The Ship Model Forum

Hello Gentlemen,

I hate to ask as I am new to the forum, and also to building ship models, but I have burned-out my eyeballs trying to find some easy paint reference materials online. I have only just gotten the plastic shipbuilding bug (after building aircraft for several years) as it has reignited my interest in the hobby that was starting to wane. As can be imagined, almost all my paints and reference materials are geared toward WWII to Vietnam era aircraft. So far I've built three ship models, two in 1/700 and one in 1/250 scale. I was fortunate in that I was able to use some of my aircraft paints as they were very close to the colors mentioned for the ships I built (HMS Nelson, DKM Z-37, and a Victorian torpedo ram). But now I have a stash of ship models and need a little mentoring.

Currently I have seven ship models in my stash. One is an MPC/Airfix HMS Iron Duke in 1/600 that I have to repaint (wrong gray), the rest are all 1/700 scale (which I think will be my preferred scale for now). Of the six remaining, three are IJN ships, two are DKM, and one a USN battleship (BB61 - USS Iowa). I don't have any decent hobby shops near me where I can easily purchase paints. I prefer to use Testors Model Master enamels (I have not had good luck using acrylics on airplane models, nor do I want to spend a lot on paints such as those by Vallejo, etc). I have used Humbrol enamels, but they have been a mixed bag of results.

Since I have to mail-order my paints, I've been trying to get the necessary paints for all the models at one time. So for the past few days I have been trying to go online and research colors. I have gone to all kinds of model-building sites (ModelWarships.com being my primary go-to site) but the results, to me at least, have been overwhelming. Painting model aircraft seems so much easier! When reading about naval colors, for example, there are so many shades of gray (if someone says there are fifty they need to be punched by the mods ) that a single ship could use during its life. One of the models I have is of the Prinz Eugen, which you can model at commissioning, in its Baltic colors, during Operation Cerberus, etc., and all have different grays or shades of. IJN ships are different colors depending upon where they were built..it is mind-boggling to a beginner. Or so it seems.

Does anyone know of any web sites or postings which have the basic colors for the major WWII naval combatants in WWII? Perhaps one that even puts, in table form, a cross index between equivalent colors among the different paint brands? And by "basic" colors, I mean paints that you should always have on hand for each navy being modeled.

Any help you can offer is most appreciated. Thank you for terrific web site.

This is a pretty sweeping question and I don't think a one-stop resource of the kind you're looking for exists. Ultimately though, it comes down to your perception and how far you want to go matching colours. It can be fun researching all the shades, but once you take into account possible fading, weathering, touch-ups and light conditions you could get away with using a single paint for lots of things.

IJN for example can be even more confusing as a ship might have been repainted at a different yard during a major refit, so you need to study records of movement if you want to know what colour a ship was at a specific time. But honestly, they're all medium or dark grey, so just pick one and use it for everything, I really doubt anyone will call you out on it. I would say grab a Kure grey and stick with it. You'll also need a reddish-brown colour for linoleum decks.

For Iowa, her camouflage colours in 1943 were Haze Grey and Navy Blue. Deck Blue is a universally useful US colour but again if you're not too nitpicky it's a very close match for Navy Blue so use that for both and just weather for the deck fading. If you plan on making more USN ships, a lot of the camouflages use Light Grey and Ocean Grey. Having said that, no ship uses light and haze grey together, and haze grey looks very light in some pictures, so again you could get away with using one for both.

For KM you basically need three shades of grey and an off-white. Early war is light grey superstructure on a medium grey hull. Random things like Baltic stripes and recognition markings are just applied on top of that and are usually generic colours (white, black, red etc.). Splinter patterns e.g. Tirpitz are usually some mix of white, light grey and dark grey. You can really go down rabbit holes for some KM ships' patterns but the above should serve you well for the most typical cases.

You also want a generic tan colour to use as a base coat for your wood decks but you probably already have that.

Note though that while I do like researching colours and getting the right colour mixes on my ships, I tend to play fast and loose with exact shade matching so my advice above is more skewed towards what you can get away with as a minimum. Is that what you're after or do you want more detail? Which specific ships do you have and what are you planning to buy in the future?

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Vlad

Ditto to what Vlad said. It's a pointless exercise trying to get an EXACT color match, what with weathering, scale fading, and paint batch variences on the real ships. Perfectionists and Experten also often disagree among each other.

For US, you'll deal mostly with WWII and modern.
WWII:
Do you like dazzle camo? If so, you'll need more paints. If not, then it's either Measure 21 or Measure 22, which are USUALLY:
MS 21: Navy Blue on the sides, 20B Deck Blue on the horizontals. Very similar, almost the same - get one very dark blue-grey and one slightly lighter.
MS 22: Navy Blue from waterline to lowest point of the main deck, then Haze Grey above. 20B Deck Blue on the horizontals.

Exception to this are the "neutral" variants of these paints that were introduced (but not entirely adopted...) during 1945, which had no blue in them. It's pretty hard to pin down whether a ship had these, so I'd just ignore it.

Postwar: Haze Grey, deck grey. See the USN Modern Colors thread that's stickied for the details. Super easy to find. Postwar haze is different from WWII haze, but no one's going to notice, so you can probably get away with using the same paint for both.

So you can make do with basically just four paints for most of the USN fleet.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

Only one more if you're not picky. 5O Ocean Grey is the most common middle colour in dazzle schemes, including all the most iconic ones like Missouri and Yorktown CV-10, as well as being the middle colour in all the early war Measure 12 and 12 Mod. schemes, so it's got you covered for a lot of things. Everyone owns a pot of black so I don't count that as something specifically to buy for USN dazzle schemes. I consider having a separate 5L Light Grey a luxury since as long as you have a light, slightly blue-ish grey, you can use it for both Light and Haze Grey as you'll never see a ship wearing both.

_________________
Vlad

Sacrelige

_________________
Harold

Thank you all for your help. I really appreciate the information and suggestions you have provided. They give me a foundation to start with.

I should mention that I am not a rivet-counter, but I try (as an average builder) to come as _reasonably_ close as practical to what I am modeling. I am always awestruck at what advanced builders do with their models.

Thanks again!

Currently I have three completed ship builds under my belt:

1. Trumpeter: Zerstorer Z-37 in 1/700

2. Tamiya: HMS Nelson in 1/700

3. Kits Remembered: RN Torpedo Ram in 1/250.

In the stash, I have the following:

1. MPC: RN Battleship "Iron Duke" (WWI) in 1/600 (currently under construction).

2. Fujimi: IJN Light Cruiser "Isuzu" in 1/700.

3. Aoshima: IJN Seaplane Tender "Chiyoda" in 1/700.

4. Aoshima: IJN Aircraft Carrier "Unryu" in 1/700.

5. Fujimi: USN Battleship Iowa (WWII) in 1/700

6. Fujimi: DKM Pocket Battleship "Graf Spee" in 1/700.

7. Trumpeter: DKM Heavy Cruiser "Prinz Eugen" in 1/700.

My interest in ships generally runs from ironclad/ pre-Dreadnought ships through WWII. So my purchases will probably remain in these areas.