Royal Navy WW2 - CAFO 1112 - Camouflage of Sea-going Ships

[SovereignHobbies]

As part of our ongoing work I was reading through some references I had in paper photocopy only. I decided to retype this one in full, partly to ensure it sunk in properly but mainly because the paper photocopy was a little poor in places and scanning it to have an electronic copy would likely have resulted in something fairly marginal to read.

Having done all that yesterday, I then decided to make the facsimile copy available for others to download.

Confidential Admiralty Fleet Order 1112/42 (C.A.F.O. 1112/42) is dated 11th June 1942 and post-dates C.A.F.O. 679/42 which may seem obvious looking at the numbers. C.A.F.O. 679/42 dealt with the camouflage of small ships at sea, i.e. destroyers and smaller craft, using 507A, 507C, White, Western Approaches shades and the "Standard Camouflage Colours" M.S.1., M.S.2, M.S.3, M.S.4, M.S.4A and B5. B6 is conspicuously absent from C.A.F.O.679/42 although it does seem to have been in use - just perhaps not on destroyers and smaller craft.

What's interesting about C.A.F.O. 1112/42 is that it comprises some principles of camouflage which are re-emphasised in CB.3098 the following year, and defines what the policy was for camouflage at the time, applicable to all types of ships in all waters. It also lists Emergency Designs to achieve one of four average tones of camouflage using only White, Home Fleet Grey and Mediterranean Grey for situations in which camouflage paints are not available or where there is not time to apply a proper camouflage pattern.

Download here for anyone interested:
https://www.sovereignhobbies.co.uk/page ... -june-1942

[Robbie Mac]

Thanks very much, James, for the trouble and effort you went to and for making it available to us all.

Cheers,

Robbie

[SovereignHobbies]

No problem

It needed to done anyway so it was no more than 5 minutes work to upload it to the website after that The time/effort was all in reading and making sure I understood everything properly and I can more-or-less touch-type as I read happily!

[SovereignHobbies]

I am considering doing likewise with C.A.F.O.679/42, CB.3098/43, with 1945 and 1954 updates, both of which describe painting orders for destroyers and smaller craft in quite some detail and each comprises a series of standard camouflage designs using the promulgated colours.

These could help the modeller "reverse engineer" black and white photographs by comparing the shapes and tones of the designs to the standard designs in use.

The WEM prints of CB.3098 back in the day used scans of the colour plates. The differences between the old printed inks of the plates and the Snyder & Short colours make the interpretation a little awkward though. AFAIK nobody has done the same with C.A.F.O. 679/42 or the 1945 and 1954 editions of CB.3098 which cover also the late-war G45 and B20 standard scheme A and B55 and B30 standard scheme B etc.

Any interest? These might not be free-downloads, but would have redrawn illustrations for all colour plates.

[JCRAY]

I think there is enough interest to pay to play, as long as you keep it reasonable.
John

[Tracy White]

From one person who has re-typed a lot of camouflage documentation to another, bravo and good work