The Ship Model Forum

I know this is likely to be a contentious subject.

But in looking over photographs in my Warship Pictorials books, and various online photos of ships in Ms 11 or Ms 21, I am getting a feeling that there is likely a great deal of variation in the paints used for these measures (5-S and 5-N).

One of the reasons is that I have found photos (in both B/W and Color) that show a marked range of gray-range, and of blue-value in the photos.

In the B/W photos, I cannot measure the Value (the color of blue), but I CAN measure the Value and/or Saturation ratios.

And it looks as if some ships in Measures 11/21 were markedly darker than others.

One specifically that comes to mind is USS Pringle DD-454, March 1943, and the USS Halford DD-480, April 1943.

Based upon a contrast study of the white values in the photo, compared against likely Blacks (The inside of the funnel, or men wearing black slacks), and then doing a Value Adjustment to bring the whites and blacks to the same Value (Value here being the specific numerical value in Photoshop), the hulls remain starkly different in Value, and thus would have been starkly different in color (the "Hue" - for example, the Munsell Hue number - may or may not be the same here, depending upon the B/W images, but I'll get back to that in a second, when I get to the color images, but in the case here, I am assuming them to be the same, even though a different Hue COULD account for a portion of the shade difference).

But, when I look at different color photographs:

http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/bo ... wp7-01.jpg
(Ms. 21)
Or

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... y_1941.jpg
(Ms. 11)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War ... :Bb-38.jpg
(Ms. 21)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... d_2015.jpg
(Ms. 22)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _BB-35.jpg
(Ms. 21)

And so on...

When I look at the Navy Blues (whether 5-S or 5-N), they are LARGELY the same Munsell value for Hue, yet even in these photographs (when corrected for white-black balance), they show that the Saturation (amount of color) and Value (amount of black) is not constant.

Thus, SOME ships during WWII painted the same Measure, would have had differing colors of 5-S or 5-N.

I even see different colors on the same ship.

If you look at DD-551, USS David Taylor (a Fletcher DD):



You can see Amidships, several very subtly different shades of 5-N, where likely touchup work was done. Irregular rectangular patches, with lighter values in between.

So, while it is not contentious especially that different batches of 5-N should be used, the degree of difference I am seeing is rather broad; by as much as 20% Value shift (±20% in the white/black range - 20% darker or 20% lighter).

I am especially seeing this on Destroyers, where smaller batches of paint would have been mixed up than for Battleships or Cruisers. For a BB or Cruiser, you would likely have used 200 - 1,000 gallons of paint (maybe twice that on the larger BBs, or CVs).

But for a DD, you could get by with 50 to 100 gallons of paint (one or two 50 gallon drums).

This is based upon the usual painters rule-of-thumb that one gallon of paint covers 300 - 500 square feet.

Any thoughts on this?

Because I want some more variation in my Ms 11/Ms 21 Ships, so they will look more interesting when deployed as fleets.

MB

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HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

I don't recommend using the color picture of Drayton as a comparison (your second link), it was using an experimental color called "Sapphire Blue"

http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/ ... CN-41.html

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Even including the Drayton, it did not change things overly much, as I was just using it for Hue Valuation (the "Color" on a Munsell or Pantone Scale).

And its "Hue" is basically the same as the others, only more "brilliant" (a purer Hue, with a higher saturation - less B/W in it than the 5-S or 5-N).

But it would not be what I would be using as a basis for painting other ships.

The variations would be in Saturation and Value (Greyscale of the color - how much grey was mixed in - and the light/dark of the color - how much black there is total in the greyscale; 0 being totally "Black," or non-reflective, 100 or 255, depending upon metric of digital scales, being "totally reflective, or "White").

MB

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1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

Do your methods account for different types of films that have variable sensitivity to certain colours?

Weathering - are you certain all your samples are consistent in terms of paint freshness? Do you know how the paints faded?

How about shadows from clouds or sun angle?

If I were you, I'd be comfortable adding variation to your fleet - there are a whole wack of possible reasons why they may differ ranging from weathering to poor mixing.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

There was certainly variation - 5-S and 5-N were to be mixed in forward locations. BuShips talks about issuing the white base and tinting material but the forward commanders also ordered no paint to be carried by ships. I'm curious if the bases and supply ships that were responsible for holding and issuing the paint mixed it and issued it thusly or as the two components. I haven't seen any documentation either way. I would tend to think that an activity that regularly dealt with paint would have less variation than a ship's force that received the materials once every couple of months, but even if it's the former, there's going to be some small variation in production batches. Add weathering, lighting, etc.,

I think a lot of the issues you're seeing is from film and processing though.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

Well, the fact that weathering could alter the value is a real possibility, as early 20th Century pigments (especially blues and reds) where usually photographically active (They tended to alter in Hue or Saturation due to exposure to light more readily than pigments produced after 1950).

So, I did consider that even though I did not explicitly mention why.

Alteration in Hue, though, was not something I typically found. Only Value/Saturation differences.

And, yes, correcting for B/W Balance would correct for the different film stock for the B/W films. For color images, there is not a lot that could be done, considering most of these color images were a form of Technicolor, or early Kodachrome process (less sure about that one), meaning that the colors were mostly artificial to begin with. But given that their hue values were very close, the developers and tinters did a very good job of matching color Hue.

MB

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1/700 (All Fall 1942):
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USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

Matthew,

5-N paint as it appears on destroyers (all USN ships) varies with applications by different sources, methods (spray or hand), and particularly age. The sun and salt in the South Pacific "appears" to fad 5-N paint. Plus, as you know the whole photographic process can cause quite a bit of variation in "appearance". I can't quantify how much change there is or can be.

Even on some freshly painted ships, differences can appear from one section of the ship/hull and another. Here is an example of USS DRAYTON after her MINY refit in April 1942. I'm guessing her hull WAS NOT spray painted.

Rick, this was something I mentioned in the OP, but could find no real decent example. I knew that I had seen a couple, but did not know how to track them down.

I don't have scans of the images, but even the surviving New Orleans-class CAs in the Pacific showed such variations in color on the same hull, where the San Francisco and New Orleans had irregular rectangular "blotches" of paint where they were likely touched-up due to minor digs, or bumps from recovering aircraft (given the locations of many of these off-color splotches where in the area of the amidships Aircraft-recovery Cranes and the sides of the hangar and well-deck).

MB

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Working on:


1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

Another feature that can be seen in photos, particularly for destroyers, is that ships exposed to sea and sun with a faded paint job in the Pacific during or shortly after high speed operation, will exhibit a "darker" area above the waterline where the hull has gotten wet. I remember an argument many years ago when someone swore this effect showed a "new" camo scheme on a 1943 FLETCHER that was painted in Ms 21.

I have already taken that into account.

I recognized that from Art School, when we dealt with painting "wet effects."

I plan to include a strip of darker color on my models when I put them onto their gaming bases, which will be a small wake (running at roughly cruising speed of 14 - 20 kts), and then have a small band of water-darkened hull at the waterline.

But I am still waiting on when my old employer will have a machine open up so that I can have him mill the 500 - 1,000 bases I plan to make (to sell some of them). They will be 1" to 2.5" wide, and 5" to 13" long (depending upon the ship), with a wave and wake surface that tapers off to flat at the edges.

I'm thinking about using the wave and wake patterns to make some display boards for specific models as well (with the cutout for a specific ship - such as Trumpeter's New Orleans-class, or Blue Ridge Models' Cleveland-class, or Dragon's Benson/Gleaves-class, etc.).

But for the time being.... I need to get the Ms 11/21 and Ms 12/22 Blues sorted out, so that I can have just a tiny variation in color, and a few ships that look "fresher" than others.

That is something that I wish that I could take into account:

How old the paint I am looking at in photographs is.

Because blue paints, especially during the early 20th Century, tended to fade HORRIBLY and rather quickly in bright sunlight. They were mostly made with a Lazurite or Cobalt pigments.

Lazurite, which was the most common color for Ultramarine, which itself was the basis for Navy Blue (5-S/5-N) has a photo-optically active Polysulfide in it that is primarily responsible for the Blue coloration.

As sunlight hits it, the sulfur catches the ≈440 - 490nm wavelength photons which break the sulfide bonds, causing the color to de-saturate (become more "grey"), and to yellow slightly (which would cause the color to catch a slightly greenish tint, which I see in some of the photos ("Seeing" isn't the right word. It is noticeable to the software I use to do color analysis, and shows up as a hue-shift toward the green by about 5% - so I "See" the number that shows a Munsell shift toward a Green Hue). The photo of the USS Pennsylvania in the drydock shows a similar greenish shift when compared to the 5-N in photos I have from a video of a BB launching that is in fresh 5-N (which I stupidly forgot to label the screen captures of the ship, or to grab a photo of the ship itself, and now I can't find the video).

Likewise, Prussian Blue (Cyanotic Blue) is one of the pigments found in some formulations of Navy Blue. Prussian Blue is an Iron Cyanide blue (Fe7(CN)18) - or, more properly Fe4[Fe(CN)6]3.

Sunlight also affects it by knocking lose the Cyanide ion (CN-), which again causes a loss of saturation, and a hue-shift toward the red (Iron oxide, because with the loss of the Cyanide Ion, an Oxygen ion will oxidize the Iron which was previously connected to the Cyanide, creating a reddish hue shift.

Almost ALL pigments prior to the 1950s where photo/optically active, and exposure to the sun caused them to change much more than modern synthetic pigments, which are formulated to be able to either resist or repair from photonics damage to chemical bonds.

So, even though I cannot track down exactly what the formulation for "Navy Blue" (5-S/5-N) is (because I have found that there are a LOT of colors that go by the name "Navy Blue," and most of them do not correspond to the Munsell Values I have for 5-N and 20-B.

Anyway, enough of me blathering about color spaces, chemistry and blue...

MB

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1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

I think you may be talking about the Squadron DD/DE Camouflage book and the author's Statement that DD-492 Bailey had a Measure 5 fake bow wave. It's a demonstration of that argument, at least.



Did you see this on the link Abram's been dropping? Paragraph 3 of Reference B gives the formulas used in the tinting paste.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

Tracy,

That could have been the argument I'm thinking of. That was a big one. It was quite awhile ago. But, I do recall a similar "question" about a FLETCHER exhibiting the same "look" that didn't get as much notice.

USS BAILEY certainly showed a lot of WEAR, salt residue, and fading in this photo ... see first attached image ... (the version of this photo I found in 80-G says it was taken by USS CHENANGO in December 1943), which was well after the April 1943 photo of her arrival at MINY for repairs ... see second attached image. She departed in July 1943 with a fresh coat of paint. Gives a rough idea of how quickly 5-N faded.

So it IS Ultramarine (Thought it might be). That would account for how quickly the paints faded.

A newly painted ship could be very dark, and within two weeks of the Southern Pacific Sun be faded to 50% of that Value.

MB

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1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16

And exactly.

Ultramarine is a Polysulfide, Lazurite.

Polysulfide are highly photoactive.

The Sulfide bonds help keep the color (and hence the ship) "Blue."

And, as I just pointed out, two weeks in the Southern Sun could cause a ship to lose roughly half of its Color Saturation (it would "Grey out").

I guess that probably accounts for most of the variations I am seeing, as that is a LOT of color-loss.

MB

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Working on:


1/700 (All Fall 1942):
HIJMS Nagara
HIJMS Aoba & Kinugasa
USS San Francisco
USS Helena
USS St. Louis
USS Laffey & Farenholt
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 4 - 7
HIJMS Sub-Chasers No. 13 - 16