"RN in the Med?" Topic

I'm going to be painting up British ships fairly soon, mostly A&A War at Sea stuff with some Shapeways thrown in, but I'm having difficulty finding reference images showing camo patterns and colors. My theater of interest is the Mediterranean, particularly the Malta convoys(but any Med actions will work), especially Operation Pedestal.

Does anyone know of any good image references? I'd especially like to find information on HMS Victorious.

Thanks!

Get all 3 of Mal Wright's books on British and Commonwealth Warship Camouflage of WW II. There is no more thorough or definitive source I know of.

I recommend getting all three volumes while they're still affordable, because they were a limited print run and the prices will climb to the stratosphere once the stock gets low.

- Ix

It's complex TMP link

I agree with Yellow Admiral. I have painted up every ship for Operation Pedestal.

That's…a bit further down the rabbit hole than I'm trying to go. Those books are out of my price range right now(though I'll keep an eye out at used book stores, so thanks!), and my painting style definitely falls more towards "use whatever you already own that looks close enough" rather than "match the hues exactly".

I guess I was hoping more to find some Shipbucket-style images rather than heavy-duty reference books.

Thanks, though!

LOL! Sorry I don't have anything better to offer.

You can often find the Wright books cheaper on Abe Books if you don't mind buying used copies: link

One of the reasons I get books like this is because the online search for images to use as painting guides is a deeper rabbit hole than the books I can buy. It takes less time to wait for shipping than to find a less complete set of pictures that might still not be what I want. :-\

There is also a single-volume Clash of Arms publication by Patrick Hreachmack which you can get for less money than a full Mal Wright set, called Painter's Guide to World War Two Naval Camouflage. I'm 1000 miles from my copy, so I can't verify it covers the specific warships you might want to see, but it's probably good enough to provide general guidelines.

- Ix

For 1941, this (which BTW shows Victorious in 1941-1942 scheme, though the actual colors should probably inferred from faded versions of the paint chips rather than the color illustration in the book):
link

For 1942, this:
link

These are becoming very difficult to get, so if you have $25. USD to $50. USD to spare, get one in your preferred time period or ideally both. There is a third relevant volume 4 with corrections. Both have extensive coverage, mostly of destroyers and larger, mostly B&W, with some color, and the 1941 volume has color paint chips on the back cover (for approximate colors, which should be faded for small-scale models).

The Mal Wright books are probably good too, but I don't own them. The Kindle free preview of the Mal Wright books also show color paint chips, on the Amazon website.
link

MH

Looking at things more closely, it seems like references for just about any major ship are easy to find except for Victorious, and there's no way I can justify any book that's more than $10 USD total just to paint a single miniature.

I've found some good references for her North Atlantic colors, so I may just go with those instead. Regardless, thank you everyone for your help.