Postwar USN Submarine Schemes

[El Santo]

Looking through photos of Cold War era US Navy submarines on Navsource, I think I'm seeing three distinct paint schemes. The most common, of course, is overall black, which equates to the World War II era Measure 9. Then there's one in which everything below the surfaced waterline is black, but everything above is a sort of dull dark gray; I'm guessing this is the postwar version of the wartime Measure 10, which called for overall Ocean Gray above the waterline, and anti-fouling black below. It's the third scheme I'm really curious about, though. In this one, it's ambiguous (or maybe just inconsistent) whether the anti-fouling paint is black or red, but there is at least a broad black band extending from some distance below the waterline to roughly the joint between pressure hull and superstructure. Above that level, most vertical surfaces are what looks to be the same dull dark gray as in the second scheme, but the deck is black, along with the top of the sail and about the aft-most 15% of the superstructure sides. Does anyone know the span of years during which this scheme was in use? It looks like it was mainly a 60's thing, but I might have spotted some late-50's examples, too? Also, is the gray component of the scheme indeed the neutral version of Ocean Gray, or is it something else? Finally, does this scheme have an official name?




If this helps at all, here's the Regulus cruise missile sub, Growler, done up in the third scheme: http://navsource.org/archives/08/574/0857708.jpg

[Tracy White]

It depends on "when" you are talking about post war. Immediately post war they were still following this pattern for submarines but with reformulated colors. Maritime.org has a 1952 camouflage instructions booklet here that should give you the update for most of the 1950s - as far as I know there weren't any large updates again until 1962 and there isn't a copy of that booklet online that I'm aware of. The paint colors used were all the same though and it mainly added information for boomer-shaped hulls.