The Ship Model Forum

Just a minor comment rightly pointed out by Dick; the funnel cap patches are not "realistic white" as in your table (if my choice is at all correct) but really white.

That's just a case of how white is white

The white paint available to the RN measured at 75-80% LRV whereas our screens achieve pure white at 100%. For the renders there I just tweaked it down a little to reduce contrast from 507C to white.

_________________
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

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?

Not sure if you have seen this paint before. I have an old WEM tin and painted next to 507C it could be the candidate on Prince of Wales for the lightest shade. I believe Sovereign is now reviewing this paint and renaming it RN10 Western Approaches RN White or something similar. It is not pure white.

Looks like "Duck Egg" blue. Maybe slightly lighter!

This is a snap of the HMS Janus which instructions said had RN White as the division lines between dark and light Admiralty grey.

I have painted RN white on it where instructed and painted the new Sovereign version of 507C and unfortunately have the old WEM version of 507A on it. I do have in my possession the new Sovereign version of 507A but am just leaving that as it is and will be using the new one sparingly.

We are suggesting that Prince of Wales had the 507C as the primary colour and something like RN white as the lightest.

Something odd there, RN10 was RN Warm White.

I'm not sure what I'll do with RN10 to be honest. The only whites I've seen formulations for would have just been white going by the pigmentation.

We haven't sent any paints to Creative Models in Australia for a good while now. They order infrequently due to shipping costs.

Regarding PoW's bow, I still say EJ's sketch is closer than anyone has got before but admit there possibly does need a tweak in some places.

Perhaps the 5th lightest shade between 507C and white is MS4A. There isn't really much option for it to be anything else besides a custom mixed paint in which case for modelling purposes I say just choose something and get on with it or some of us will never get any modelling done and others will just ignore all the work done and make schemes up.

_________________
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

Hi All,

I dont wish to sound negative as I'm definitely not but I'm afraid this is the trouble we have with trying to estimate paint from b/w images. We have a ship 745 feet long in images in which light, shade, shadow, paint wear, or image exposure or reproduction etc etc may be different from image to image, or for simply lighting conditions etc then from one end of the ship to the other in the same image! However being positive the work done on here by all shows the determination in finding an answer, and the professionalism of that attempt.

From documents I've seen pre war RN white had white pigments (obviously sorry!) and a small amount of pattern 8p blue so would probably just appear white. However what white the RN painted their draught marks in, I'm not sure!

There are images of HMS Chiddingfold, a hunt class destroyer, where from Admiralty records we can probably say her bow has 507c or more likely an equivalent matt Foreign Stations Grey together with MS4a. We can compare those two tones (unfortunately again those images are taken in different lighting conditions to the PoW ones) and they may help with an estimated tonal match on the lightest PoW tone?

If the lightest paint on PoW is not 507c or it's matt Foreign Stations Grey equivalent, then it may be MS4a or white and there in lies our problem, pick one from the three. Any comparison to other tones on the ship may not be of help, for all of the above stated reasons. Plus if we look at consecutive image stills of PoW from Critical past films you can see that tone B (at one point thought to be B5 but after B5 proved to be more blue than blue grey its more likely either 507a or MS2) change its tone from still to still. Most tones do.

It's not impossible, but will require a lot of work, and study of a great number of images but armed with colourcoats tones I'm sure the job will be easier.

Best wishes
Cag.

That is the dilemma we are all facing. Unfortunately the new B5 formula from Sovereign did not go in the direction we had hoped for. We were hoping the new B6 would fit in place for the second lightest but it appears the new 507C does fit better. As for the lightest if it is not RN white or off-white then it would have to be a colour that is lighter than 507C and darker than pure white.

Well there aren't many options left. If I get time I will try to establish a numerical contrast between the draft markings and the background paint. The contrast isn't high.

There are only 3 paints lighter than 507C from the Standard camouflage colours and two of those are pretty unlikely candidates given that their use of their intended types of schemes was not recommended on large ships; these being MS4A (a light grey), Western Approaches Blue and Western Approaches Green.

Only MS4A seems realistic of those.

Let's evaluate the contrast of the draft marks though.

_________________
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

I wouldn't say B5/6 did not go in the direction we were hoping; let the evidence lead where it may. We had a feeling that B6 was not applied as a main colour and now we have more reason to believe that it indeed was not.

The sceme with the colours I put up a page earlier is nothing more than a combination of listed colours that matches to colour footage really well. However, whaterever colour E is, it is certainy not a pure white, something we concluded a long time ago.

What remains now is finding out which of the remaning colours would give such changes in contrast for tone C between B&W shots and this has to match with tone D. These contrast changes occur in photographs during her entire career so I am quite confident this is due to type of film and not colours being painted out.

I'll throw in a few new schemes with some colour combinations.

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!

_________________
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

Were the draft markings raised features or just painted on? From the shadow of the anchor chain, it seems possible that the draft markings seen on the lightest colour are made visible not by a difference in colour compared to the light background, but merely outlined by the shadows cast by being a raised feature, combined with perhaps some weathering between markings.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

Hi All,

Hi Jamie, that image I think is part of the Goodman collection from which copies or prints are unavailable. There is an image in the Chesneau book and one in the RN in focus pt 2 book by Ben Warlow. I think Mr Foeth posted a good image earlier on as well as many others, and his and others excellent work gave us a very good idea of the pattern.

Hi Timmy C, never thought of that it's a very good point, the draught marks would be fixed on I would guess but I'll try find out for sure from bits of info I have from the archives.

I am sure the PoW scheme will be worked out, and if anyone can do it will be those posting here on this subject! The fact that after much research B5 being matched to real samples and being a blue rather than a blue grey can be seen as a benefit, it may allow us to rule out a paint and confirm another.

The better idea we have of the real colours the better we can tell their tone shift limits and then perhaps how to identify them.

Best wishes
Cag.

Here's a series of colour combinations. I think no one questions that tones C-E are increasingly lighter and with the colours we have the combinations aren't that many.

MS3/MS4/MS4a, no C. (Doesn't look in the least convincing)



Two combinations with "white". Only the second one seems to come close in contrast between C/D

MS3/MS4a/"white"


MS4/MS4a/"white"


Two combinations with AP507C/MS4a. There is sufficient contrast between D/E to make them out.

MS3/AP507C/MS4a


MS4/AP507C/MS4a.


The difference between MS3/MS4 is comparatively small for the AP507C/MS4a versions

And the last one in in B/W


This collection shows that the contrast between C&D is nearly absent on some images but not on all (this made tone C so easy to identify).


Orthochromatic film is not very red sensitive and when I apply a high contrast red filter over the image I can make the difference between C and D disappear. No filter (from all the B&W filters in photoshop) manages that for MS3 instead of MS4. Not that I know enough about film and digital filters to make any conclusions and perhaps it's wishful thinking. There are plugins for photoshop that simulate many different types of film, but then you'd have to be pretty sure the schemes we have now are really colour accurate, so it seems far-fetched.


So, MS1/AP507A/MS4/AP507C/MS4A seems like a good candidate at the moment. It matches the observed contrast excellently, does not require new whites with MS4A appearing sufficiently light, may explain why the contrast between C&D is absent on some images, but does not perfectly match the overly blue colour footage. In my camo summary exel sheet this combination of colours is unique (even for pairs of combinations of individual colours), but the same holds for many of the official camouflage patterns. Plus, with all the discussion on the pattern so far for a ship so well photographed one may wonder what the quality is of many of the patterns as published. As far as I'm concerned, without any good documentation it might all be nonsense. And that is without people interpreting different types of contrast due to film type as a reason to claim the entire pattern was re-applied but in different colours. "That looks about right" ==> wrong.

(Edit: all the floating funnel caps in the image should show a pure-white top; forgot to activate that layer. Also edited out the UP-launchers on the turrets).

How is this photo for judging the lightest shade with what we earlier suggested could be off-white. Here we have a white shirt directly in front of the part of the ship we are interested in.

Sorry, I do not subscribe to the idea that the lightest of the 5 camouflage colours was white (or off-white or "realistic" white or some unofficial very light grey).

When considering the tone of the lightest of the 5 camouflage colours on PoW these photos seem to me worth considering. The lightest tone (of the two) on Mauritius would presumably have been 507C. The lightest camouflage tone on PoW looks darker.





I think it is worth going back to the photo of PoW and Ripley to see how dark PoW's scheme can be seen as. If the darkest two tones were MS1 and 507A (as seems to be the consensus) then (see CAFO 679/42) it was perhaps an Admiralty Dark Scheme....

If it is not off-white then the only other colour as the lightest I would lean towards is the MS4a as the new version published by Sovereign on the other thread looks rather nice compared to 507C as seen above in EJ's drawings.

At the moment I'd say MS1/AP507B/MS4/AP07C/MS4a and a white funnel cap; the current MS3 seems a bit too dark.