"ship painting other than cammo..." Topic

Good evening guys! I just came into possession of a nice pile of 1/2400 US and Japanese warships. I have everything from destroyers on up to carriers! I just completed the lions share of the construction of the ships, and now it's time to paint. I know that there is a ton of posts about various types of camouflage. I'm hoping to find a resource, whether it be a book, or a website that has more basic painting information. The basic shade of grey for the hull, the color of the decks, deck equipment, lifeboats, funnel stripes, any of those basic items! Thats the info I need! Now, I know this info is all readily available somewhere on the internet, quite a bit of it on this site! Is there a good resource that I won't have to shift through so much, something with some nice colored illustrations! It would be nice if it covered all the main combatants, but that might just be greedy! Thanks for any information you guys can give me!

Well, the simple answer is – it depends.

Japanese are pretty straightforward as they didn't use much camo, although there were a few ships that were camouflaged – especially carriers in '44/'45. You can't really go wrong painting Japanese with natural wood main decks (for battlewagons cruisers and carriers – other ships would have a dark grey deck) and a dark grey everything else. Carrier decks were a medium to dark brown – a little lighter than milk chocolate. I think I used Vallejo Mahogany. The exact dark grey depended on the yard that was painting the ship – there was a great deal of variation. Vallejo Dark Sea Grey and Dark Grey both work well for Japanese ships, though one is clearly darker than the other.

The US gets much more tricky because – because of the camo patterns there wasn't really a "standard" paint job. Decks and horizontal surfaces were deck blue (I use Vallejo Luftwaffe Blue, which comes fairly close) from early '42. Verticals could be navy blue, light grey or medium grey. I think I did a lot of my 1/6000 (minimal research – before I really got into it) with medium grey hulls and light grey upper works, which was actually the prewar standard. For the US, check out link which will tell you everything you ever wanted to know, and more, including paint chips.

Good luck with colored illustrations. Remember that they are only as good as the artist rendering them, and colors may not be the correct color at all. There is often argument as to what – exactly – the original color used was. For example, the silhouette painted on the side of Japanese carriers is described as either black or dark green. And no one knows exactly what color the light pea green that some Japanese ships were painted was.

A good book is "The Painter's Guide to WW II Naval Camouflage"
published by Clash of Arms. There is a good discussion of various nationalities' colors although many of the paint brands recommended are no longer available.

This website should help with U.S. camo:

shipcamouflage.com

Mike

Yikes – Just realized Sundance already linked to that site. Sorry!

Mike

I'm hoping to find a resource, whether it be a book, or a website that has more basic painting information. The basic shade of grey for the hull, the color of the decks, deck equipment, lifeboats, funnel stripes, any of those basic items!

The problem is that on camouflaged ships those items are camouflaged.

Ships went camouflaged early with exceptions.

Most Italian ships were not camouflaged in 1940. The standard is light grey hulls, dark grey steel decks and 'wood' (I don't know what wood the Italians used), light grey superstructures. They started experimenting with various camouflage patterns in 1941 and by 1942 they are all in camouflage.

As said above the Japanese were camouflage adverse until '44 and not whole hearted about it even then. Merchants and carriers began to embrace it then.

I disagree about Japanese decks. Most, but not battleships or carriers, were covered in linoleum of a reddish brown tint, the deck areas not covered in linoleum were painted the same grey as the hull and superstructure.

The Royal Navy went camouflaged early. By 1940 they went wild with official and unofficial patterns slowly coalescing into official patterns that change by year and area.

The USN painted in camouflage before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

So, unless you are doing 1939, they will be camouflaged.

But they are your models paint them as you wish.

The Royal Navy Home Fleet was in medium grey, most other areas were in light grey. Wood was teak, decks were grey steel or brownish linoleum

The USN was in dark grey, lower superstructure in dark grey getting progressively lighter in shade the higher you go.

The Kriegsmarine was… hull medium grey (I think) with the greys getting lighter as you went higher.

The Japanese were as above and the Italians in the 1940 paint.

Oh yes, on the ship camouflage site listed above is a very nice article on British camouflage shipcamouflage.com/3_1.htm

Seem to remember that Mal Wright, who posts on TMP and on the Yahoo Naval Wargaming Group, did something on painting WW2 vessels.

TMP link

I stand corrected on the Japanese decks. Thanks!

Mal's book is on British ships, at least the first one that has been published – destroyers and smaller vessels.

… and Mal's book is fantastic.
link
Shame he is not still around on the site as he was always helpful with questions like this.

Thank you very much for the information guys! A ton of good resources for American ships! When I was painting up my infantry armies I know that the Osprey series of books was very helpful. I know they make ship books too… Have you guys use them? Are they at all helpful for ships? I have found them to be pretty great for land forces, but might not be worth the cash for ships!

Don't worry about it too much. IMHO, any color you paint will be at best an approximation, because the information available (even paint chips) is inexact, for reasons such as:

1) The absolute value of color from a book or website will be distorted by the display medium (printing technology, monitor settings, etc.).

2) Small scale models need to be painted differently to represent them being viewed from scale distances of miles away ("scale color" is generally lighter and less saturated). Thus even if you have an un-deteriorated paint chip (after 70 years…) it would be wrong for a model.

3) Colors should be a good aesthetic match for our table colors.

So, in the end, I would advise obtain general information (light grey, dark gray, lighter than country A, etc.), pick your colors, and go for it. If you don't want to paint fancy camouflage schemes, as mentioned in other posts Japanese usually don't require it, and you could use a simple scheme for all your US ships, such as "Measure 11" at link. Then if desired at a later point in time, you could go back and repaint individual ships in more date-specific camouflage schemes.

One of many on-line sources is the Yahoo 1/4800 site, where Robert has some albums duplicating color plates from various books (you have to be a member to see them). Click "albums", not the default "photostream": link

Mark H.