Brett Morrow wrote:
Whilst you have provided documentation of the continued use of 507A and C, they were superseded by the MS and then the G`s and B`s.
Sorry Brett but I have to come back on this.
We are in agreement that in the wartime era of the B&G series paints, ie from May 1943 onwards, any listing of the paints on a camouflaged ship that mixes B&G terminology with 507 terminology, ie that mentions 507A or C rather than G10 or G45 is almost certainly wrong.
However 507A and 507C were not superseded by the MS paints in the MS&B era, ie 1941 – May 1943, as you state.
There are innumerable documents on file in the UK archives from the very people in the Naval Camouflage Section at Leamington that designed the disruptive camouflage schemes, and from the Admiralty department (DTSD) in London that they worked for, listing the colours in use in their designs. 507A and 507C are included alongside the MS&B paints. Some easily accessible examples can be found in the designs illustrated in CAFO 679 of 9th April 1942. Here is one such:
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Plate 54.jpg
This would be because no paint in the MS&B series was the same shade as 507A & C (unlike in the B&G series where G10 was the same shade as 507A and G45 was the same shade as 507C).
Now our suspicion is that true (semi-gloss) 507A & C would not in practice have been used in 1941-May 1943 camouflage designs alongside the matt MS&B paints. We suspect that “507A” and “507C” were often being used in documents etc as shorthand for the commercially available or Portsmouth Dockyard mixes of matt versions of the shade of Home Fleet Grey (507A) and the shade of Mediterranean Grey (507C). This is suggested in various places not least in this listing of the then standard camouflage colours from a Leamington document dated 25 Nov 1941:
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119 - Copy.JPG