"IJN and USN WWII color equivalents" Topic

Following up on jdagee's post GW/Citadel paints USN WWII color equivalents, I thought I'd post my personal recipe list for painting USN and IJN WWII color equivalents.

My own technique for painting WWII Pacific War ships is to spray paint the decks with one color (angled straight down), spray paint the vertical surfaces with another color (angled straight on or slightly upward), then use brush-on paints to fix overspray, add camo patterns, paint details, do weathering and shading, etc.

I settled on Tamiya spray paints for the base camo colors, because they work great as spray primer, and come in a wiiiiiiiiiide variety of grays. Unfortunately, Tamiya is awful about matching brush acrylic colors to spray paints; a spray paint and a bottle paint with the same name are different colors more often than not. This problem can be fixed handily if you have an airbrush – Tamiya bottle paints mix really well and spray really well, so just use bottle paint colors and mix formulas and get consistent results. I'm not an airbrush user, so two years ago I did a lot of work mixing up matching brush-on paints, then last year I started decanting spray lacquers into jars to get a perfect match, every time.

Spray colors

USN 5-L Light gray: Tamiya AS-5 Light Blue (no brush-on match)
USN 5-H Haze gray: Tamiya AS-25 Dark Ghost Gray (no brush-on match)
USN 5-O Ocean gray: Tamiya AS-31 Ocean Gray 2 RAF (matches XF-82)
USN 5-N Navy blue: Tamiya AS-8 Navy Blue
USN 5-S Sea blue: Floquil Aeromaster 1048 US Blue Gray (OOP)
USN 5-D Dark gray: Tamiya TS-48 Gunship Grey
IJN Sasebo gray: Tamiya TS-67
IJN Kure gray: Tamiya TS-66
IJN Maizuru gray: Tamiya TS-99
IJN brown linoleum decking: Tamiya TS-62 (no brush-on match)

Brush colors
USN 5-Light gray: Vallejo 989 Sky Gray (no spray match)
USN 5-P Pale gray: Tamiya XF-83 Medium Sea Gray 2 (no spray match)
USN 5-O Ocean gray: Tamiya XF-82 Ocean Gray (matches AS-31 spray)
USN 5-N Navy blue: custom Tamiya mix XF8:1 + XF17:1, then add XF18 to mute the blue, and XF2 to lighten (matches AS-8 spray)
USN 20B Deck blue: custom Tamiya mix XF50:10 + XF8:3 + XF1:3 + XF17:4. Often adjusted in situ on a model (see below).
IJN Sasebo gray: Tamiya TS-67 (decanted)
IJN Kure gray: Tamiya TS-66 (decanted)
IJN Maizuru gray: Tamiya TS-99 (decanted)
IJN Yokosuka gray: Tamiya TS-91 (no spray match)
IJN brown linoleum decking: Vallejo 70.818 Red Leather (no spray match)

About USN 20-B Deck blue
I have never found a consistent solution to achieving USN 20B Deck Blue. I have disliked every commercial paint or recommended match/mix I've tried (most are too gray and/or too dark). I use the custom Tamiya mix I listed above, but it's indistinguishable from black on 1/2400 DDs and some CLs, so I have to lighten it; it's too blue for 1/1250 CVs and BBs, so I have to desaturate it or just do something different altogether. For my 1/1250 USS Enterprise I used a basecoat of Tamiya XF-50 Field Blue and then various Vallejo colors, mixes, and washes to adjust it until it looked "right"; I no longer have any idea what I did, and couldn't repeat it. Deck Blue is a hard color to get right in miniatures.

About IJN grays
There were 4 main IJN grays, one from each major shipyard; it turns out you can't tell them apart in 1/2400 scale. What I ended up doing was spray painting a base coat in Tamiya Kure gray, Sasebo gray, or Maizuru gray (which I also used for Yokosuka gray ships), then drybrushing to differentiate using highlights. TBH I still can't tell Maizuru/Yokosuka apart at gaming distances. When I move up to 1/1250 ships, I'll try using all 4 grays again, because there may be enough surface area to matter on cruisers and larger. Note: Tamiya makes spray paints for 3 of the grays (all but Yokosuka) and brush-on acrylics for all 4, but the spray paints do not match the bottle paints. Not even close. They basically make 7 colors with 4 names.

About IJN brown linoleum
The IJN red-brown linoleum decking looks okay if the color is even close. After many experiments with various brush-on browns, I settled on Tamiya TS-62 Nato Brown as the easiest one-shot spray and Vallejo Red Leather as the brush-on paint. Both look okay, and I think many red-browns will work. Strictly accurate colors are either too dark or too brown for scale models – the red hue must come through, and the paint must be unreasonably bright in the bottle to be the right saturation on a tiny deck on the table. My next experiment will probably be a custom mix of Army Painter Speed Paint 2.0 colors.

- Ix

Please forgive a stupid question. The cross pieces that appear on Japanese linoleum decks, are they painted gray? I swear that when I look at scale models of Japanese WWII warships, the cross pieces look like they are brass colored. That doesn't makes sense to me, so I thought I would ask.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

I just slapped this into a pdf for future reference. I have several 1/700 US Cruisers to paint so this will be handy. I appreciate the work you did on this!

Thanks.

John

A small aside about my choices of spray colors for USN colors:
If you look at samples of the grays and blues I selected for USN measure colors, you will probably disagree with some of them. I know I do, just looking at them together on my sample sticks. However, there was a method to my madness.

In 1941 the USN switched from targeted paint colors to a set of recipes that could be repeated in the field, all using different quantities of the same blue-black tint. Effectively all grays and blues were variations of the same hue. I made test samples of all the Tamiya spray grays and picked a variety that I felt matched this theme. There are many specific grays in the Tamiya spray paint range that individually match USN paint chips better, but don't "go together" visually, or contain too much brown or something that doesn't look "USN" enough.

In addition, I had to select colors that contrasted sufficiently to distinguish them on a miniature ship. One of the problems I have with a lot of the off-the-shelf paints made to be historical matches is that they don't contrast with each other like the colors in photos. Miniature painters need colors too bright and higher contrast than IRL, so that we can see them at gaming distances, but similar to the problem I describe above with 4 IJN grays in 1/2400 scale, a lot of the USN paint colors I could get just blurred together in miniature, or even looked downright black. I have the complete set of Lifecolor USN paints; I haven't used any of them.

Again, you could be more accurate and also achieve the contrast and hue variation to your own liking if you have an airbrush and mix your own colors (and write down your formulas! Seriously, record your mixes, you'll thank yourself later.). My use of Tamiya spray paints is definitely a shortcut past the long road of airbrush acquisitions, practice, and maintenance.

A note about USN 5-S Sea blue:
I haven't actually used the Floquil Aeromaster 1048 US Blue Gray; IRL it was my aiming point for a custom mix. I started with Delta Ceramcoat Midnight Blue and added Neutral Gray to it until I got to a rough approximation. This was actually a failed experiment to get a range of totally different colors, but I wound up with two whole jars (about 1.5 oz total) that were so close to the OOP Floquil that I decided to use them. As long as I keep them sealed, I should never run out…

Like many of my other USN colors, in the jar or on sample palettes this color looks oversaturated and too dark or too light (depending on lighting). However, it was a pretty good match for some well-photographed scale models I found on line, and it fit in really well with the "theme" of related blues and grays I was aiming for.

Please forgive a stupid question. The cross pieces that appear on Japanese linoleum decks, are they painted gray? I swear that when I look at scale models of Japanese WWII warships, the cross pieces look like they are brass colored. That doesn't makes sense to me, so I thought I would ask.

I'm not sure what the crosspieces are. Can you show some photos with examples?

I'm not aware of any large quantities of brass on IJN decks, or anywhere on the outside of IJN warships in WWII, so I agree brass sounds a bit… odd? But I also don't know what part we're talking about. Some things get exaggerated in models for visual impression.

@Yellow Admiral (sir)

Brilliant stuff – and Japanese colours too! I had an unhappy experience with Tamiya acrylics once upon a time and don't use them, but your general thoughts – on picking some colours that work well together, and basically going for what looks right – very much chime with my own and reinforce my inclination to go with what I'm happy with.

On that, I've been trying Vallejo on a couple of New Mexico BBs in 1/3000. I've used 905 "blue grey pale" (basically grey) for Ms 1, and 907 ("pale grey blue") and 905 (Revell 57 looked too light) for Ms 12. I tried GW Fenrisian Grey for the deck but again it was too pale and I have used Revell 79 ("Greyish blue) which now that I look at it in the daylight doesn't look very blue. I suspect Humbrol 144 is quite promising, but I've already used that on bases … I should say that I also do a black wash, so that probably darkens things a bit.

The linoleum is put down in strips. Brass edging strips hold the linoleum in place. If I remember correctly the British used this same system to hold the linoleum (corticene) in place. For that matter I think the Germans used the same (different colours) to attach linoleum to their WW1 ships… possibly also WW2?

I had an unhappy experience with Tamiya acrylics once upon a time and don't use them

Everybody has unhappy experiences with Tamiya acrylics. So did I, and I didn't use them either until a few years ago, when I was finally able to use the Internet to discover the secrets of chemical assistance and techniques that make Tamiya paints usable with a brush. TBH, Tamiya acrylics are a lot of trouble.

Tamiya spray lacquers are awesome. I preferred the Testors sprays, but when the Model Master military colors were discontinued, Tamiya is what was left. Tamiya has always had a better array of plane colors anyway, which is how I got so invested in them.

Yellow Admiral,

I agree with the sentiment that the IJN grays are just not that different at 1:2400 (or 1:1800 either) though I use GW/Citadel Dawnstone, Eshin Grey, Mechanicus Standard Grey, or Skavenblight Dinge depending on what I want to achieve. As for the decks, I use GW/Citadel Doombull Brown for the IJN linoleum, gives it just that 'red' touch I like on my ships. I haven't found a good GW/Citadel shade to use for wooden decks so usually go with Vallejo Iraqui Sand (though I think that's too bright) washed with GW/Citadel Seraphim Sepia (sometimes mixed with Army Painter Light Tone).

R, Jim