"Orange bow & stern decks for Netherlands Navy WWII?" Topic

I was looking at a friend's Axis & Allies Pre-Painted naval miniatures collection and I noted that his lone Netherlands Naval vessel had the bow and fantail deck painted orange. I have never seen a reference to this before. Is this artistic license or is this an actual practice of the times?
Thanks in advance,
Mike

I've never heard of that, though it's possible. I know the Dutch Navy's ships in the Pacific were painted a light blue gray color, but that's it.

It is feasible. Orange was a national color and their Far East aircraft used Orange in their national markings. If the Italians could use red stripes on white decks I don't see why the Dutch could not use Orange.

It is not true, so artistic license.

I have several color images of Dutch WW.II-ships, but none of them shows orange decks. Maybe he mistakes the beige / ochre / light brown decks for orange.

There are several images on Google of Dutch DD's with dark bow and fantail decks. It would be interesting to see what color that really was.

Virtualscratchbuilder – do you have any URLs for those images?

Thanks,
Mike

This might be a bit obvoius but, Orange being the national colour of the Netherlnds, could these not be air rcognition markings similar to those of other nations (particularly during the Spanish Civil War)

Here's a couple.

link

picture

picture

I assume this was a home-grown paint job. As the models come out of the box the De Ruyter is light gray, the Van Galen (the late-war ex-RN 'N' Class, not the original) has light gray uppers and a dark gray lower hull, and the Zvaardvish is medium gray all over. Not a dot of orange to be seen.

LT

Hard to tell for sure from the links Virtualscratchbuilder provided. The One color photo of the ship model does have darkened decks fore and aft…and amidhships…I guess I'm going to go with LT's post that it's a home-grown touch-up for the miniature until I can have a word about it with its owner.
Thanks for the input guys!
Mike

I have been researching ship camouflage and colour schemes for decades and have never seen orange used for Dutch ships.

However I do not entirely discount it, so I'll do some research to see what I can come up with.

Painting the forward area around the anchors a darker colour is quite common.

Darker colours are used to hide the nicks and scratches that are common with the handling of anchors.

I've now looked and looked, including asking some sources in the Netherlands. I cannot find any reference too it, nor any source that mentions it.
From a wargames point of view however, it may provide a handy recognition aid.