or for the crew to alter during the working-up period. Getting the ships completed and at sea was more important than the exact shade of paint.
In addition to poor-quality pigments fading, there were at times great difficulties in supplying particular colours. Green, for example, was in high demand by the Army and the Air Force as part of their camouflage schemes. Many shades of khaki required green pigment too, as did olive drab. For this reason, green was often not available for warships and other colours had to be substituted. Blue was in less demand by the other services and therefore pale blue often stood in for pale green in naval schemes. Indeed there were many shades of blue and blue grey used although the designer of a particular scheme may have specified green of various hues.
Lastly, not only were paint schemes affected by shortage of pigments, the ‘TLAR’ system, fading and wrong colours being available, there was also the effect of seawater on the paint itself. Ships spending lots of time at sea suffer salt corrosion and become rusty. Paint can bubble up in rust patches and flake off, exposing previous paint colours underneath. For some paint schemes this effect was very bad. White and other pale shades of the famous Western Approaches Scheme became much less effective once they became rusty. For larger ships with more crew available, touching up was much easier. But, for small vessels, keeping up with the effects of rust was very difficult. As mentioned earlier, a ship returning from some arduous mission would return to harbour with a very tired crew and touching up the paintwork was secondary to getting a good rest before heading out again. The smaller ships, with less crew, therefore had much more difficulty in keeping elaborate schemes looking smart.
So where does that leave us? I guess it is up to the person painting a model as to how specific they are. But, when using reference sources, just keep in mind that the very neat-looking ship in a photograph has probably just come from a refit or dockyard job. The ship that looks rather scruffy has probably been worked hard and had little time for the fancy touch-up jobs. I recall years ago seeing a photograph in a book with a caption that referred to a particular destroyer returning to harbour with its paint scheme in a ‘disgraceful condition’. A veteran WWII sailor looking at the book was quite derisive of the caption. It was a case, he said, of the person writing it having no consideration or understanding of what that ship must have been through in the weeks preceding the photograph for it to be in that state. No doubt he was quite correct.
So if your model-painting skills are not the best you can always claim your model ships have seen a lot of sea time. If you are a very discerning model painter that strives for total accuracy in shade, spare a thought that perhaps you may not be producing a realistic model after all, simply one that looks perfect. A more genuine approach would be to deliberately alter shades, change patterns slightly and add a rust streak or two here and there. Then you can truly claim your model is very accurate. There could be an area that has been cleaned of rust and touched up, but the new paint is not exactly the same shade. Close but darker or lighter!
A final point; when working on this book I deliberately made contact with some naval veterans and asked them their opinion of the ‘TLAR’ attitude. Most responded that it was by far the most common way of mixing paint, especially when in a hurry. Another pointed out, and then just recently yet another, that, even in peacetime, when ships were painted to regulation and with crew who had time to do it, there was nothing at all unusual in seeing a group of sister ships tied up together all resplendent in new paint straight out of the regulation tins, and all still somewhat different. In the case of flotilla craft, this could have even been deliberate to enable individual ships to be recognised while operating together.
SCALE
DRAWINGS ARE NOT TO SCALE. In order to give the reader a good view of the drawings, they have not been produced to a comparative scale, rather they are drawn to the best size for viewing in the format of this book.
PHOTOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS
Black and white film varies in quality and did so even more during WWII. The armed services used vast quantities, which left civilian photographers and even military ones at the mercy of what they could obtain. As a result, true shade is not always present. A scheme can look lighter or darker than it really was. Pale blue can come out quite dark grey and give the wrong impression of the real shade. Similarly, it can fade almost to nothing and look like there is no camouflage at all.
With diligent research, one can sometimes be lucky enough to come up with multiple photographs of the same ship, from different sources. Some may be in sepia and others a variety of faded or under-exposed film. But if one knows what the colour was supposed to be, it is possible to take these, analyse them and come to a fairly reasonable conclusion as to the pattern and the depth of shade. This is helped if the collection includes the ship from different angles and one can work out the depth of shade from the sun etc. It is not perfect, but in some cases where records have been lost, it is our best way of working out what a particular ship looked like.
I have used this technique many times. It is a case of using some detective work to gather a whole range of evidence and, from that, then coming to a reasonable conclusion. It is something that requires great diligence in finding the different sources to compare, but in this day of the internet that has become much easier. With patience, one can look up the memories posted on-line either by a veteran, or his family, along with some Box Brownie photographs these people took, and compare them with more official sources.
I have touched on issues here that I have used for fifty years of my life during research. I have of course referred to official sources too. That is the easiest of all and does produce lots of ‘what it should have been’ as well as a lot of ‘what it actually was’. The archives of the Imperial War Museum in London are excellent. But I am firmly of the belief, based on personal interviews over many decades, that what was supposed to be and what actually was has not been recorded.
As the famous song goes: ‘It ain’t necessarily so.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Dave Schueler, Andy Doty and Ian Thompson for their assistance, corrections and patient proof reading of this volume.
Mal Wright
January 2014
Numerous paintings by war artists. Some were actually ‘there’ and I place a higher reliance on their work than some who painted later.
Brown, David K, Atlantic Escorts (Seaforth Publishing, 2007). Although about the escorts themselves it has some excellent illustrations that are very helpful.
Camera at Sea, 1939-45. Compiled by the staff of Warship. (Conway Maritime Press, 1978).
Elliott, Peter, Allied Escort Ships of World War II (MacDonald and Jane’s, 1977).
Ellis, Chris, United States Navy Warship Camouflage, 1939-45 (Pique Publications, 1975). A famous name in the modelling world and, although dealing with US ships, there are issues that cross over to the RN.
Gillett, Ross, Australian and New Zealand Warships 1914-45 (Doubleday Books, 1987).
Gooden, Henrietta, Camouflage and Art, Design for Deception in World War 2 (Unicorn Press, 2007). Some good technical discussion on the how and why.
Hodges, Peter, Royal Navy Warship Camouflage, 1939-45 (Almark Publications, 1973). Long out of print but an invaluable work nonetheless.
Hreachmack, Patrick, The Painter’s Guide to World War Two Naval Camouflage
