[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Type941

I have a few questions that hopefully the history buffs will help to clear out.

First of all, the UK warships. What colors did they really use throughout the WW2? ANd I am not really interested in the wacky camouflage versions, from what I hear those were only used early in the war and were changed to gray color. But that's the thing. What shade of gray?

I have a few colors in progress for warships because I want to get all the british ships in this gray color - so task forces appear realistic, and not so easy to identify using the familiar patterns = especially when 2 ships of the same class in one camouflage looks odd (to me anyway).

1. So below is a few variations for the Home Fleet I have prepared. Is there a color you like and feel realistic?





2. May be there is a set of pantones or color chips to match? I have made a decent template and can play around with color, but need to decide whethere to make all ships in similar color, or in varying color? Again, I don't know if all ships had same shade of gray, or there was like Battleship gray, and Destroyer gray, etc...

ANy weblinks, etc, are helpful. If this all works, I'll give the community a full set of gray UK warships.


3. Naturally, the same will apply to the US navy. That would be next.


To get started on this, I want to know:

- should all UK warships be in similar shade of gray
- should there be rust or no rust on ships, and is it dependent on ship size
- colors for ships based on class?
- difference of HOme fleet color to german Kriegsmarine color
- is there even a need for all this???

I'm glad you're interested in doing the Brits too, 941. A request, first of all - PLEASE do something about the really common escorts, like the armed trawler, hunt class, and V&W.

AQs for camo schemes, the fragmented blue scheme that you see on so many warships probably shouldn't appear at the outset of the war. Initially, many RN escorts were painted a solid dark grey or an extremely light grey overall. I have one picture of a V&W in 1940 that is so dark that it looks almost black, as well as pictures of tribals in the light-overall scheme prewar. Later on, around 1940-41, the British realized that this camo was ineffective for North Atlantic vessels and switched to a mix of geometrically-patterned whites, blues, light greys, and greens.

I'm not certain about rust but I know that smaller vessels like escorts often had more rust than larger warships. The need for a fast turnaround time with all those convoys arriving and departing left little time for painting. However, even the worst-maintained warships should have less rust than a badly-maintained merchant.

Try checking out the white ensign models webpage to find common escort schemes. Their page on corvettes was pretty useful to me.

www.whiteensignmodels.com