HMS Saumarez (and other S & T class members) - help

[Gerry]

Dear friends, after a long and futile search on the net, I would like to ask if anyone could help me - I'm drawing a paper model of the destroyer HMS Saumarez and can not find his camouflage during the Battle of Nord Cape. I only know he carried one version of Admiralty Disruptive Pattern (probably Intermediate), but I do not know which colors exactly. Does any of you know more? Otherwise, if anyone knew about other S & T members' camo, I would be very happy. Thanks in advance!

[SovereignHobbies]

The short answer is that I don't know. The pattern is vaguely similar in shape to one of the standard designs in CB.3098 from May 1943, but not a match. Furthermore, the relative tones do not match particularly well with that design either which has larger gaps with the darkest colour being G10.

A friend in the USA is building a 1/350 model and asked the same question 2 or 3 weeks ago. I did this at that point to *suggest* colours which might fit well with the observed tones. I used a well known photograph, plus the free online colour summarizer tool "mkweb" to analyse a segment of the bow, then calculated Light Reflectance Values (the Y part in Yxy colour space) for each of the 3 tones on the hull. They are 15% apart and the absolute values corroborate reasonably well with B15, B30 and G45.

Saumarez2.jpg

No promises though...

[Gerry]

Thank you very much for your quick and very helpful response! This finding corresponds to my assumption that it is the Admiralty Intermediate Disruptive Pattern that used these colors.

[SovereignHobbies]

I've now decided to build this myself, and just this morning Peter Hall has posted one of his Atlantic Models ATK 35051 1/350 HMS Scorpion S-Class kits to me

[Gerry]

Good luck with that!