that a remarkable number of starboard-side views were able to be interpreted compared to far fewer portside views. It must be kept in mind that some ships did have a different layout on each side. Others did not and, of course, many standard schemes had to be identical on either side.
I have not listed them by camouflage scheme, rather by ship type. This should enable the reader to go straight to the ship type wanted and find an appropriate scheme. They are also listed by name and, while not all the ships of each class are always shown, I have nonetheless included a lot of them, so the reader can also often chose by name when painting a model. The classes include ships that were British Commonwealth-built yet manned by other navies in exile. I have occasionally included ships that were captured to show how they looked in enemy hands. There were few of them, but the changes are of great interest.
Overhead views are included with some ships as concealment from aircraft was important for much of WWII. However, where not shown, it was common to paint upper surfaces grey or in the case of Cemtex to leave it in its natural grey. Some camouflage schemes were carried across the deck. But by and large the easiest way was to use grey, even if it meant painting over wooden decks that had been kept holystoned for years by the sweat of sailors.
One of the very important issues for those painting models to remember is that sometimes there is no exact shade. There may well be a recommended shade, and even a paint guide with colour chips to go with it, but you must put yourself in the shoes of the sailors of the day. Imagine you have been at sea with a convoy for a week or two; you arrive back in harbour exhausted, in need of rest. But half the ship is sent off for a few quick days leave and the others remain behind to carry out minor maintenance. This usually meant either touching up the paintwork or preparing it for the half on leave to tackle when they returned. Laid out in front of you is a sort of cook book telling you to add this much of a certain pigment to that much white or grey and the result will be the shade specified for a particular scheme. But you are tired, or perhaps the ship is on standby to leave harbour on yet another mission. So your level of care when told to add a cup of this to a tin of that can be rather less than ideal. The famous ‘TLAR’ comes into effect. The buffer puts in the pigment, a seaman stirs it, they look at the result and say ‘That looks about right’.
Veteran after veteran told me how arduous the task of chipping rust and repainting was. It was hated. This was even more so by tired men waiting for the rest of their shipmates to get back so they could get a few days leave themselves. So up until 1943 we must accept some of the official Admiralty shades with a pinch of salt. Even they accepted that a ship may not have the right amount of paint and recommended a scheme be as near as possible. In some cases this meant the colours might not even be the same, in which instance the recommendation was that they be of similar shade tone. Hence pale blue was often used instead of pale green and vice versa. No ship was going to be held back from her vital role in war just because the paint scheme was not exact.
From 1943 onward this was eased (though never fully overcome). That was because the Admiralty started to issue ready-mixed paint to the ships along with full instructions for specific schemes. Thus in later wartime photography we are more likely to see ships looking much the same shade when wearing various regulation schemes. Also new ships coming from the shipyard would have been painted in the yard using paint delivered for the purpose.
But, to emphasise, it was never fully overcome, because there were often shortages and a ship might have to make do with what was available to the crew to use. There were instances of there being insufficient of a particular shade to cover the amount of area intended so that area was either made smaller than specified, or often the problem was solved by mixing some other spare paint to eke out the shade that was running out. Therefore you should never assume a ship is exactly one shade or another regardless of what official records might state.
The most reliable paint jobs were those provided by the various yards while ships were in for refit or repair. The crew were usually not involved and the work was carried out by workers under the supervision of a foreman painter. But even here many were not familiar with naval requirements and despite written instructions they could easily get things wrong under the pressure to get the job done and on to the next one. Firstly, they had to mark out the areas of the ship to be painted. One of the gentlemen I met who had worked in a naval dockyard said they would take measurements from drawings provided and mark the areas with a large lump of chalk. On each side of those lines they painted a dab of the shade required and moved on to another area. The painters then got to work and filled in the marked-out areas. Sometimes there was an ‘oops’ moment and a straight line now had a bend in it, or a curve was a bit flatter than originally intended. But in general it would be as marked. But of course the markings depended on the accuracy of the measurements in the first place. Hence one foreman docker might get a few things wrong that another got right. Similarly, from ship to ship supposedly painted in the same pattern these human errors were present. It is very important to remember this. The accuracy of the pattern depended on the human who marked it out in the first place. Inexperienced foreman painters could make some howlers. I have included one ship where the flag superior and pennant has been painted on along with the abbreviations intended only as notes for his reference. I have seen this in photographs on two occasions. Even shipyards ran short of paint and rather than hold a vessel up from entering service it would be sent to sea with whatever was available. This explains why the reader will see ships of exactly the same class, but which, although painted similarly, the colours may not necessarily be the same.
The gentleman I met years ago who had worked in Royal Dockyards told me that, when he started work there a few years before WWII, there were stocks of paint on hand. But they were limited to specific colours only: Primrose, buff, dark grey, light grey, white and black. Sometimes there was a quantity of Brunswick green. And always lots and lots of red lead undercoat. Therefore, when a ship required painting, or for the paint locker to be filled, they were the only ones on offer. It should therefore be no surprise that early schemes, which were worked out by the officers of the ship, would be based around what they had, or what they could mix with those shades.
During research for the ‘Insect’ class gunboats I was aware that, having been stationed in China, they would have had lots of buff and white as part of the normal stores in the paint locker. In later reading I came across a verbal account of HMS Ladybird having been given an emergency coating of ‘stone’ during the period she spent defending Tobruk harbour and needed to hide close to the shore during the day using an inlet to avoid German aircraft. There are two possibilities. One is that there were still some stores of buff on board and these were combined with white to produce stone. But then again, when on passage from China under tow, the ships of the class were stripped of armament and almost everything else. So when they were rearmed and refitted at Bombay it would have needed the original contents of the paint locker to have been put back aboard after being transported all the way from the Far East. That sounded unlikely. Then it occurred to me that I knew a gentleman who had been a stores officer with the Australian Army and was at Tobruk. In conversation with him it became obvious that they had stores of British army paint in the port and that, if the RN had asked to borrow some, there would have been little dispute about it as daily air raids were destroying so much anyway. Therefore the RN could have ‘found it’ or were given some stone on asking. As the Ladybird was considered of great value to the army, due to her gunnery support, I formed the opinion that it was more likely that the actual stone colour mentioned in writing was in fact army stone as used on vehicles and tanks. I have no proof, but it is a logical deduction. One should not pass up the chance to think these things out.
Other issues affected how a ship looked. The sudden demand for masses of paint was a major problem for all the nations involved. Even the USA, with its vast resources, ran short from time to time. This meant that sometimes the pigments accepted were below standard and faded very quickly. Those who have looked at photographs of US warships in dark navy blue will realise how quickly that faded, often in patches. US shipyards were churning out ships at a prodigious rate and, rather than delay them, new ships could be painted in what was available and the task of providing the correct shades left to the dockyard
