"Painting References WW2" Topic

I've only been doing Naval for about two months now, but here's what I found in the way of good painting references.

1) "The Painters Guide to WW2 Naval Camouflage" by Patrick Hreachmack (Clash of Arms).

This is a great reference for the price. Detailed B&W ship profiles describing the various disruptive schemes of the major players in WW2. Also has brand paint suggestions for specific colors. While I would highly recommend this book, be aware that it's paint brand information is dated. While the author references Polly-S, Testors, & Armory which are valid choices, his Floquil Maritime Colors are long gone. But all of this is rendered moot anyway by the advent of White Ensign Models Colourcoats (appeared after book publication), which are directly available from the UK, and are exact color matches too. Lastly, the book has several Humbrol paint mixes for the various Royal Navy colors which I find suspect & do not endorse.

whiteensignmodels.com

2) "Naval Camouflage" by David Williams. A nice book to have, if it were $30. USD But for the price Naval Institute Press is asking for, I can't recommend it. It has a very extensive & well researched written account of the camouflage used by (mainly) the allied ships of the world wars. However, the photos are not well reproduced. They are small, fuzzy, dark & there simply aren't enough photos, contrary to the books subtitle ("A Complete Visual Reference"). However, the author does include nice tables in the appendix for Humbrol paint mixes for the WW2 RN, and they seem accurate. For this reason, the book is worth checking out of a library. Again, with White Ensign Models paints, this point is less important.

link

3) "Warship Pictorial" by Steve Wiper of Classic Warships Inc. These are excellent photo album references & a great value. I doubt if there is better quality research out there. Steve is a true guru & gives you the juice. Get them all.

link

While there is very little in the way of color drawings, the photos are large, clear, and well captioned. For color, see:

4) "[Ships] in Action" by Squadron/Signal Publications (another great value). These nicely round out the references in that they in addition to large well captioned photos, they also have a color centerfold with six ships in profile. Sometimes, the information may contradict Steve Wiper, and I would go with Steve in such situations. But these occurrences are few & very far between.

squadron.com

5) Lastly, Schiffer Press has several good & inexpensive books on German warships (ex. "Pocket Battleship Admiral Graf Spee" by Siegfreid Breyer. Not too much discussion of colors, but very nice photo references.

6) [Ship] on Deck also by Squadron Signal. A great value, with some color photos (usually museum shots, ex. Alabama), large well captioned photos, & 4 color profiles of the specific ship during various stages of her career. Nice.

A few fragments from my somewhat dated warship library:

Italian:

Regia Marina, Italian Battleships of World War Two, Bagnasco & Grossman (includes deck and profile color images and text).

Navi italiene dell 2a guerra mondiale–nuova serie, Bagnasco, etc. (includes color plates on the class covered by that particular volume; I have the Soldati DD book).

Warship Profile series (probably out of print; various ships including Italian Zara class deck and profile color paintings).

Great Britain:

Ensign series (various classes of British WWII ships, including KGV volume with nice color profiles of various KGVs, including POW in "First Admiralty Disruptive" scheme).

Warship Profile series, mentioned above.

France:

Warship International, various issues. (2 of these focused on French "Fantasque" and "2400 tonne" classes of DLs, with info on "wine-red" linoleum deck covering on quarterdeck and around gun mounts).

Alan Raven's Warship Perspectives are four books for RN camouflage. Mostly b/w but there are a number of pages in each that are colour. Most schemes refer to the Admiralty colour, which you then go get off WEM. Easy!

For US ships:
link
Again, paint from WEM.

If we want to represent "scale color", we will need to lighten the WEM paints. Our perspective when viewing our miniatures is one of viewing a large object from a distance of several miles away. In such cases, the colors generally appear lighter than when one is standing a few feet away. You can't just match your 1:2400 model to a paint chip.

Greetings All… :O)

Well, I haven't been sucessful yet in finding 1/2400 scale IJN decals….But, I did find 1/700 scale Seawave IJN decals that have Carrier deck decals, language characters, numbers etc! Well worth the 11.91 GBP I paid for the set!
And, they also have a line of naval paints for the various WWII nsvies, very nice, with a book I purchased:

"Imperial Japanese Navy Greys (A ship by ship compilation)"
by John Snyder! Thhe book has a soft plastic cover, lists every warship and it's shade of grey,depending on which of four shipyards it was built, repaired or refitted in!

Sasebo Grey
Kure Grey
Maizuru Grey
Yokosuka Grey
Types 1, 2, 21, 22 Camouflage
Deck Tan
Linoleum

Man…I really got wound up, didn't I?? LOL I'm still waiting on an email from Hasegawa reference 1/700 & 1/2400 scale decals!

White Ensign's URL is as follows:

whiteensignmodels.com

The people at GHQ Models emailed me, and informed me that athough they have a source for US and British decals, they said that Sea Bat has ceased production of Japanese decals!

Thanks,
Moshe

Does anyone know what color the flight deck is on HMS Ark Royal (around 1940), and what paint scheme she had in the Med. Just about finished the Italians, and now I'm working on the Brits.

Steve Ford