The Ship Model Forum

It's possible, for Derfflinger. What I know for sure is that there's a photo of Seydlitz right before grounding on the Jade bank due to the damage from Jutland, and another one during repair, with a battleship in the background, and in both instances both ships have the after funnel fully painted with what seems to be a shade of dark red. While the measure may have only been implemented "sometimes", we know for sure it was at Jutland, if these two photos are anything to go by.

Obviously there may be the outlier that hadn't been painted on the occasion, but we wouldn't know for certain unless more pictures were found detailing specific ships in that very specific time frame.

The first Reference given in my post of 2 June stated that they also used brown and blue but it also reported that the measure was only used "sometimes."

There are two images of DERFFLINGER taken prior to Jutland to my knowledge showing this. In one, only the forward and after ends of the after funnel are painted; in the second, the whole of the after funnel has been so treated. Caution: were the two images taken at different stages of the painting on the same day or on separate occasions? I suspect the former.

Greetings folks, I'm not a German fleet expert, but I just learned something that may be relevant to this thread. If it's been pointed out already, then I apologize.
I was recently made aware, by a very renowned historian, that High Seas Fleet wartime colour scheme called for painting the after funnel of each ship (it doesn't specify whether just the capital ships or all the ships in the fleet, but certainly applied to the former) in a particular colour, generally dark red was used (I'm not aware of the specific shade, but maybe other people can help there). Sometimes other colours were used, he mentioned yellow was tried at least once. This practice was put in place during wartime because, in case of action degenerating into a melee, it would have helped identifying friend from foe and hopefully eliminating friendly fire possibilities.
The reason this particular bit is poorly documented is that, to disguise this practice and keep the British from getting onto it (possibly reusing it to cause further confusion or disguise ships as false friends), the actual painting of the funnels happened at sea. The fleet was painted in the normal shades of grey while in port, and after setting sail and losing sight of land, the after funnel only would be repainted in preparation for action. Then it would be returned to its normal colour just after putting into port afterwards.

It is definitely known this practice was used at Jutland, and that all German capital ships for sure, were painted this way. There are few, but original photographs detailing exactly this.
Since I'm just completing a model of SMS Friedrich der Grosse as it looked at Jutland, I found this bit of information particularly interesting to me.

I note and thank both wefalck and maxim for their prompt responses to my last post. As an interested Briton, however,
I cannot add any further information on this matter for the present.

81542 wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2026 7:48 am Further to my last post, we do have two pieces of information about the colour schemes of Imperial German Navy warships in print. These are in "German Warships of World War 1." This is a print of information contained in British Admiralty intelligence reports; which were printed in 1918.
The book was published by Greenhill Books. It states that surface vessels were painted light grey overall. Destroyers and Torpedo Boats were black but the most modern ones were grey.

Sorry - but this information does not fit to any information available in German books.

Standard pattern:
below water - RAL 8013
boot topping - RAL 7016
hull - RAL 7000
superstructure (plus part of the hull on some ships) - RAL 7001

Destroyers (classified as torpedo boats): black, but officially since 1916 in the "dark grey", actually a light grey, RAL 7000 (but actually already in 1915 many were painted in this colour).

Most pre-war and early-war photos show larger vessels in the standard pattern consisting of two light greys.

There are variations, especially later in the war, there are photos which appear to show variants from the standard pattern, e.g. much darker hulls.

The reason could be the decline in the quality of the paints and also a reduced attention to standards.

"I was amazed by the apparent variations in the number of paint schemes of models in German locations: especially those made around the time of the actual ship's building." - Builders' models were not necessarily painted in any of the official paint schemes. I recall having seen several such models in a creamy-white paint with brass or nickel-plated fittings.

The spectral sensitivity of the photographic material used greatly influences how different colour appear on B/W material. Therefore, it also difficult to impossible to judge from difference in shades of grey what the original colour may have been. I would doubt that photographers, particularly under war-time conditions, would have used them, but normally B/W photographers had sets of colour-filterss to correct for instance the limited red sensitivty of the photographic material.
This is why the skies in most older photographs appear a sort of uniform light grey. Using an orange correction filter would have taken out a lot of the blue light that led to this overexposure of the sky and represent e.g. clouds more naturally in front of a darker sky. By the same token, a warm dark grey would appear darker on an uncorrected B/W image than it should have, compared to a blueish grey that may appear relatively lighter.

Further to my last post, we do have two pieces of information about the colour schemes of Imperial German Navy warships in print. These are in "German Warships of World War 1." This is a print of information contained in British Admiralty intelligence reports; which were printed in 1918.
The book was published by Greenhill Books. It states that surface vessels were painted light grey overall. Destroyers and Torpedo Boats were black but the most modern ones were grey. Details for U-boats are also in the book reporting that in the North Atlantic they were painted a light French grey but that there were variations depending on where they were employed.

There is also an anecdotal report that I recall reading but cannot now recall the source. However, this said "The German ships looked particularly fine in their silvery-grey yacht-like paint."

Those apart I know nothing else more definite.

What follows is speculative and concentrates on major warships only i.e. cruisers and above. I am frankly mystified by the apparent variation in appearance between the superstructure and hull of ships seen in some monochrome photographs. Alright, I have read statements elsewhere about the reasons such as lighting, film type, exposure and weather and so forth: I don't have the technical knowledge to understand the arguments but will leave that there. My main point however, is based on the double-page image of SMS LUTZOW (sorry, couldn't find the "u umlaut") to be found in Staff's "German Battle-cruisers of World War One." It shows the newly-completed ship in what one can take to be good, neutral light. The differences in shades between the hull and superstructure are just noticeable. How, therefore, would the superstructure reflect so massively as seen in images of other ships elsewhere? Was there something in the paint pigment to cause this or did the German paint their superstructures slightly lighter later as a "camouflage" measure?

I have thought that crews were under instructions to paint superstructures a little lighter than was officially laid down but somehow and based on the evidence of late war photographs I can't believe that they did: some ships appear to be all of one shade but in other images, the differences are noticeable.

Final point, for those still "with me," I recently purchased a second-hand copy of PC Coker's "Model Warship Building." Although understandably now somewhat dated, it contains a vast number of photographs of models together with captions describing their locations. Regarding models of ships of the Imperial Navy, I was amazed by the apparent variations in the number of paint schemes of models in German locations: especially those made around the time of the actual ship's building. Moral? Treat everything with circumspection.

It would be, indeed, interesting to subject paint chips from artefacts (such as the Admiral's barge, if there is any original paint left) to a modern compositional and structural analysis, such as those used in museums. This would give at least a clue to the pigments used and perhaps through the ratios of chemical element one can draw some rough conclusions in what ration the pigments were mixed. However, such analyses are quite expensive, when performed commercially, so out of range for us amateurs. One would need to sollicit some funding from relevant organisations.

And, indeed, we have the official paint-schemes from the Prussian Navy in 1867 as predecessor to the Kaiserliche Marine until the last modifications in 1918. However, the wording is very general.

To back-extrapolate colour hues from the Kriegsmarine back to Kaiserliche Marine some some two to four decades earlier I would take with great reservation. It may be right or may not be right.

A little earlier in this conversation, I attempted to post an item giving information on what I had on the subject. The draft took me some time and sadly, for some reason disappeared without trace when I tried to submit it. I was to put it mildly, "miffed" but I am going to try one more time: bear with me.

I am British and became interested in the Imperial German Navy some years ago as a result of starting a project to draw plans for and make a 1:200 model of SMS HINDENBURG. That has taken me down many rabbit holes which have included compiling a report on an ex-German admiral's barge now located in a museum in Orkney (I have visited the county on several occasions) and cataloguing a large collection of German warship plans now held in a well-known British museum. I do not speak German but have acquired a working knowledge of it as it applied to the work that I have undertaken. There is a lot to say but I will try to be succinct. First though I have to report that I agree entirely with wefalck's philosophical thrust regarding researching this matter. However, there are a number of Germans who have written on the subject to my knowledge; Koop and Schmolke and Grießmer are examples and some of their work has been translated into English.

Right: the paints. The first link in Zaku II's post of 7 May contained a lot of what I had originally wanted to say: page 8 of that document quoted the Reference by Jung, Arbendroht and Kelling (2nd Edition) and it would appear that much of what is currently used stems from that book and was used in an article Thorsten Pfeiffer in the booklet "Schiffs Modell Extra No 4: Die Kaiserlichen Marine." I translated this article using "Google" Translate and in short the RAL numbers are the same as those given elsewhere in this subject by Maxim. I did some more looking around though and found a reference to the General Instructions for the painting of German ships 1911 (as amended to 1917). There is a copy of this document available on-line via the Federal German Archive's "Invenio" search engine. The "catalogue" number is RM 3/24559. In brief, it gives details of the colours to be used and the differences in shade but no specifications concerning the paint mixtures.

There is more however; which may prove more interesting but I will leave that for a forthcoming post.

I hope this is useful, if it only confirms "background" information.

On paintings, it is actually the varnish (partially linesee oil, partly resins) that yellows. Once old varnish has been taken off, usually the original brilliance of the colours returns (sometimes one has to get used to it, after seeing a painting with degraded varnish for decades/centuries).

Research on the Imperial German Navy (and its predecessors before 1871) is compared to other countries rather limited. German have been taught for decades to view certain periods of their history with at least great reservation, if not to deliberately ignore them. This includes, strangely enough, also the time before 1919. Most of the research has been and still is being carried by amateur individuals. Other research focuses mainly on the societal or perhaps economic dimensions, areas for which public funding is made available. Research on 19th/20th artefacts is largely frowned upon by historians and ignored in academic teaching and research.

There may be various relics of the Kaiserliche Marine dispersed around the world in museums and privated hands, but owners are often reluctant to disclose actual holdings for fear of restitution claims. As I said before, I tried to draw up a directory of such relics and a directory of still extant shipmodels (builders' models, presentation models, etc.), but in some cases met with reluctance to disclose any holdings. For Russia, for instance, for many years I hit walls, after which for a few years they became more open and actually responded ...

Well, of course, if one wants to do a Ph. D. dissertation-level job on this matter there are many more sources. I spent years on the Royal Navy in WWI, and I was hoping some kindly German had done all the research for me on the German colors. I found a useful sample of the 1916 Grand Fleet gray on a fragment of a ship's boat from HMS Hampshire in the Imperial War Museum. There is the possibility some German naval artifacts are in the Imperial War Museum, or the Portsmouth base naval museum. There are supposedly some WWI German torpedo boats left to sink at their moorings at Portsmouth.

That is very interesting about the linseed oil effect, which I know about from what linseed oil does to paintings. This might be the source of the neutral gray observed by a source some time ago. The Royal Navy colors of WWI were supposedly neutral gray, and it might have been due to the use of linseed oil.

It is also useful to check, when certain pigments became available on the market. A quick summary on TiO2-pigment by ChatGPT shows that it commercial production began in Norway at around the end of WW1. So it would not have been available to the Kaiserliche Marine.

However, pigment is only one aspect. In the case of white/grey also the behaviour of the binder is important, which at that time basically was lineseed-oil. When it is exposed to sunlight, it will yellow, particularly if it is industrial and artists-grade. This would give, together with lead-white probably a warmer hue to the whites/greys, more pronounced the lighter the colour.

Thanks to Allied and Russian bombing/shelling and post-WW2 looting most of the larger artefacts of Kaiserliche Marine in the Museum für Meereskunde in Berlin, which was also the naval museum, have been lost. Some years ago I had started building a small database of still extant relics of the German navies from before 1918, but in most cases 'special' items have survived, not simple fragments of steel-sheets. Scapaflow would be the source of hull pieces, but I doubt that any paint has survived.

It is probably not sufficient to look on Amazon et al., but one needs to sift through library catalogues as well, as many relevant books may be out of print. In addition, such detailed questions require work in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg in order to go through what still exists in terms of files by e.g. the Marinebauamt etc.

I finally found a post-Coronel photo of Scharnhorst or Gneisenau which clearly shows they used the two color scheme. The other post-Coronel photos are so washed out by bright sunlight the two colors are not visible.

I not only searched Amazon USA I also searched Amazon Germany for new books on the Kaiser Marine, and found only the new political/social history of the the fleet in the First World War, which I acquired. I have tried keep up to date on English and German language books on this subject, but completely missed Dirk Nottelmann.

You will notice this SMS Graudenz model is painted with neutral grays unlike the other WWI models which used titanium white in the grays. The source I had found several years ago had claimed the Kriegsmarine warships used titanium white, and Kaisermarine warships used neutral grays.He said the bluish Kriegmarine colors were incorrect for WWI. I wonder if plates from some Kaisermarine warships are still in existence? I found remnants from British Royal Navy warships when I was researching the colors of their WWI ships.

... the discussion shows that it is useful to make oneself familiar with the literature of the country one is interested in and the respective auhtors.

The information about the colours are from his book about the battleships of the Brandenburg class (Die Brandenburg-Klasse: Höhepunkt des deutschen Panzerschiffbaus). I am not aware on any book specific about the colours of the Imperial German Navy.

The armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were painted in the standard two-colour pattern - visible on the photos. I.e. the pattern I described above (wefalck is correct that there were no RAL colour codes at the time of the Imperial German Navy, but this were the RAL codes as comparison given by Nottelmann in the above mentioned book).

Why do you think that this model of Graudenz is historic?

For me, it looks like the typical 1/100 models built in the last decades (compare the colours also to the colours of the model of the Kriegsmarine tender in front of it).


https://www.modellmarine.de/index.php/f ... pot-teil-1
.

Who is Dirk Nottelmann?

Google was my friend.

"Dirk Nottelmann is a marine engineer by profession, presently working as a civil servant for the German flag-state administration, and has been working on the history of the Imperial Navy for about 40 years."

He is published!

https://www.casematepublishers.com/auth ... ottelmann/

Sehr interessant!

I AM VERY GLAD FOR THIS INFORMATION, MAXIM, DANKE SEHR!

Has he written anything on the ship colors of the German fleet of 1914-1918?

I am particularly interested in the color of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the Coronel battle







Yes, that is the Graudenz model I saw.

Be aware that RAL numbers for cases before 1927 are only retrospective approximations to help modellers etc. to find a suitable colour.

Not only according to Gröner, but also e.g. according to Dirk Nottelmann, the standard colours for ships of the Imperial German Navy were:

below water - RAL 8013
boot topping - RAL 7016
hull - RAL 7000
superstructure (plus part of the hull on some ships) - RAL 7001

Which model of SMS Graudenz? This one?


https://www.modellmarine.de/index.php/f ... pot-teil-1

For those who scoff at paintings being unreliable sources for ship colors, it all depends on the artist, the light, the atmosphere, whether the artist is a realist or a subjectivist, and the printing. Charles Pears, for example, did a useful rendering of WWI Royal Navy 507A in this painting of HMS Courageous in the Rosyth dockyard ca. 1917.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarshipPorn/co ... /#lightbox