Modern US Navy colours

[Sutho]

As far as I am aware the US Navy uses haze gery on all their modern surface ships.

I am just curious if the USN uses or has used any other darker greys from the 60's to present day. In particular the Iowa class Battleships in the 80's and some of the early CGN's that were in service. I have noticed allot of photos on the web sometimes show USN ships in a darker grey. It just got me curious if over the years they used any other colours.

[Cliffy B]

Best I can tell it has more to do with the lighting on the photos then the shade of gray. While paint can certainly vary from batch to batch and the formula has changed, the actual color hasn't changed a whole lot since the 1960s. Lighting can make the ships seem very dark to very light or even "colored", IE blue or even orange during sunsets. The actual color is neutral gray IE just black and white that I know of. Its generally agreed upon that FS 36270 while decks are FS 36118 and non-skid/flight decks are FS 35076. From people who have seen fresh Haze Gray they say it has a satin finish to it, not flat.

[William4443]

I was going to post a question regarding this and saw this post. What are your thoughts on TAM 85032 haze grey? It almost looks like a blue on the website sample which makes me question its validity to accomplish what we're trying to do here.

[Tracy White]

For what it's worth, the FS *6270 "Haze Gray" has #27 in it's title (see this page -26270 about half way down, and 36270 maybe 5/6 of the way down). This 1948 document refers to Haze Gray #27.

Formulas change over time, and as we've seen with the "Low Solar Absorption" pinking problem, weathering and age can have an affect, as well as the stories of Chief's buying whatever looks close commercially in a pinch. Most of the variation in photos, though, is caused by lighting (sun position, cloud cover) and film exposure.