HMS Prince of Wales

[sargentx]

You've been very helpful.. Thank you.
I just had a look at your build website. I am absolutely in awe of your building skills. Amazing and inspiring work. As I nudge along my path to greater detail, work like yours really inspired in that regard.
Thanks for sharing!
Chris

[EJFoeth]

Thanks! And I've been following your paint work with great interest!

[dick]

,
..... Everyone seems convinced that B6 was a predominant color.....

Like E-J, certainly not me either! See my post on page 3 dated Feb 6th 2012

[sargentx]

Or should I say..'some'. lol
The all blue thing just seems wrong to me. It's out of character with the other ships of the time. For me at least, the film still speaks volumes. That bluish tint would have shown up what with all the other blue colors that managed to be captured. It's predominantly gray IMO. And no B6 methinks.

[Sutho]

Okay,
I'm doing POW's as I write this. I've been reading and re-reading this thread ad-nauseum. Everyone seems convinced that B6 was a predominant color. some have modeled POW to be almost entirely the bluish color. What information is there that this color was in fact B6 and not some gray color?
Should I be worried that I'm doing the ship according to the mostly bluish theory? My gut instinct tells me its wrong. Looking at the video still, I am certain that since the sky and water show adequate amounts of blue, that a bluish POWs would have appeared at least slightly blue in the picture. It doesn't at all...not one bit. It 'looks' like a predominately gray ship with aspect of blue and green as per Tamiya's box cover/instruction roughly. (minus their strange colors.). But gray.

Should I be fretting over my bluish dominant scheme? It is out of character with other ships of the time?
This is driving me completely nutso.

You need to forget about colour photos. They are useless. I do work as a professional photographer and have done aerial flights in helicopters over ships and can tell you that even in this modern day and age photography does not capture the true colours of ships even to this day. When you are photographing ships at sea and have light reflecting off the water, water reflecting on the ship the colours can seem a lot different depending on the angle of light.

Unfortunately WWII images are very poor. What you have to rely on is weather they had the right ink to match the colours and all images we see online are scanned which again comes back to colour matching.

I personally think looking at colour photos are a waste of time and proves no point.

I am convinced that the POW primary scheme was B6, that wont change. It does not matter what colour the sky is in colour photos and videos of POW, it is completely irrelevant. Photography of that day was in its infancy and is not accurate and judging colours based on any images of that time is just a waste of time.

[Sutho]

Or should I say..'some'. lol
The all blue thing just seems wrong to me. It's out of character with the other ships of the time. For me at least, the film still speaks volumes. That bluish tint would have shown up what with all the other blue colors that managed to be captured. It's predominantly gray IMO. And no B6 methinks.

Check my recent post. You are wasting your time judging colour film. The colour film is garbage and photography in those days was in its infancy. There are too many variables including shade, reflection, ink, chemicals in the film that mean you will never see a correct colour scheme in any WWII photographs. The film is wrong.

[sargentx]

Well, It seems like a mystery without an answer.
and....
You're right about photographs and how deceptive they can be. Regarding the photo/film: I would have to hear a really convincing explanation as to why so much blue was recorded in the sea and sky, but none whatsoever was recorded in the ship. Even enhanced to the max in photoshop there isn't even the slightest indication of any blue tone in the film grain in the ship.

Just pure opinion: Any model that I've seen that has the B6 throughout feels wrong when compared to every other RN ship of the time and their use of 4 tone schemes.
As this thread proves, this is a circuitous and unresolvable mystery of ship modelling!

[Sutho]

The problem we have with WWII era photos is none are accurate.

In all my years at sea never have I seen the sea as a dark blue colour like it is in that film with POW and the light blue sky. The ocean is a reflective surface and glossy. There are serious issues with that so called colour film.

If you want examples of B6 on colour photos then look at HMS Howe. This ship did have B6 painted on it and in colour photos it does not turn out as it should.



http://ww2db.com/images/ship_howe5.jpg

Paint chips have been kept of these paints throughout the years. The paint mix is right, the photos are always wrong.

[Sutho]

In addition I should also point out when you paint your model you are used to seeing it under fluorescent lighting and indoors under household conditions. Even photographing them with a camera flash indoors has its own unique effect.

What I suggest you do is paint a model in the B6 paint scheme, take it outdoors into the bright sunlight away from any shade and reflections of households. Lay a bluish colour padding on the ground to represent water, wet it a bit to get the watery reflection and then stand some distance away from the model. I can guarantee that if you did something like that the B6 painted on it would look nowhere like how it does under household light.

Also another lighting test is to stand on the side of the street with the setting sun. Take particular notice to the colour of cars with sunlight headed directly at them and then look at the colour of cars on the side as they pass by. You will see two entirely different colours due to the angle of light if you were to photograph them. Human eyes are used to that and we tend not to notice it so much. As light shades change depending on nature and conditions our brain pays little attention to the change in colour based on the angle of light. The difference with photography is that when a photo is processed it may not look how we remember it at all as the camera picked up the angle of light and registered a different colour.

I am resigned to the date that I will never know the true colours of HMS Prince of Wales. I am accepting the official colours of MS1, B5, B6, MS3 and 507C. I am suspecting the B6 was painted predominantly over the ship as we have all seen a direct stern shot proving there is no paint change at the stern.

[EJFoeth]

There are no official colours...

[sargentx]

WEll,
Good responses. Thanks for that. Another way of putting it:
We forget just how dull B6 and other similar color are. In the workshop in a jar they can look quite intense, but out in the world next to an intensely blue sea, those colors, by contrast alone will appear more grey than anything. Add to that the bleaching out effects of sunlight and scale effect, and it is plausible to assume that the blue is simply not there in the film still.
On gut instinct alone, the all B6 scheme is just wrong looking. It's just out of character with the kinds of decisions being made on most ships of the time.....and on a purely aesthetic level, I think it looks like crap! lol.

But, it's sure been an interesting puzzle to pick at.
Thanks to everyone in this thread for all their research and hard work. It was invaluable to me doing this build.

[dick]

In all my years at sea never have I seen the sea as a dark blue colour like it is in that film

I sincerely hope you are joking...and here is a photo we took last summer during a family birthday party in Falmouth Bay

Blue 3.jpg

Paint chips have been kept of these paints throughout the years. The paint mix is right, the photos are always wrong.

I think the nub of the problem is the question of just exactly what colours certain RN WW2 camouflage paints actually were. Which B6 paint mix do you believe is "right"? Of the available modelling paints or in the paint charts in the various books that have been published ( I think I have most of them) please can you say which most closely matches the colour you believe B6 was.

[Sutho]

In all my years at sea never have I seen the sea as a dark blue colour like it is in that film

I sincerely hope you are joking...and here is a photo we took last summer during a family birthday party in Falmouth Bay

Blue 3.jpg

Paint chips have been kept of these paints throughout the years. The paint mix is right, the photos are always wrong.

I think the nub of the problem is the question of just exactly what colours certain RN WW2 camouflage paints actually were. Which B6 paint mix do you believe is "right"? Of the available modelling paints or in the paint charts in the various books that have been published ( I think I have most of them) please can you say which most closely matches the colour you believe B6 was.

Your photo is probably true to light, however if you look at the colour video of Prince of Wales you will note the ocean is too dark against a really light sky. The ratios are way off.

I could fill this thread with hundreds of photos I have taken as well as found on the net that prove colours can be distorted by reflections, shade, direct sunlight and what the camera sees.

Our eyed don't notice subtle change in colours because our brain has been programmed to ignore it. That is why people can easily be tricked by optical illusions and cinematic magic.

I don't think an entire ship painted in B6 the blue the RN used is unrealistic. History proves it was used a lot. HMS Belfast had a great deal of B6 on it as did the King George V and Howe. American ships had a dark navy blue stripe on their hulls and in some cases entire ships were painted exclusively navy blue. USS New Jersey and USS Essex for a great period of time were painted entirely in navy blue with a subtle difference of deck blue decks. Some RN ships were painted pink, other ships had shades of white. Besides as I said out on the real environment that B6 paint is not as confronting as it is on a model. It looks more grey and subdued out in direct sunlight.

My personal thoughts is that this riddle of what the ship was really painted in will never be solved. It wont ever be solved. I think it is a waste of time trusting colour photos and video from the period as they are inaccurate, incorrect and a victim of poor photographic equipment and film at the time. You will have better chances of building a time machine to look at the past than judging what colour photos show you of the time.

I would also probably trust the WEM and their paint chips and manufactured paints over what I see on a photo any day.

[Sutho]

Paint chips have been kept of these paints throughout the years. The paint mix is right, the photos are always wrong.

I think the nub of the problem is the question of just exactly what colours certain RN WW2 camouflage paints actually were. Which B6 paint mix do you believe is "right"? Of the available modelling paints or in the paint charts in the various books that have been published ( I think I have most of them) please can you say which most closely matches the colour you believe B6 was.[/quote]

Sorry I missed this statement earlier. Honestly if a paint chip has been reprinted in a book then it all depends on the quality of the ink that printed it and how good the publishers are at colour matching. The only paint chip that would be 100% correct is the one that has the actual paint on it.

When I started on in this thread I found the best pieces of information were the ones were discussing shades A to E were done in detail and working out what shade was the same as the other. That was probably the best course of action to take in order to get the camouflage pattern correct.

The only other possible way of finding out what camouflage pattern HMS Prince of Wales had would be to do some old fashioned detective work. You would have to research the history of the RN and find out where they sourced their paint from, obtain all the factories records (if any are left) and get the exact paint formula and cross reference it with other factories that produced paints for the RN.

Then somewhere in history and records there would have had to have been a stores order and receipts for what paints made their way onto HMS Prince of Wales. There would have to be order forms somewhere requesting delivery, delivery receipts etc. The Navy hardly does anything without records. It is highly unlikely paints not needed by the ship would be sent to the ship, the paints in high demand by the ship and requested the most are the paints it was likely to be painted in.

In my best opinion I think the best way of working out for sure what paints were the camouflage pattern would be to painstakingly go through all records to find any paint delivery invoices.

Sadly I am resigned to the fate that colour photography of the period will tell us nothing and just waste our times.

I am on everyone's side here and would love to know the true camouflage scheme. I just took artistic licence with my model and did it best I could matching the A to E shades and took a punt on WEM's colours and the paints mentioned in the Raven books. I believe his book was wrong that MS3 as he puts it was painted out by the time the ship reached Singapore.

[EJFoeth]

A few points

The only paint chip that would be 100% correct is the one that has the actual paint on it.

Paint chips in the archives with the same do not even agree among each other; some they have aged considerably. Some do show the same colour. Not all of them match the S&S colour charts. But even the S&S colour charts do not agree; there are 2 variants of B5 and B6; the horrible B6 (Chart 1) and the nicer B6 (Chart 2).

The only other possible way of finding out what camouflage pattern HMS Prince of Wales had would be to do some old fashioned detective work.

One ingredient is in this thread with the analysis of over 100 camouflage schemes and is exactly that, from which it was concluded that no a single ship in the RN has B6 and MS3 or MS4... nothing definitive but a very good lead that B6 is highly unlikely. I also read several old and out-of-print books of sailors aboard HMS PoW (Bamboo years, One Year Life, Atlantic meeting); not a single line on colour though...

Then somewhere in history and records there would have had to have been a stores order and receipts for what paints made their way onto HMS Prince of Wales. There would have to be order forms somewhere requesting delivery, delivery receipts etc. The Navy hardly does anything without records. It is highly unlikely paints not needed by the ship would be sent to the ship, the paints in high demand by the ship and requested the most are the paints it was likely to be painted in. In my best opinion I think the best way of working out for sure what paints were the camouflage pattern would be to painstakingly go through all records to find any paint delivery invoices.

Well, I doubt they sent all that to the archives. What should be in the archives are the official camouflage patterns that Alan Raven now possesses.

Raven.jpg

From the variation in the patterns in his books over the decades of HMS Prince of Wales you can safely conclude he does not have any official pattern of HMS PoW and made artist impressions (based on many photographs he published in this books I do not find anywhere else and I'd love to have a good scan of the original ). This means that the documentation no longer exists (probably) or will turn up when someone opens the right drawer, recognizes it for what it is, and shares the information (but don't hold your breath).

I think the scheme we put together here is better than the rest, though still not 'done', in terms of pattern and especially colour. Raven is a good option and the rest is rubbish.

[Tracy White]

Speaking as a US-based researcher of US naval records, let me add a couple of things.

EJ's note about color chips is spot on. The paints on the chips might not agree and might have aged - some of the US samples are more yellow than they were at the time of "issue." They're handy, but not precise.

With regards to records, good luck. There's a bit of a dichotomy at times. US Law states that records be turned over when the agency (navy in this case) is "done" with them, but that's really hard to carry out in practice. Typically what happens is that a ship or command will keep records and clean them by purging (burning, mostly) at intervals. I've never seen individual ship records turned over by the ship other than log files. Shipyards turn over records (not useful if a ship is repainted in forward areas) and the Bureau of ships *generally* has a file for each ship (sometimes they purged records when a ship was lost ) but in many cases in the US records we just see "painted in accordance with current directives." These records are turned over "after" the yard or command is done with them, but often there have been years of "maintenance" done on them so you're really only getting a snapshot of the last couple of years or major projects. So even though they are turning over "the records," they're not turning over all of the records that ever touched those files.

I have no idea how much of this is relevant or similar in the Royal Navy and current archives, of course.

[EJFoeth]

EJ's note about color chips is spot on. The paints on the chips might not agree and might have aged - some of the US samples are more yellow than they were at the time of "issue." They're handy, but not precise.

Credits to dick; he actually went to the archives

[Sutho]

Then it is still a riddle as to what paints were used. We can only hope there is some shred of information somewhere that will have information about what colours were used on the ship.

I had been contemplating that the ship was painted predominantly in the light grey 507C with the brighter shades at the front and port stern being white. WEM produces a tin of RN white which is more of an off white colour but not bright snow white. I have modelled HMS Janus in 1940 and the tins I used were the 507C, 507B and RN white for the division lines. If POW was painted almost entirely in 507C with the medium blue grey B5 and dark black blue MS1 left on then it left that mid camouflage colour to the chances it could have been MS3 or B6. That is one theory I was thinking but had not posted.

I have all the Raven books, I am assuming others do here. Perhaps if we did a statistical analysis as others had said to identify the primary paints used by the RN in the period of 1941 only we might have a better chance of identifying the colours.

[EJFoeth]

I had been contemplating that the ship was painted predominantly in the light grey 507C with the brighter shades at the front and port stern being white.

Here's a shot of HMS PoW with one of the 35ft launches at the stern. Now, the cabin of the launch is white. The bars at the rear of the HACSs are white. The lightest colour of HMS PoW is not white.

[dick]

Dear Sutho,

It is I think three years ago that, in addition to the exchanges on this board, Evert-Jan and I started to exchange numerous e-mails off- board discussing the numerous black and white photos and films of HMS Prince of Wales in her disruptive scheme to establish the detailed design of that camouflage pattern and, based on their relative tones (dark to light/ A-E) try to work out which camouflage panels would have been the same colour. This process proved beyond any doubt that PoW wore a camouflage scheme of at least 5 colours and that those 5 colours were still present at Singapore. I believe that Evert-Jan�s wonderful drawings, shared freely by him on this board, are the most accurate representations of the design of her camouflage pattern available anywhere and surpass by a very considerable margin anything ever published.

The logical next step, based on knowledge of which paints were in use at the time, the likely palette given that we were looking at an early Admiralty Disruptive scheme, and the known reflection factors of those paints was to try to assign colours to the various dark to light tones A-E seen in the black and white photos. This proved more difficult but we could narrow down the options to a handful of likely combinations (I had my favourite one, he had his).

The problem for me was that when I tried painting the various options onto a model using WEM paints I found the result I got never �felt� quite right. Although I felt one or two combinations were close, I was never absolutely satisfied. After months and months of scrutinising photos and films of PoW, I felt I knew the scheme well enough to say that the steps in the tonal scale dark to light that resulted on the model were not quite what I felt I was seeing in the photos and black and white film.

So that set me wondering and off to the archives I have been for the past couple of years whenever I can. I have now found numerous samples of various of the WW2 RN paints, some faded, some not, as well as some contemporary paint charts, some more faded than others, and various written descriptions of the paints. Whilst many WEM paints �match� chips in the archives some do not. B6 is one of the latter that consistently does not.

More recently I have started to find what I was really looking for, mixing instructions for the paints. I have not found B6 (1941) yet.

B6 was nothing like what you see painted on HMS Belfast in the Pool of London today which is no surprise as the light blue on her is modern Light Admiralty Grey BS 38 1C 697 (and I have personally checked that in her paint locker accompanied by her conservation manager).

I place far more faith in the colour photos and film from WW2 than you do. I believe the point to use them is last, ie after careful assessment of the likely much more numerous black and white photos of a ship in question have narrowed down the likely options. I believe that the bit of colour film of the Prince of Wales (have you seen all of it not just the clip E-J posted?) is the key to establishing what her colours were. The panels D tone hull colour visible in the film appear to me to be not a blue grey but a green grey.