"Battle of the River Plate Ship Colours" Topic

Hello All

I am looking for a good source for the ship colour schemes for the British, New Zealand and German ships for the Battle of the River Plate. I have just got out the GHQ ships I purchased and they are so nice they deserve the correct colour schemes for the action. Any help would be appreciated as this is an area I am not familiar with

Thanks you

British ships – overall pale grey, wooden decks.

Graf Spee – medium grey hull, pale grey superstructure with green camo scheme. White false bow.

link

Ajax, Achilles and Exeter all wore AP 507C Admiralty Light Grey on all vertical surfaces, with AP 507A Admiralty Dark Grey on all steel decks; wood decks were natural teak.

Graf Spee was painted as follows:

Hull —Dunkelgrau 51;
Superstructure—Hellgrau 50;
Bridge decks—Linoleum;
Wood decks—Teak;
Steel Decks & Boot-topping—Schiffsbodenfarbe III Grau 1;
Underwater hull—Schiffsbodenfarbe III Rot 5.

The camouflage pattern applied to superstructure & turrets, used Dunkelgrau 51 and Dunkelgrau 2.

THERE WAS NO GREEN USED IN GRAF SPEE's CAMO PATTERN! That error is based on artist error on the old Fujimi kit box.

All the above colors are available, accurately matched, in the Colourcoats line of enamels from White Ensign Models.

So basically….paint them gray.

In the absence of anything better, light grey is a pretty safe bet for a warship :)

if green is an error it was around well before the Fujimi model came out. I've seen it in all sorts of old places.

Thanks for the picture link. I repainted my Panzerschiffe Graf Spee.