"WW2 British Aircraft Carriers Flight Decks" Topic

I'm painting some 1/6000 scale ships and while I know that the color of US and Japanese aircraft carriers' flight decks, I have no idea of what color a British one would be.

I'm assuming since they were armored decks that they were a covered steel, but what color?

Anyone direct me to a colored picture, or can tell me what color they should be?

Dan

I recall some of the early war paint jobs on the likes of Furious, Glorious and Courageous as being essentially a dazzle type scheme with lots of greens, gray-greens and grays etc that carried up off the vertical surfaces and on to the flight deck. There are some images floating around that can be pulled up on Google of (I think) Furious in such a scheme.

I've always seen Ark Royal and the Indomitable/Illustrious classes with a medium gray deck with white or black markings.

There is a colour photo of HMS Formidible in a book I have called "The War at Sea in Photographs 1939-1945."

The flight deck is a kind of dirty brown in two shades in that picture. The book says it is a camoflage pattern. Looks horrid.

Sorry, that should be Formidable, obviously.

Alan Raven's Warship Perspectives series on RN camouflage patterns shows a few deck patterns, states some are medium grey, some had camouflage, but not well enough known to draw it, and other's that he doesn't know. Depends which ship & when.

Mike

Decided to go with the medium grey deck. At 1/6000 it's more important to know what the ship is than to have the exact color, or camoflage.

Noticed on the first few ships I did in this scale that putting hull camoflage on was a waste of time as no one noticed even when playing (unless held at eye level to peek at) and that it "dirted" up the look of the ship on the table. Might have been realistic, but I'm gaming, not doing a simulation (smile).

Dan