indomitable's island in the background) are over-saturated but show fairly vibrant medium-light blue and grey-green, the former looks rather light in tone to be B5 or B15, but rather saturated to be B6 or B30 - and the apparent dates of the photographs (late spring / early summer 1943) are too close to the AFO2106/43 promulgation to judge for certain which paint "set" these came from. Although rambling a bit, B6 might have been a 25~30% RF fairly saturated "baby blue", or it may have looked like a 507C mixture without enough white paste in it. The latter would not have looked out of place on that fleeting colour cine film of HMS Prince of Wales.
If "we" don't like MS4A in this position, then where anyone can go from here is unclear, unless avoiding the subject of building HMS Prince of Wales can be called a solution. It's not a satisfactory answer for me, personally!