HMS Rodney camouflage colours

[mister me]

so you would here tend to confirm that the lower repainted part of hull is in the dark shade/version of 507a/b ?

side40.jpg

[SovereignHobbies]

That's a good photograph. If it weren't for all of the Admiralty documents only discussing 2 greys, one would probably assume that the grey there was an intermediate shade.

What can be safely observed though is that the glossy nature of the 507B formulation of Home Fleet Grey in particular will tend to reflect more of the ambient surroundings than a matt 507A formulation would. I'm sure many of us have had cars that look starkly different colours depending on the sky, for example:





Yes, this is pearlescent, but they're all the same car taken on different days. Whilst photographs are invaluable references, they can also be grossly misleading.

With that in mind, and in the absence of having thus far personally encountered a document detailing an experimental or trial scheme on HMS Hood, I would have to hold the belief that the photograph above is HMS Hood in the process of being painted in Home Fleet Grey.

[mister me]

I am myself sometimes misleaded when i look at my previously built models :

I once found that when looking from a distance, a dull black USN #82 pannel looked like a 5-O ocean grey pannel in the vicinity (not the same hull shape/angle on those 2 pannels, not the same luminosity hitting them, and so on... but even black seemed to be medium blue !)

[EJFoeth]

A nice example: A and B are exactly the same color.

[EJFoeth]

Contrast-min.jpg

Two shots of HMS Hood, taken within moments of eachother, both unprocessed shots as received from two musea. Light or dark grey?

Spectral-min.jpg

And a nice example of the small C spot behaving between images, barely visible in some, and clearly visible in other shots.

[SovereignHobbies]

Contrast-min.jpg

Two shots of HMS Hood, taken within moments of eachother, both unprocessed shots as received from two musea. Light or dark grey?

Spectral-min.jpg

And a nice example of the small C spot behaving between images, barely visible in some, and clearly visible in other shots.

Excellent object lessons. For my money, the control object is the north Atlantic ocean in the shots. I've see that warer with my own eyes and the paint on the ship is clearly chosen to camouflage against that sea.

[Islander]

Hi,
This is a very interesting discussion and it continues to amaze how complicated the science of paint and colour is.
Since I can't buy Colourcoats, I have been using XF-66 for 507B, but am contemplating ordering the Lifecolor RN set. Can anyone comment on the quality and accuracy of Lifecolor? That is a super looking car, by the way.
Cheers,
John

[SovereignHobbies]

LifeColor and Hataka both appear to be direct copies of Snyder & Short / Colourcoats.

[PaulC]

OK....so question: If 507A = 507B....

What were the colours used on Hood in April 1941 when A and B turret were lighter and darker respectively than the rest of the ship?





(From: http://www.hmshood.com/photos/miscellan ... scship.htm )

[SovereignHobbies]

507A without any doubt whatsoever is 507B, less the enamel varnish content content.

I have at home copied extracts from numerous Admiralty documents describing the proportions of pigments and binders and although the 507 formulae do evolve over the interwar years, the interwar 507B "Home Fleet Grey" shades can be traced back to a 1920s document recommending a higher quality glossy paint to keep the ships looking good with less frequent repaints required. The varnish component is described as being "Home Fleet shade" and is added to the oil pastes, black paint, linseed oil and driers.

Early in the war, there is another document referencing 507B decreeing that due to wartime economies the use of enamel was to be discontinued, and re-introduced 507A "Home Fleet Grey" with exactly the same constituents minus the 7lbs of varnish per hundredweight.


I would expect a little variation in practise, because the recipes for shipboard mixing from ships' stores at least seem to be designed to use entire cans of blue-black paste, for example. There's a later document instructing users to rinse out the cans with white spirit or turpentine to ensure they got all the oil paste out. The proportions of blue-black to white are so small that a small amount more or less blue and black could account for some of the small differences observed.

Last night when I was making colour chips to take to the National Archives tomorrow, I decided to approximate the documented emergency wartime mix (early war) of 50/50 Home Fleet Grey to Mediterranean Grey, and got this:


That's Colourcoats RN01, RN02, RN03 on the left corresponding to Snyder & Short AP507A, AP507B and AP507C. Centre right is a 50/50 mix of RN01 and RN03.

This proves nothing regarding Hood, but Colourcoats RN01 = S&S AP507A which is very similar to G10 which does indeed measure out with the Light Reflectance Value of ~10%. There are also Admiralty documents clearly stating that 507A and G10 are the same shade in the context of 507A being a suitable substitute where the new G10 (this is 1943) is not available. RN01 / 507A is Home Fleet Grey. RN02 / S&S "AP507B" is out of the ballpark in LRV to be considered Home Fleet Grey.

The 50/50 emergency mix was officially sanctioned, but was never given a pattern 507 name. It's possible that some colour suggestions are ultimately correct, but mis-named. That medium grey colour is not and never was 507B. Having played about with the pigment recipes using artists ground pigments, oils, spirits and dryers, it doesn't seem feasible that the medium grey could have been an accidentally poorly made early-wartime Home Fleet Grey. It would need to have had much of Home Fleet Grey's black content omitted, but with extra blue. This could only have been possible if not using 7lb cans of Pattern 370 Blue-Black Paste which was purchased pre-made by a handful of approved suppliers. There is a document giving a recipe from Portsmouth dockyard in 1939 for Home Fleet Grey still using separate blue and black constituents where S&S' original sample could have potentially been made, but it could not be stated to be typical of Home Fleet Grey.

[mister me]

ouch... my dark camo on warspite has been done in "medium" 507... not the dark one...

but this picture, once again plays in favor of a kind of "medium 507", especially when comparing to the strange dark boats alongside : I find there is not many contrast betwen the 2 camo colors. or was it not a "medium 507" but another color ? B5 ? MS3 ?
and the ship seems to be freshly repainted ! so no fading.

1a.HN-Ma-Academy-HMS-Warspite-1943-1.350.jpg

PS : is it your car this purple beauty ?

[Sutho]

Contrast-min.jpg

Two shots of HMS Hood, taken within moments of eachother, both unprocessed shots as received from two musea. Light or dark grey?

Spectral-min.jpg

And a nice example of the small C spot behaving between images, barely visible in some, and clearly visible in other shots.

Those two photos of Hood are easy to achieve like that. It is just a different shutter speed by the camera.

[SovereignHobbies]

ouch... my dark camo on warspite has been done in "medium" 507... not the dark one...

but this picture, once again plays in favor of a kind of "medium 507", especially when comparing to the strange dark boats alongside : I find there is not many contrast betwen the 2 camo colors. or was it not a "medium 507" but another color ? B5 ? MS3 ?
and the ship seems to be freshly repainted ! so no fading.

1a.HN-Ma-Academy-HMS-Warspite-1943-1.350.jpg

PS : is it your car this purple beauty ?

I'll caveat this by stating that I am away from the references various folks have shared with me, but I seem to remember some discussion via multi-way email recently about camouflaging using the 50/50 emergency mix. I may be imagining that though.

I think we can probably help clear things up if we get away from talking about 507A and 507B, and just call it Home Fleet Grey. If we see something talking about, for example, HMS Barham, painted in 507A and 507B camouflage, keep in mind that the author thinks 507A and B are distinct colours. What he's really observing is Home Fleet Grey and Something Else. That something else may be too dark to convince anyone it's 507C Mediterranean Grey (sometimes referred to as Light Grey in Admiralty docs) then it's possible that the Something Else MAY be the 50/50 emergency mix.

There have been long-post war narratives of "507B" being a 50/50 mix of 507A and 507C. That effect observed and application of resultant paint may in a roundabout way have been correct but an extra assumption has been thrown in and someone's erroneously done the old 2+2=5 and Christened the 50/50 emergency mix as 507B, causing decades of confusion to follow.

Documented facts from primary references (i.e. official period documents) are:
1) 507B was Home Fleet Grey with enamel varnish for durability at the beginning of WW2
2) 507C was referred to as Mediterranean Grey, Foreign Stations Grey or Light Grey from the beginning of WW2 until renotated to G45 by 1943 - the shade never changing
3) 507A was reintroduced as Home Fleet Grey without the enamel varnish early in WW2, the 507B formulation to be discontinued effective immediately
4) There was a shade described as 50/50 emergency mix being discussed by 1941 - it was never given a formal notation
5) The mid-1943 onwards shade "B20" was indeed a 50/50 mix of B15 and B30, which were themselves described as renotated B5 and B6 equivalents


Now if my hypothesis is correct, and someone has taken it upon themselves to attach the name "507B" to the 50/50 emergency mix, the remaining unknown is whether when we see 507B stated as being the colour of a particular subject, from whom did that information originate? If it came from someone conversant with the notation at the time, then they mean 507B as it really was - Home Fleet Grey. If it came from someone long-post war from studying photographs etc, then there is a possibility that they have correctly judged /assessed the shade that they can see, but have misidentified it thinking 507B was an intermediate shade of grey.


I feel I may be labouring the point, but to drive the point home - Raven, Snyder & Short didn't make up the "AP507B" samples they obtained, and some of these photographs strongly suggest a shade other than Home Fleet Grey or Light Grey on the ship. If we can accept that 507A/B is Home Fleet Grey and that 507C is Light Grey, then the intermediate shade sample the above Gents received must be something else. The 50/50 emergency mix is a possibility but not a certainty.

[PaulC]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I do recall this being discussed before though - including problems with the Colourcoats matching the actual colours.

I also recall a discussion in the old HMS Hood forum some years ago about those photos of Hood and wondering what the rationale was for the turrets being painted lighter and darker. Could it be that in mixing the paint, too much blue-black paste was put into one batch which went on B-turret, and there wasn't enough left to match the colour for A!!

Paul

[SovereignHobbies]

I suppose it's possible, but each hundredweight of paint was supposed to get a complete can of blue black paste in it. I can't imagine the Captain being happy about the pride of the Royal Navy being given a botched paint job though!

[mister me]

another crazy idea :

shall it be possible that the good shade of true dark admiralty grey (507a/b) is in fact S&S 507b sample ? and S&S 507a sample would be in fact a kind of deck color with erroneous name ???

[SovereignHobbies]

another crazy idea :

shall it be possible that the good shade of true dark admiralty grey (507a/b) is in fact S&S 507b sample ? and S&S 507a sample would be in fact a kind of deck color with erroneous name ???

I don't believe so for two reasons:

1) when mixing the Rate Book ingredients together for 507B Home Fleet Grey, whilst I still haven't established the exact nature of Blue Black paste in terms of the blue to black split, we get a dark grey resembling RN01 - the S&S 507A colour

2) a Home Fleet Grey that did look like S&S 507B has a Light Reflectance Value of nearer 20% and couldn't possibly be described in 1943 by the Admiralty as being the same shade as G10, so named because of its LRV of 10%.

[Sutho]

Especially this color (Reported to be AP507B), but it's not so dark... (yesyes, exposure and such applies)

Untitled.jpg

Untitled-3.jpg

Can I ask if you know for sure if they are true colour images or videos and not colorised by some studio? That would explain why the colours do not look as they are supposed to. Not only that it is extremely poor quality and there is nothing else in it o compare it to like a human with skin or cloths to colour match. I personally think photos like that are totally useless at matching paint. I am just going off what I know about photography that is all.

[Dan Banks]

I'm confused!!! Are you saying the S&S color swatches shown here do not represent 507A & 507B. If they are the same except for the addition of enamel for a higher reflectance, then is the S&S 507A wrong, because it is a whole lot darker than their 507B. If not and you paint your Hood model in 507A or G10 its going to look way darker than any photo I've ever seen from 1941 period. I know from this discussion that no one knows for sure what 507B was exactly, but for a modelers purpose, the S&S, Colorcoats, Lifecolor, 507B's are all really similar.

[EJFoeth]

Can I ask if you know for sure if they are true colour images or videos and not colorised by some studio? That would explain why the colours do not look as they are supposed to.

No idea other than the claim from the original poster who I would consider credible (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAthCvk5Gro).